Hello,
Just wondering if anyone has tried Elisabeth Marek's cake recipes (Artisan Cake Company). I have heard a lot of good things about her fondant, but curious about the cakes. The instructions are very different than a normal mix method. She adds butter to the flour first, then half of the wet ingredients and beats it for a good while until fluffy, then put the rest of the wet ingredients. The recipe uses butter and oil.
She calls it "My Perfect Scratch Cake Recipe":
http://artisancakecompany.com/cake-and-buttercream-recipe/
I tried it yesterday and I was pleased with the taste, fine crumb texture, and moistness. I also left a piece of it out overnight, and was amazed it did not dry out!
The process and recipe is very counter-intuitive and it contradicts much of what I have learned about baking, which is what is kind of surprising!
Curious what others think! I am always in search of that perfect scratch cake recipe!
Thanks so much!
AI have used this method before many times, I believe it's called the two step method?!?
Rose Levy uses this method in the Cake bible, but without the oil. Sweetopolita has a similar recipe too. I personally really like this method, but recently the chemical taste of the cake flour has been bothering me. (But I'm pregnant, so everything bothers me. lol)
I just tried Three Little Black Birds vanilla cake. It was reeeally good, but I am sooo used to the other method I felt like a fish out of water reading the recipe every five seconds making sure I didn't miss anything.
I'm going to give her recipe a try, but with unbleached cake flour. Rose Levy and Sweetopolita's recipes are good, but they can be perceived as dry. I always thought about adding oil but was unsure about how much to add. Glad someone else has done the legwork:)
It's called reverse creaming. The idea is that the flour gets coated with fat before the liquid is added. This protects the flour from gluten development and makes the recipe more forgiving because the risk of over mixing is minimized.
A..and by two-step ( I'm confusing dancing and cakes) I meant two-stage...or reverse creaming as Annie mentioned.
Instead of two 8"x2" pans, I made three 6"x2" pans........so I could eat one of them myself (after freezing of course) and then make a small 6" cake out of the other two cakes.
That's pretty much what hers looked like in her video on "how to make" the vanilla cake. mmmm can't wait to taste this cake. It rose to the full height of the two inch pans, pulled nicely away from the sides, is flat as a pancake and will not need any trimming on top. the toothpick stuck in the center came out dry, bounces back when touched, so it's fully baked.
http://artisancakecompany.com/cake-and-buttercream-recipe/
Artisan Cake Company - Liz Marek
now if I could only borrow some of her brilliant talent in decorating....Cheers.
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Instead of two 8"x2" pans, I made three 6"x2" pans........so I could eat one of them myself (after freezing of course) and then make a small 6" cake out of the other two cakes.
That's pretty much what hers looked like in her video on "how to make" the vanilla cake. mmmm can't wait to taste this cake. It rose to the full height of the two inch pans, pulled nicely away from the sides, is flat as a pancake and will not need any trimming on top. the toothpick stuck in the center came out dry, bounces back when touched, so it's fully baked.
http://artisancakecompany.com/cake-and-buttercream-recipe/
Artisan Cake Company - Liz Marek
now if I could only borrow some of her brilliant talent in decorating....Cheers.
They look delish. My favourite filling is chocolate ganache with vanilla cake. Especially when the cake is still warm- then add a bit of warmed ganache- OMG.
I tried Liz' vanilla cake recipe, not sure which one it is (if she has more than one vanilla cake recipe on her site). It was wonderful but I had problems with the cake looking uncooked in patches all over. When you eat it, its cooked, but when you look at it, it looks like it didnt cook in certain places. It's not Liz's recipe's fault at all, just the fact that I used sponge flour which isn't quite the same as cake flour. It's very difficult to get cake flour here in the UK, and what you can get costs so much it's not worth getting. I have tried others and although I loved Liz's cake, had to try something else that wouldn't make my customers wonder whether the cake was baked or not- again not Liz's recipe's fault!
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HA.......taste like chicken (just kidding) mine came out like a soft delicate yellow sponge cake, it was not firm and dense like her cake ( which is why she's the pro and I'm not) Sounds like she's made it a thousand times so she has perfected her technique. I probably over mixed the batter as it was too delicate. I could not pick it up like she did in her tutorial.
@cazza1 it is not overly sweet, nor overly vanilla flavored, I'd think that you could use it with a large variety of fillings & flavors of icings. Actually I was trying to take my mind off of my 'World of Warcraft crash cake' so it was a matter of trying something new and unknown for me. Experimentation distracts and entertains small minds like mine. 
I'd like to try it again someday. I've got some butter thawing so I can make my own standard butter scratch cake (the one I modified from a pound cake recipe) just to compare.
@petitecat, I'd think that you could substitute regular all-purpose flour (without the self-rising additives). Just using a bit less. However from the look of your lovely cakes you already have a super successful recipe in play. Same as you cazza.
I must have a small mind then, MBm because I am always experimenting and trying new recipes. I can have the best recipe for something but if I see the same thing made slightly differently then I will want to try that. It has driven my family nuts for years as they can't understand why I don't just stick to the same recipe if it works.
A
Original message sent by MBalaska
Actually I was trying to take my mind off of my 'World of Warcraft crash cake' so it was a matter of trying something new and unknown for me.
Hey MB, glad to hear that you've climbed back on the cake horse.....
Seriously, I'm so hectic at the moment I haven't had a chance to try the two amazing fruit cakes I picked up from that thread, but I've printed out this recipe and put it on the "to try" pile. Like you all, I'm always searching for that little patch of greener grass....you know the perfect vanilla cake.....I love my chocolate cake but I feel that I could improve my vanilla still.....
AI recently made the chocolate recipe and LOVED it. Best chocolate recipe I have tried yet
I'm thawing some butter to try Liz's vanilla recipe again. this time I'll watch her instructional video while mixing the recipe as I'd like to get that perfect texture that I see in her baked cakes.
It really tasted great, as I keep eating the cake without icing. 
I really liked her recipe the first couple of times I made it, then it started acting weird. I would slice the cakes horizontally and had gummy streaks throughout. Not the nice looking texture the first time I made it.
I use the scraper blade on the Kitchenaid, and I think with it, the batter doesn't need to be beaten as long. When I would beat it as long as her recipe states, it would overflow my pans and have weird explosions pop out. So, I cut back on the beating time, and it was better.
I've since moved on as it wasn't consistent. I've used Rose Levy Beranbaum's Golden Almond Cake for a long time, so I left the almonds out and have used it for lemon cake, orange cake and have subbed pistachios and it works. Our wedding coordinator said everyone has loved the lemon version when she's cut them at weddings.
I didn't like the chocolate version of LM's at all.
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