Cakes and Tortes

Cakes are favorites in all western cuisines, while tortes are just as popular in pastry kitchens with French culinary influence. The difference is small but significant-tortes are cakes with little or no flour. They acquire their bodies from ground nuts and plenty more eggs.

• Some tortes may have a small amount of flour to thicken the batter, some have dry bread crumbs. Tortes use 2 to 4 times the number of eggs that most cake recipes call for. Both cakes and tortes receive high esteem on dining tables, and when it comes to a celebration or a festive occasion, one or the other is unquestionably the choice as the last course in our dining rooms.

• The selection may be as simple as a home-baked cake from a mix, or a basic inscribed supermarket cake in technicolor or elaborate, exquisite torte from a high-end pastry shop.
• The name torte has been misused by fashionable menu writers to enhance the image of a simple cake. Torte connotes something rich, European and elegant. Now airline meal menu may denote "torte" as one item on your crammed tray of food for the small piece of simple, unpretentious white cake topped with a strawberry-flavored sugar syrup.
• The high reputation of tortes is well-deserved. Not because cakes cannot be equally sumptuous and elaborate and just as difficult to produce. Yet, a humble home baker can bake a simple, easy, almost foolproof cake, but any true torte takes meticulous care, some knowledge and baking experience before you can serve it with pride. And they are anything but foolproof.
• Tortes don't have a flour matrix to give them strength, and are particularly sensitive to collapse if you dare to disturb them before fully set in the oven. They rely entirely on solidified egg white foam structure for support, which is considerably weaker than a combination of flour and egg white. There is no starch that gelatinizes on heat to give the body extra strength.
• Perfect cakes and tortes are light and tender, with moist body, just the opposite of good yeast bread where the goal is a chewy and firm texture with strength provided by the gluten structure. The trick to a light cake is not allowing the gluten to develop, the arch enemy of all sweet baked products. Since tortes have no flour, gluten problems don't exist. Cakes do have flour but you can do two things to reduce the chances for gluten development:
• 1. Use cake flour which has minimal protein (that produces gluten),
• 2. Stir the batter as little as possible to discourage gluten formation. The high fat in cakes is helpful-fat coats flour particles and insulates them from moisture. Without moisture, gluten cannot develop.

Planning ahead

• Before you start the baking project, decide if you want a layer cake and if so, how many layers. You can have a two, three or many layers. The authentic, glorious Hungarian dobos torta has seven bread-slice thin layers. There are two ways to make layers.
• 
• Either divide the cake batter into as many portions as layers in the cake and bake each in separate pans, or bake the cake in a single pan and cut the cooled cake with a serrated knife into layers. There is a difference. If you bake in a single pan, the cake bakes longer and you have more chance of a collapsing catastrophe. But with a serrated knife you can cut even, flat-topped layers.
• In single pans you are safer when baking, but you may need to trim off the domed tops for even layers, and the cake tends to dry out more in the shallow pans. For 2 or 3-layered cake, the choice is yours. For a 7-layered cake you need seven cake pans-it is very difficult to cut a single cake into seven thin, equal layers.
• Have sets of good-quality, heavy pans and torte pans (with removable bottoms), preferably in more than one size. Light, inexpensive aluminum pans will not help for even baking. You can grease the pan either with solid fat (butter, vegetable shortening) or, for convenience, with oil spray, both produce identical results.
• Dust the greased surface with flour and shake off excess to assure that the cake will release easily. For additional insurance, cut a round of waxed or parchment paper to fit the bottom. Fit the paper into the pan after greasing and flouring both the pans and the paper's surface in contact with the cake. You will have virtually no chance for the dreaded stuck-to-the-pan cake.
• And here is another professional trick that is an extra step for you but helps baking professional-looking and high quality cakes and tortes. The sides of cakes and tortes brown faster than the rest because they are in direct contact with the hot metal.
• Home bakers generally leave the over-browned layer on the cake and cover it with frosting. If too brown, they may trim it off. Many professional bakers, on the other hand, want to avoid too much browning.
• They wet a kitchen towel, fold it until it is a long, thin narrow strip and tie it around the cake pan. The moisture in the towel slowly evaporates in the oven, cooling the metal just enough to reduce over-browning. An extra step but it is worth it.