Ask The Foodie : Convection Cake November 19, 2007

Q: I just bought a dual-mode (convection and standard) oven, and the user’s manual says cakes are best done in standard mode. Why is this?

The short answer: Because they’ll look better

The long answer:  A convection oven is an oven that uses a giant fan to circulate the hot air inside an oven, baking things more evenly (and more quickly) than a standard oven. In fact, they are so much more efficient that when baking convection, it is recommended that you both shorten the baking time and reduce the oven temperature by 25-50 degrees. Put simply, a convection oven is “hotter” than a standard oven.

For most things that most people bake, this is a good thing. However, when you start combining this even, forced-air heat with more delicate baked goods, it can get tricky.

Cakes (and for this case, lighter quick breads such as muffins) rely on baking powder or baking soda to get their airy feel. These two ingredients are simply chemicals that react with the chemicals in the other ingredients to add air to the mix. It’s like in third grade when you put baking soda in orange juice to create “orange soda” – the acid in the orange juice mixes with the baking soda and creates carbon dioxide. When this happens in a batter, the air gets trapped and gives the cake lift. When the batter begins to solidify, the air bubbles are “baked in” and stay there. This allows the uncooked batter to lift even higher, because there is a base for it to grow on – kind of like climbing a ladder.

In a regular oven, the heat rises from the bottom of the oven, through the batter, cooking the bottom first and lifting the cake as it goes. In a convection oven, the batter is bombarded with heat from every direction. This cooks the cake from the edges in rather than bottom-up – so when the leavening does its job and the cake tries to rise, it starts building on itself from every direction. The result of this is a cake with a top that rises a bit at the edges, falls a bit in the middle, and then puffs up in the center. It won’t affect the taste of your cake at all, but if you are going for the classic, even dome appearance, switch your oven over to standard mode.

The other option, especially if you’re planning on decorating the cake, is to level it out manually. Freeze the cake for anywhere from 20 minutes (in the pan) to overnight (turn it out of the pan and wrap in plastic wrap). Then use a serrated knife* to cut off the top of the cake and create a level surface.

Then put the “leftover” cake you just cut off in a bowl, top off with a bit of milk, and enjoy the favorite of caterer’s daughters everywhere!

Have a question? Email jadetater (a) yahoo [dot] com!

* Serrated knives are those knives with edges that look like waves – lots of little points. When you use these in a sawing motion (rather than cutting straight down) they cut breads and deicate foods (such as tomatoes) much more evenly.