Jennifer Rao

Have you ever wondered why you need to have your butter “softened” or your ingredients at “room temperature” when mixing up a cake recipe? In How to Bake: The Basics of Butter Cakes you will learn the answers to these and many other baking questions. Jennifer Rao, a Chemical Engineer by trade, has been baking for over 20 years. She owns and operates her own cake decorating business, Around the World in 80 Cakes and regularly posts recipes and how-to videos on her website, http://www.80cakes.com.

In "How to Bake", Jennifer has compiled all that she has learned while walking you through every step of the cake baking process. Some of the topics she dives into include: how to bake a cake without a dome, understanding the different types of flour, why weighing ingredients is better than measuring by volume, what each step of the batter mixing process means and how it is important as well as many other helpful topics. It also includes Jennifer’s recipes for basic yellow cake and American buttercream frosting. The appendix contains an extensive Reference section with recommendations for kitchen tools, ingredients, and other helpful baking books.