As the new batch of amateur bakers enter the Great British Bake Off tent for the first time, we'll all be in baking mode for the next few months. Starting off with Cake Week, the contestants showed off their baking prowess by creating a loaf cake for their Signature challenge. Baking the perfect loaf cake may seem like a walk in the park, but it can be deceptively tricky to make sure the inside is baked to perfection without running the risk of burning the surface.
Making sure you have your oven temperatures can be critical to achieving a flawless bake. But to make your loaf cake “worthy of any French bakery”, there’s a little hack you should know about to achieve a bakery-like appearance. French patisserie chef Eric Lanlard, founder of Cake Boy, shared a quick and incredible tip to give your cake a professional flair.
In a TikTok video from 2023, Eric dubbed this hack a ‘top baking tip’. He said: “A cake like this will sit happily on the shelf of the best patisserie in Paris.” To complete the trick, you’ll need a little cornet made of greaseproof paper and some slightly soft butter.
Eric explained: “Before I put my cake into the oven - this one is a lemon cake - I’m just going to pipe two lines side by side in the middle of the cake. “This is going to go into the oven, the butter is going to melt, create that lovely ridge of fat and create an opening for the cake to erupt beautifully. And no misshapen loaf anymore in your kitchen, always perfection.
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