1,569 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

For well opened (puffed) cakes

It's always nice to have a well puffed up cake after baking, not only will it taste good but it looks great too.

Let's see how to get this beautiful shape almost every time.

36 K 4.2/5 (28 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Cake Cake Puffed up Nibbles

Last modified on: January 23^th 2019

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

For well opened (puffed) cakes

baguettes lamées - grignes

Have you noticed that when you buy bread, a baguette for example, there are openings on the top of the loaf called "grignes"? They're there because when the dough is put in the oven, the baker "blades" or"nibbles" the top with a very sharp blade, so that when the bread is baked, it opens up well, and has that elegant, appetizing appearance typical of French breads.

How does it work? Quite simply, the stroke of the blade on the dough creates a weakness on the surface, and when the bread swells in the heat of the oven, it will spread in the direction of this weakness, thus accentuating the opening created by the initial blade stroke.

If the baker doesn't blade, the bread bursts during baking, or rather splits a little anarchically, but this can also be desired for a "rustic" style, as shown here:

pain non lame

In short, all this to say that if you don't blade your dough, the bread is less beautiful, but that's not the whole point of this post.

In fact, and this isn't obvious, but it also applies to cakes like cake or 4/4. During baking, the same phenomenon occurs as with breads, except that water vapor pushes the top of the cake open to varying degrees. Now, we all want to have beautiful cakes with open tops, so how do we go about it?

Well, almost like a baker, we're going to sift the dough, but as we're not dealing with a firm dough, but a very soft one, we have to be a little tricky.

Here's the idea:

- You bake your cake as usual, pouring the dough into a mould.
- Just before putting it in the oven, dip a spatula or a simple knife in a little neutral oil (peanut oil, for example).
- You trace a line down the middle of the dough with the oiled spatula (note that the groove remains thanks to the oil)

- Bake as usual
And that's the kind of result you'll get.

Pastry chefs do things a little differently: using a very thin piping bag, they place a thin bead of butter on top of the pastry.

As you can see, the principle is still the same: all you have to do is create a weakness in the dough, which will be transformed into a nibble under the action of the cooking gases,_CO2 for bread, and steam for cakes.

To sum up: if you want a mouth-watering, open-topped cake like this one, you need to "split" the top with a lightly oiled marysee.

Lasts posts

A little leftover butter

Very often when you're making a cake, your recipe will tell you to melt some butter and mix it into the batter - a classic for cookies, cakes, moelleux and the like. And every time you do this, you'll have to butter the baking tin to prevent the dough from sticking during baking. Naturally,...
April 16^th 20266505

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20261,3955

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20261,2725

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20253,2975

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20252,2035

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201821 K5

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202035 K4.4

Cream and sauces

Have you ever wondered why making beautiful tasty sauces is so easy when you use cream? .
October 15^th 201224 K4.4

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
February 8^th 201849 K 24.6

Different kinds of pastry and dough

When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
November 6^th 2012113 K 14.0