A Guy’s Take on Baking a Cake

After a few hours of home plumbing renovations to our bathroom, which included replacing shower handles, entire valve body, faucet, etc., what’s next on the list of things to do? Bake a cake.

I’ve been fairly consistent of producing excellent grilled/smoked meats, so I figured on starting a series of articles on baking and cooking that I know I need a little work on. I decided to start out easy. What could be easier than making a box of Angel Food Cake Mix?

First, you pour the water – my mix called for 1 1/3 cup into a non-plastic bowl. Not sure why it can’t be plastic. Maybe it’s like in plumbing where they say you shouldn’t go from plastic to metal back to plastic … who knows. Anyway, bring out the power tool! I used a GE model 10665IN 120v-60hz-225w mixer. If you don’t have one of these, you can always use a power drill, I’m sure one of the spinners on the end would fit in the chuck.

Mix the packet of egg mix with the water. After about 5 minutes, mix in the other packet. Total mixing time is about 7-8 minutes. At this point, the directions mention a “tube pan”, I didn’t know what that was, so I was glad there was a little drawing on the back of the box of what one looks like. Luckily, we had one, which was tucked away behind some of our other pots and pans. Pour the liquid into the tube pan. The instructions also said to “cut” the bubbles, I hacked at it pretty good but I don’t know for sure if it was doing anything.

I baked it at 375F for 35 minutes, just enough time to watch an episode of Storage Wars (yuuuuuuup!). It looked golden brown to me, so I figured that was good enough. Makes me wonder though what would happen if I had used a meat thermometer. Would I have been able to tell if it was done by reaching a certain temperature? After the cool down process, I turned it over and slammed it down on the table, that didn’t seem to get it to fall out, so I pulled it out of the pan by sliding a spatula down the sides.

It tasted good enough to me, but I don’t really have too much cake-tasting experience. Would I take it over a juicy steak? Nah, I’ll take the steak, but in the end it was fun and I’d do it again … but I probably should think ahead and get some sort of topping.

- Kyle

About the author.