HOW TO MAKE A NIGERIAN CAKE - JOSHSPOT








Nigerian cake is simple and sweet. There's not a lot going on
in the cake but it tastes delicious. No chocolates, no whipped
cream but Nigerians love it and they are always searching for
that unadulterated Nigerian Cake recipe for that cake that
melts in the mouth.
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Decorating my Birthday Cake
Whether you are looking to bake a Nigerian wedding cake, a
Nigerian Birthday cake for your kids or you just want to bake a
cake that you will store in your freezer and munch on from
time to time, the Nigerian cake recipe detailed on this page is
the basis for all Nigerian cake recipes. All you need to do is
add a little twist to yours. But don't go too far with it else you
ruin it :)
Nigerian Cake Ingredients
The quantities of ingredients listed below are what I used for
a cake that I baked with a 10 inch diameter and 2.5 inch deep
cake pan. When done, the cake had a diameter of 10 inches
(of course) and a height of 2.5 inches with a slight dome.
4 cups (500g) All Purpose Flour
12 Eggs
4 sticks (500g) Butter (NOT Margarine)
400g (2 cups) Granulated Sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons vanilla extract
½ cup brandy
Tools You'll Need to Bake a Nigerian Cake
The following are the minimal tools you'll need to bake a
Nigerian Cake:
An oven with a top and down heating capability is best
Cake mixer. Buy it in USA | in UK
Kitchen scale: Buy it in USA | in UK
Sieve or Sifter
Egg Whisk.
Bowls
Spatulas
Cake Pan: 10 inches in diameter and 2.5 inches deep.
More information about the Nigerian Cake

Ingredients

The flour to use for your Nigerian Cake
You MUST use plain flour for you to have success with the
Nigerian Cake recipe detailed on this page. I do not know
what using a self-rising flour will do to your cake if you use it.
The problem with self-rising flour is that they never state the
amount of the leavening agent (in this case, baking powder)
they added to the flour. This is why I prefer plain flour so that
I have more control over the amount of baking powder that I
add to the cake recipe.
The butter to use for you Nigerian Cake
For those living in Nigeria, please use baking butter NOT
margarine. You should be able to buy baking butter from any
shop that sells bakery ingredients. For my US audience whose
butter comes in sticks. I don't know the weight of 1 stick of
butter. Maybe this is written on the wrapping so you can
check it and then know how many sticks correspond to 1.1
lbs.
Please do not melt the butter. Bring it out from the fridge the
day before you make your Nigerian cake. This way, it will be
soft enough for creaming on the day you'll bake the cake.

Sugar
If you think your granulated sugar is too coarse, you can grind
it with a dry mill (the one used for grinding egusi, ogbono,
etc) before adding it to the butter for creaming. You only need
to grind it a little bit to reduce the size of the grains of sugar.
This reduces the creaming time.

Flavour
The job of the vanilla extract is just to add a vanilla flavour to
the cake. If you want another flavour such as butterscotch
(used in wedding cakes) etc, please use it to replace the
vanilla flavour and add it when I add the vanilla flavour.

Dry Fruits
If you want to add dry fruits such as raisins, please soak
these in brandy for at least 1 week (up to 1 month for
Nigerian wedding cakes) before adding it to your cake. This is
so that the fruits will not make the cake go bad or taste funny
after some time especially for Nigerian Wedding cakes which
people like to keep for a longer time.
Brandy
The brandy is a preservative for the cake. With all those eggs
in the cake, it can go bad before the event if you don't add
brandy or any other cake preservative to it. Here, I am talking
about if you will place the cake on the counter for a few days
while decorating it (especially for wedding cakes). But if you
are making a cake that you will throw into your freezer as
soon as it has cooled down, then no need for the brandy.
But please do not go overboard with the brandy. You don't
want people to feel tipsy after eating your cake.

Before you make the Nigerian Cake
1. Make sure that all the utensils and appliances you will use
for the cake are clean and dry.
2. Check, check and check that you have all the ingredients
you will need to bake the cake.
3. Print out the Nigerian cake recipe and keep it close by.
For those who prefer using the video, bring your laptop
close enough. LOL
4. Everything ready? Let's go!
Making the Nigerian Cake: Step by Step

1. Cream the butter and the sugar
Put the soft butter and the granulated sugar into the mixer
and start creaming.
I used the highest setting on my mixer which is a 300 Watts
appliance and the creaming took me a total of 1 hour.
Please follow the instructions in the user manual of your
mixer when creaming. For my mixer, the instruction says that
I should not run the appliance for more than 10 minutes at a
time. So, I cream for 10 minutes, stop to let the mixer rest
and cool down, I run it again for ten minutes etc. And it took
me a total of 1 hour creaming time (stoppage time NOT
included) to completely cream the butter and the sugar. Your
own time may be more or less depending on the type of mixer
you have and the size of the grains of your sugar.
A well-creamed sugar/butter mix should look much whiter
than the butter you started with, softer (it should be able to
drop from a spoon, see video) and you can barely feel the
granulated sugar when you taste the creamed butter and
sugar. Some granulated sugar may be stubborn and you can
still feel the grains but it's OK so long as the butter/sugar
mixture is as white and soft as possible.

