Lesson 4: Cakes and Icings

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Objectives:

At the end of this lesson, students will able to:

Prepare a variety of cakes.
Prepare a variety of icings.
Assemble cakes using basic finishing and decorating techniques.

Exploration: “Choose Right”

Directions:

An individual activity.
Guess the pictures provided
Add your answers on the link provided below and read the directions carefully.
Remember that the words are based on our topic for today.

When you are ready to

answer just:

History of Cake

The ancient Greeks called cake (plakous), which was derived from the word for "flat", (plakoeis). It was baked using flour mixed with eggs, milk, nuts, and honey. They also had a cake called "satura", which was a flat heavy cake. During the Roman period, the name for cake became "placenta" which was derived from the Greek term. A placenta was baked on a pastry base or inside a pastry case (Cake, 2021).

The Greeks invented beer as a leavener, frying fritters in olive oil, and cheesecakes using goat's milk. In ancient Rome, the basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked good Latin poet Ovid refers to his and his brother's birthday party and cake in his first book of exile, Tristia(Cake, 2021).

Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a "cake" and "bread" were the round, flat shape of the cakes, and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process (Cake, 2021).

Introduction to Cake

Cakes are bakery products that are rich in sugar, fat and eggs, and can be accompanied with a wide variety of inclusions like fruits and flavors such as vanilla extracts. They represent a very important segment within the baking industry.

They come in many varieties and are very versatile in terms of flavors, textures, shapes and colors, perfect as snack or as serving size portions on special occasions. They are typically made from soft wheat flour characterized by low protein content and high purity (mostly endosperm and starch from center of wheat kernels).

The ingredients for making a cake can be found in your kitchen year-round. The essential ingredients consist of flour, leaveners, salt, sugar, dairy, fats, extracts, spices & other add-ins such as vanilla extract, and chocolate chips.

These are the basic cake ingredients that can’t be easily changed or substituted if you’re going to achieve the perfect cake mix. There are, however, a variety of optional cake ingredients to enhance the flavors, colorings and appearance of the cake, such as; cocoa, lemon, jam, curds, nuts, dried fruit and more.

History of Icing

The practice of dusting cakes with powdered sugar or other ingredients dates back to the 17th century. The frosting was added to the cake and then baked to solidify it. The verb 'to ice' in this meaning appears to have been recorded from 1600, and the noun 'icing' from 1683. The term 'frosting' was first used in 1750 (Icing, 2021).

Food historians define marchpanes as a paste composed of almonds and sugar that is offered at festivities, according to Simon Charsley in "Wedding Cakes and Cultural History." Icing was initially used to top marchpanes in 1494, and it soon became inseparable from them. Additional ornamental elements might be added to the icing on marchpanes (Icing, 2021).

Introduction to Icing

Icing, or frosting, is a sweet, often creamy glaze made of sugar with a liquid, such as water or milk, that is often enriched with ingredients like butter, egg whites, cream cheese, or flavorings. It is used to coat or decorate baked goods, such as cakes. When it is used between layers of cake it is known as a filling.

Icing can be formed into shapes such as flowers and leaves using a pastry bag. Such decorations are commonplace on birthday and wedding cakes. Edible dyes can be added to icing mixtures to achieve a desired hue, usually this is usually to do with connotations of added ingredients. Sprinkles, edible inks or other decorations are often used on top of icing.

A basic icing is called a glacé, containing powdered sugar and water. This can be flavored and colored as desired, for example, by using lemon juice in place of the water. More complex icings can be made by beating fat into powdered sugar, by melting fat and sugar together, by using egg whites, by whipping butter into meringue , and by adding other ingredients such as glycerin.

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