Cake Flour

I like to make cakes. Everyday, not fancy, spur-of-the moment kind of cakes.  And it's easy, if you know proportions.

Decide first how big a cake you want to make.  2 c. of flour is regular, 3 is extra big.

You will use almost as much sugar as you do flour.   2 cups flour, slightly less sugar.

Fat and oil should make up about 1/3 c. per cup of flour.  2 cups flour, 2/3 cup of butter or oil and butter combined.  Beat this in with the sugar for the first step.  Whip it until it's "fluffy" or some semblance thereof.

1 egg per cup of flour, plus 1 extra.  Add to sugar/fat mixture one at a time.
Measure out your flour and add salt, 1/4 tsp. per cup of flour.

One teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour.  Whisk this in with the dry ingredients.

Alternate adding flour and liquid to the sugar/butter/egg mix.

Use liquid enough to make your batter thick and not soupy.  This "liquid" can include fruit, and  I would start with a quarter cup per each cup of flour used.

Use your imagination.  Add whatever seems right.

But use cake flour.

And I have a problem with store-bought cake flour.  For one thing, it's in a box.  And I'm pretty bad about searching out expiration dates--who has time for that?  So I see a box of flour and I wonder how long that's been sitting there, and if it will infest my other boxes of stuff with weevils.  I'm not looking to get protein that way, thank you very much.


This is definitely the best way to have cake flour ready to use.
Get a nice big canister; I happen to love the large clear ones because I can see what I have.

In a big mixing bowl, put 2 cups of all purpose flour and 1/3 cup of cornstarch.  *The other recipes I have seen are silly, with measuring out cups, and removing some flour, and adding cornstarch then, but this really makes more sense and less mess.









Mix them up with a whisk.

Then put them into a sieve and shake it vigorously over the big bowl.  You can do this multiple times if you wish, but let's not get too crazy here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Place this mixture into your canister.


And you're done.   Now go make yourself a delicious  cake.

Fruit Cocktail Cake

Tres Leches

 Tres Leches is Ice Cream and Cake.  Birthday Cake!  And, after all,  my favorite vanilla ice cream has always been home-made Eagle Brand.  This is by far the quickest Tres Leches I have ever made.  And it makes a small cake, important for space because you keep it refrigerated.   If you need to,  it can be doubled,  but this is enough
for 8 people.
Here's what you will need:

3 eggs
3/4 c. sugar
*1c. Self-Rising flour.  (or 1c AP flour with 1/2 tsp. baking powder.)
1/8tsp. salt
1/4 c. milk
Evaporated milk
Sweetened condensed milk
Heavy cream
Powdered Sugar
vanilla optional
*I always use SR flour when I bake.  It just seems to me to be more dependable and no sifting.
Preheat your oven to 350.
Separate the eggs and put a pinch of cream of tartar in the whites and beat to soft peaks.  I love, love, love this whipper for egg whites.  You can do this by hand in about one minute.

Mix up the yolks with 1/4 cup milk and gently mix it into the whites in about 3 portions.

Combine the SR flour and sugar and salt and add that, gently, in about 3 portions.

When it is just  combined, put it into a prepared pan more or less 8x8. 
By the way, I love this stuff for cake pans.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, sticks to this stuff.  You can get it at Walmart.  And I wish I were getting something for my recommendation, but nahhh.





Put it into the oven for 20-25 minutes.
While it is cooking, mix a can of sweetened condensed milk, about 3/4 of a big can of evaporated milk or 2 small cans, and 1/2 c. Heavy Cream.

When your cake is done, you can take it out of the pan like this, or just leave it in and poke holes all over the cake with a skewer (not too skinny) and use the flat end.

Pour the milk mixture over the cake and refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

And for even more smooth delicious milkiness, whip about 2 cups of heavy cream with 2 T powdered sugar and a few drops of vanilla.  Did you know that powdered sugar has lots of cornstarch in it?  If you use powdered sugar in the cream it will "stabilize" the cream and the whipped cream will stay whipped much longer.  Good to know, for us cream freaks.

Hide this in the refrigerator and just see if this lasts long enough to be worried about.  I bet it won't.