1,552 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.

35 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

XO Cognac Explained: Meaning, Aging, and Flavor Profile

XO Cognac always goes beyond the labels on the bottle: it is often associated with tradition and quality. You get to appreciate the artistry, character and ageing process when you understand what defines this smooth Cognac. The section below tackles everything about XO Cognac, from complex flavour...
January 28^th 2026115 Sponsored article

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 20252,2905

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 20251,5105

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,370

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20254,2935

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

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 202034 K4.4

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201379 K4.0

Making the most of seeds: Dry roasting

In cooking, and particularly in baking, there are a lot of seeds we can use, such as linseed, sesame, poppy, etc. Usually, recipes simply say to add them just as they are to the mixture or dough. To make a seeded loaf, for example, prepare a plain bread dough as usual, then, towards the end of...
January 30^th 201563 K4.0

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 201848 K 24.6

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201884 K 24.3