Greed and Patience4 Jun 2019 22:18
It seems to be the done thing to tell stories around here. So I'll add one of my own.
When I was a child, my mum used to make cakes. My brother and I used to get to scrape out the uncooked mixture from the bowl. To make it as fair as possible, one of us got the bowl, and the other the implements. Of course, it wasn't exactly fair. We both knew the bowl had more mixture, so we had to take it in turns from one cake to the next. Between us, we must have had a good 3% of the cake as batter instead of cake. Of course, we were greedy. 3% wasn't nearly enough, and we wanted more. These days, we all know the dangers of raw egg. As they say: Don't try this at home.
Needless to say, that greed was very short-sighted of us, and fortunately my mum could see the bigger picture. We two boys both loved the finished cake. In fact, we loved it far more than the raw mixture. It didn't occur to us that there was less cake for everyone - ourselves included - if we asked to have more and more of the mixture in its raw state. Still, such are children. Now I'm grown, I don't bake often, but I can see the sense in getting as much mixture in the oven as you can. More to go round.
I learnt recently that the perfect sponge cake weighs 0.28g per cubic centimetre - that's 28% of the density of the batter that made it. A lot of air goes into the mixture as the raising agent does its thing. Some say that the ideal density is 30%, others would say 25% will do. The exact percentage doesn't matter - what matters is that it stays in the oven, at the right temperature, for long enough to allow the bubbles to develop evenly through the mixture.
The cooking process takes time. It goes into the oven blond, the colour of the light from an anaemic low-energy bulb. It comes out a lovely golden colour. You can't hurry the cooking process. Many a newbie baker, like many a newbie investor, is desperate to see the progress. They want to know what the finished cake will look like. The fatal mistake is to open the oven door before the full rising process has completed. The rush of cold air can make the whole cake collapse. If the cake was only 15% risen, even 18%, insisting that you have a look at the finished cake before time may mean you get no cake at all. Just a soggy mess that nobody wants to eat.
So I'd urge all invested here to learn from my childhood experience of watching cakes rise. We need patience, which many find very hard now just as we did when I was growing up.
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