Sugar and spice and everything nice

In the bustling Yale Bakery earlier this month, Head Baker Brandie Villanova expertly crafted a single Apple Spice Ring Cake. A labor of love, 240 of these delicious desserts were prepared by hand for campus dining halls the previous day.

Villanova recently took YourYale on a tour of the tools she used as she produced this autumnal culinary delight.

Everything in its place

As the head baker, Villanova’s responsibilities are wide and varied and include maintaining all the tools and bowls in the bakery. Villanova routinely organizes them, making sure that there are enough to support all the shop’s baked goods.

To get started, Villanova set up a “mise en place”, which in French means “everything in its place.” The ingredients were measured in separate containers and placed on a baking sheet for quick and easy access. “We ‘mise’ everything in the bakery,” said Villanova. Similarly, she made sure that the baking tools she needed were handy.

Beyond the bowls and containers that held the measured ingredients, the tool of the hour was the small stainless-steel Hobart electric mixer. You might have seen one in your mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen, and in the bakery they are “de rigueur.” One of a family of mixers, the Hobart is the smallest. The bakery also has a mixer that is so large that when it comes time for the baker to put batter into pie plates, cake tins, or bread pans, a forklift-like machine aids in raising the hefty bowl.

Wet first; then dry

With the mixer running and its paddle revolving, Villanova added sugar, oil, and eggs and combined them until they were light and fluffy, a process known as creaming. She also added honey using a spatula, which is used for mixing, scraping, flipping, or spreading ingredients. With spatula in hand, Villanova made sure every last bit of honey drizzled in.

Once the wet ingredients were the right consistency in the mixing bowl, the dry ingredients — flour, salt, and baking soda — went in next, and finally, the diced apples.

Delicious handiwork

When the batter was ready for the baking pan, Villanova selected a variation on the bundt cake mold with a hole in the middle, which achieves its final presentation as a ring.

Villanova lifted the bowl from the Hobart mixer and placed it on the countertop. She used a flat, bowl scraper to get the batter out of the bowl and into the pan with the help of a spatula.

The cake went into a small oven for about 30 minutes. The oven is one of two that had to be built in place in the bakery. Each oven’s rotating racks fit about 100 pies or 50 dozen cookies at a time. When the solo cake cooled, it was adorned with cider icing and taken to the Yale dining halls.

“Now that’s what I call delicious handiwork,” smiled Villanova.