Baking tips, please

[sethrak]

You're about to pour cake batter into two nine inch pans for your son's birthday cake. You discover that due to your usual lack of forethought in such matters, the butter you took from the fridge is still too hard to do a proper job of greasing the pans.

What do you do?

In my case, I attempted to soften it by five second stints in the microwave. Two or three such stints still failed to soften it even a bit. I got impatient and went for a ten second stint. It came out soggy and utterly unfit for much of anything. >_<

Not wanting to ruin more butter, I went for the Pam cooking spray.

The cake came out looking okay. A bit dry around the upper edge, and rather high domed, rather than semi-level as my mother's cakes used to come out when I was a kid, but that's normal for my baking. Some enormous cracks in the top of each layer, which is NOT normal even for me. >_< I might have to place those sides downward when I frost it later.


So, those of my friends who bake cakes more than twice a year like I do, how can I avoid these issues? How long does a stick of butter need to be set out to soften at room temperature? Failing that, how long, if at all, can butter be nuked to make it suitable to grease a pan without ruining the butter? And how can I make my cake layers come out of the overn more level and less sharply domed? There's got to be a way. I know my mother managed it back in the eighties. I doubt she remembers now, though.

Any advice would be welcome. I like baking cookies and pies. But I don't do cakes very often, so I'm a bit lost.

Comments

[davner.livejournal.com]

Simple. Cut about two inches off the packaged butter, peel some of the packaging back, and rub the buttered end around the pan like a big magic marker.

[sethrak.livejournal.com]

::patiently:: Yes, dear. I know how to do that. It was too hard, and didn't smear properly, because I didn't leave it out to sit long enough.

[isisamour.livejournal.com]

No, Davner's right...you just may have to rub a little more on it but the friction of rubbing it will soften it as you go. Another tip is save a little bit of the powder batter mix and use that on top of the butter instead of flour.

[kamiki-seto.livejournal.com]

Actually, a good way is to wash your hands thoroughly, and butter the pan manually using a small piece at a time (cut it in some smallish chunks and unwrap it beforehand). The heat from your hands will help the butter soften as you go. It's going in the oven (like hand kneaded bread) so this is perfectly safe and sanitary to do. And it's also good for your hands! It's a bit messy, but very very effective and you can make sure the butter gets in to all the pan corners and edges.

The high domed thing...I know my mother flirted with semi-pro cake decorating, Wilton style, back in the 1980s, and I can't remember what she did. Wilton.com seems to have some good ideas about cakes, and a discussion forum, too. Might be worth checking out.

[isisamour.livejournal.com]

That works too, I just don't like getting the butter all over my hands...you can also use a little piece of paper towel.