Bakingfilter: Fridge to oven? A-OK or madness?

August 25, 2008 4:58 PM

Bakingfilter: Fridge to oven? No problemo or madness? I want to bake a cake tonight (a pflaumenkuchen) that's been sitting in the fridge all day. Do I need to let it warm up to room temp before I bake it (recipe says 350 F for 40-45 min) or can it go straight from the fridge into the oven? It's in a metal pan, so I'm not worried about anything breaking. Burning the cake would be a sad thing, however.
posted by longdaysjourney to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

Best answer: Let it warm up. Otherwise the middle won't cook as much as it is supposed to, so you risk ending up with a soggy undercooked middle or an overdone crust.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:12 PM on August 25, 2008

Best answer: Let it come to room temp, if you have the time. Cold batters will not rise as well as room temp batters, and it's possible to have the inside stay gooey.
posted by dejah420 at 5:13 PM on August 25, 2008

Response by poster: OK, thanks guys. I think I will freeze it and then defrost it on Friday night so that I can bake it at room temp on Saturday. (I would do it tomorrow, but letting the cake spend 13 hours on the kitchen counter is probably asking for trouble.)
posted by longdaysjourney at 5:15 PM on August 25, 2008

Response by poster: Whoops, strike that - I had the cake sitting on top of the oven as it was preheating and the cake and pan seem to be nicely warmed up now. Here goes nothing....
posted by longdaysjourney at 5:18 PM on August 25, 2008

Spill it. How's the cake???
posted by bilabial at 9:25 AM on August 26, 2008

For future reference, I've always heard that you should bake a cake as soon as possible after mixing the wet and dry ingredients, particularly if it uses baking soda or baking powder. Normally those ingredients start producing bubbles when mixed with liquids and/or acids, and the bubbles cause your cake to rise. Baking the cake immediately makes it "set" while the bubbles are still inside the cake. If you let the batter sit for a long time before baking it, the bubbles get produced and eventually bubble their way out of the batter, so there's nothing left to make the cake rise when you bake it.

But that's just what I've heard, I've never actually experimented. I'd love to hear how yours turned out, especially if you did the extra freezer step.
posted by vytae at 9:27 AM on August 26, 2008