2. Prepare your baking pan
When you are almost done with the creaming, prepare your
cake pan by rubbing the insides with soft butter. Then put
some flour into the greased pan, making sure the flour
touches every part, then pour out the flour.
The greasing and flouring of the insides of your cake pan will
prevent the cake from sticking to the pan thereby making it
easy for you to bring out the cake from the pan when done,
without denting the cake.

3. Beat the Eggs
Break all the eggs into a big bowl and whisk them to a
smooth blend.

4. Add the eggs and mix
Before you do this step, you should make sure that your butter
and sugar are well creamed.
If your mixer is big enough to accommodate the creamed
butter and sugar with the whisked eggs, add the whisked egg
into the mixer. Mix till you have a smooth fluffy blend of the
creamed butter/sugar and the eggs .
If your mixer is not big enough, transfer the creamed butter
and sugar to a bigger bowl. Add the eggs and use a hand
mixer to mix the two till you get a fluffy smooth blend. My
mixer is quite small so this is what I did in the video below.
This took me about 5 minutes with my 300 Watts hand mixer
which is extractable from my mixer.

5. Turn on your oven to preheat
It's now time to turn on your oven to 150°C or 302°F so that it
can start heating up while you finish mixing the cake. You
should also switch it to the up & down heat setting.

6. Add the ornamental ingredients
Add the vanilla extract or any other flavours of your choice,
add the brandy and pre-soaked dry fruits (if any) and stir with
a wooden spatula till everything is well incorporated. Add
some browning if you are baking a Nigerian wedding cake.
This is what gives the cake the dark colour.

7. Add the plain flour with the baking powder
a. Now, add the baking powder to the plain flour.
b. Put the mix into a sieve or a flour sifter. Add small
quantities of the flour through the sieve/sifter into the
bowl where you already have other cake ingredients.
c. Stir very well with the wooden spatula. Add another small
quantity of the flour with baking powder. Stir.
d. Repeat this process till all the flour is incorporated. I warn
you, this procedure can make your arm die a bit so be
sure you are ready for the arm exercise before you start. :)
Notes:
It is advisable to stir the cake mix in one direction, in a
folding fashion, when adding the flour because most cake
experts say that when you stir in the opposite direction,
air bubbles will be trapped in your cake mix and your cake
will have holes in it when done.
It is important to pass the flour through a sieve or sifter
so that you are sure that the flour that enters the cake mix
in its finest powder form. You don't want to have small
lumps of flour in your cake do you? This also ensures a
very smooth cake mix.

8. Pour the cake mix into the greased cake pan
a. Once every ingredient is well incorporated, it's time to
pour the mix into the greased cake pan .
b. If you want to make a multicolour layered cake then you
should at this point divide the cake mix into the number
of colours you want. Put these into separate clean dry
bowls. Add the colours to each, stir well and pour into the
cake pan one after the other. You should make sure you
level out each coloured cake mix as much as possible
before pouring another one.
c. Once you've poured in all the cake mix into the cake pan,
gently lift and drop the cake pan several times to level out
the cake mix as much as possible (see video). Don't
worry if the top is not so smooth, as soon as the heat of
the oven gets to it, it will level out.

9. Baking Time!
a. Transfer the cake to the preheated oven, placing the rack
halfway between the top and the bottom of the oven.
b. Bake for at least 2 hours before attempting to open the
oven door to check the cake. It took my cake 2 hours to
rise to maximum and if you open the oven door before
the cake has fully risen, you have interrupted the baking
process, the cake will stop rising, may not be evenly
cooked when done and it will be harder than normal when
done. There are endless things that can go wrong with
your cake if you do not wait for it to rise fully before
opening the oven door. That it smells like cake does not
mean that it is done. :)
c. Even though mine took 2 hours, you should keep an eye
on yours till you notice that it is no longer rising before
attempting to open the oven door. All ovens are not the
same so you should use my baking time as a guide only.

10. Check the Cake
a. After 2 hours, when I'm sure that the cake is no longer
rising, I check it by driving a knife into the center of the
cake. If the knife comes out with smears of the cake mix,
then the cake is not done. If it comes out clean and dry,
with only a smear of butter (oily look) then the cake is
done. If the cake passes the knife test, I go on to do the
other tests.
b. The second way I check the cake is to take a look at the
sides of the cake pan. The cake should be separated
from the pan or at least not stuck to the pan.
c. The third way I check that the cake is done is to dip a
wooden skewer (stick) into the middle of the cake.
Wooden skewers are a bit rougher than knives so they
tend to pick up smears more. So if the wooden skewer
comes out clean, the cake should be done.
d. Even when my cake passes all of the above checks, I still
carry out the fourth test so that I can be doubly sure that
it is done before bringing it out of the oven. Nobody wants
to end up with an undone cake. The fourth and final
check I carry out is to gently push the cake down at the
middle with my open palm. If the cake springs back when
I lift my palm and there is no impression of my palm on
the cake, then the cake is done.

11. Cool and Decorate/Refrigerate
Once you are sure that the cake is done, bring it out of the
oven and leave it alone for only 5 minutes then take out the
sides of the pan. Then leave to cool down completely before
decorating the cake .
You can also cut it up in desirable sizes and store in the
freezer.
That's how the Nigerian Cake is made. You can serve it up as
a snack with a chilled drink or eat it as a dessert. When!!
decorated, use for birthdays and weddings.
This Nigerian Cake Recipe is originally published at.coto d
www.joshspot.com.ng . The recipe details how to make
Nigerian Cake .





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