Use A Tube Pan For Baking

Tube pans are most often used to bake angel food cakes. These pans have a removable bottom that attaches to the center tube. When you make a cake in a tube pan, the result will be a ring-shaped cake. This shape not only produces a decorative cake but it also helps transfer heat to the center of the cake and allows it to cook faster. Depending on your recipe, the manner in which you will use your tube pan will be different.

Instructions

1. Ensure that the center insert is inside the tube pan if you are making an angel food cake. It is not as vital for regular cake recipes.

2. Skip this step if you are making angel food cake. For other cake recipes, spray the inside of the tube pan with Baker's Joy or cooking spray. If you only have plain cooking spray, dust the inside of the pan with flour. You will not have to do this if you use Baker's Joy, which already has flour mixed with the cooking spray.

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees or the temperature required in your recipe.

4. Prepare the cake batter according to directions.

5. Wrap the bottom of the tube pan on the exterior with aluminum foil. Ensure that the foil reaches at least 3 inches up all sides on the outside of the pan. This will prevent two-piece tube pans with a removable center from leaking during baking.

6. Pour the batter into the tube pan.

7. Bake the cake for 45 to 60 minutes or until a skewer or thin knife inserted into the cake, away from the walls, comes out cleanly.

8. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. For traditional cakes, leave the cake in the pan for another 10 minutes before turning onto a serving plate to finish cooling. For angel food cakes, follow the next steps to cool and remove the cake.

9. For angel food cake, turn the tube pan upside down onto its feet or on top of the bottle with the neck through the center tube. This will prevent the angel food cake from falling as it cools. Because you did not spray the pan before baking the cake, it will not fall out until you remove it.

10. Turn the completely cooled angel food cake pan right side up. Use the knife to loosen the cake from around the edges of the pan and around the center tube.

11. Turn the tube pan over a serving plate. The cake should fall out with the bottom insert still stuck to what is now the top of the cake.

12. Run the knife between the bottom tube pan insert and the top of the cake to loosen it. Gently pull it straight up off of the cake.

Tags: angel food, angel food cake, food cake, center tube, cooking spray, angel food cakes