Why Cakes Crack
The question of why cakes crack is not as easy to answer as you might imagine. This is because the question of why cakes crack has three parts to it. Firstly, they crack as a result of improper preparation. The second part is that the cake does crack under the pressure of being baked in a hot oven. And the third and most important reason is that the party you are throwing for your family or friends in the UK is a Bespoke party.
Bespoke Wedding
A Bespoke wedding is a fancy word for a private party. In the UK, as well as in many other parts of Europe, it typically means a private celebration held for a large number of people. The party is usually hosted by someone who works at the wedding site itself. If the cake designer is a member of the Bespoke wedding team, the cake will be designed, baked and served at the private party.
Bespoke Cake Designer
If your cake needs to meet the same quality and standard as those used in private parties, why cakes crack is actually very simple to answer. In the UK, where bakeshops are everywhere and the average shopkeeper has a great number of guest chefs working in his business, you cannot just hire anyone off the street to work on a cake. No, the Bespoke cake designer has to be specialized in that area of cake making. That means having attended an apprenticeship during which time he gained a qualification.
School of Catering and Baking
The qualifications person gains while going through an apprenticeship are measured by the length of the program and the amount of work the person has done. To work as a pastry chef in London would mean spending three years studying at the London School of Catering and Baking. In Scotland, a chef must be registered with the Scottish Qualification Society. The Society gives certificates for both cooking and pastry skills.
How to Bake a Cake
After graduating from the Baking School, the aspiring pastry chef must be able to produce cakes that are the spitting image of his or her master’s cakes. Then comes the challenge of proving their skills in a number of public and private competitions. When the work finally does begin, it is usually the desserts that people will remember. As the competitions become more intense and the skill required more elaborate, the cakes become more impressive. A true pastry artist will not only know how to bake a cake, but will have the creative and technical skills to design the cake, decorate it and put the finishing touches on it.
Professional Cake Designer
A lot of the skills needed to bake a cake are taught in a traditional way at the beginning of pastry and cake-making classes. These classes may last for a couple of days to a week. During this time, the student will learn about pastry designing, presentation, the different types of cake, how to decorate it and so forth. However, this is the end of the line. There is much left to learn, and many of these skills will take months to perfect before a professional cake designer can come up with a finished product.
How to Decorate a Cake
For some, attending a baking school that offers more than a baking degree may be the best bet for them. These programs offer classes that are focused on the entire baking process, including cake decoration, the oven and the kitchen and so forth. By learning how each of these elements works, students will learn how to decorate a cake, how to make it perfectly baked and presented and so forth. A student who has never learned about baking techniques will feel like a newcomer to the profession when he or she takes a class like this.
Professionally-Trained Pastry Chefs
Of course, the typical reason why cakes crack is because the baking process is flawed. It is very easy to make a cake look great, but when it comes down to using the correct tools and ingredients, mistakes happen. Professionally-trained pastry chefs can avoid most problems simply by paying attention to the details of the process. Whether the results are aesthetically pleasing or not will depend greatly on the details of the baking process, so why not take a baking class?
