Baking A Cake

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today EnglishPod is in the kitchen.

That's right. Today we are going to hit the kitchen and we're going to bake a cake.

Alright, so check out this dialogue first and when we come back we'll be talking about some very key phrases and words for cooking in English.

Okay, so are you ready to learn how to bake a cake?

Almost. Let me just put my apron on.

Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is preheat the oven.

That way we have it at the desired temperature once we finish preparing everything.

Set it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Got it.

Now we're going to make the batter.

Take some butter and sugar and mix it lightly until you have a nice consistency.

Then add some vanilla extract and eggs and continue mixing.

Do I have to use the whisk or can I use the electric mixer?

Go ahead and use the mixer, but put it on medium speed.

I'm going to sift the flour and baking powder separately and then we can mix it with milk and the rest of the ingredients.

Okay, so now we need a baking pan, right?

Yeah, but grease and flour it first so the cake won't stick to it when it bakes.

Done. So how long do we bake it for?

We can leave it in there for about 25 minutes.

Then we let it cool for 10 minutes before we remove the cake from the pan.

Wow, this is a lot easier than I thought.

Alright, we're back. So now let's take a look at some of those key words on Language Takeaway.

Language Takeaway

Well, first of all, we have a special thing to keep our clothes clean while we are cooking.

What is this thing called, Marco?

This is called an apron.

An apron.

So it's not actually a shirt, it's a piece of fabric that you maybe tie around your waist or around your neck to protect your clothes from flour and butter and oil.

That's right. So it's very common to wear an apron while you're cooking or maybe while you're cleaning the house or the kitchen in order to avoid getting dirty, like you say.

So we're going to start baking our cake and the first thing that we do is we turn on the oven in order to have it at the desired temperature.

Now this is something you might see in a recipe that says the desired temperature is 450 degrees.

So that means the temperature you want to achieve. Maybe when you turn the oven on it's only 100 degrees.

Right.

So you have to wait for the desired temperature, which is what is indicated in the recipe.

That's right. So this is what we want. We want the desired temperature of 375 degrees.

So now we got that done and now we're going to make the batter.

All right. The batter is the liquid, it's the cake, before the cake becomes a cake.

So it's usually like a very thick liquid, like a very thick, almost buttery, milky substance.

And after you cook it, it turns hard. So batter is the liquid form.

Right. So when you're making a cake, you make batter.

Now it's different because if you're making pizza or you're making bread, it's not called batter.

No. If you're making pizza or bread, because those are thicker, they're called dough.

But when it's still like milk or water, it's like a liquid, we call it a batter.

A batter. Very good. So obviously to make the batter, we add sugar, we add butter, we add eggs.

And then what we want to do is we want to mix it. And so the other person asks, well, what do I do?

Do I have to use a whisk or an electric mixer?

All right. These are two very important tools that you will find in most kitchens.

A whisk is like a spoon, but it's made of metal and it's empty inside.

And we use it for things like eggs or milk and sugar. And it can go very, very quickly.

It makes a kss, kss, kss, kss sound, like a whisk sound.

Yeah, it's like a wire all around it.

Yeah, it's wire that's woven together. And so it's a very, very handy tool, but you only use one hand to use it.

But an electric mixer is what the name says. It's electric. You plug it in and it does the whisking automatically.

That's right. All right. So this is what we want to use.

And before we put the batter into the baking pan, what we want to do first is we want to grease and flour the sides of the baking pan.

So then, you know, it won't stick.

All right. So to grease something means to use oil or butter to make sure that the meat or the dough does not stick later.

That's right. So you can even use it for, obviously, in cooking terms, if you put butter or something like this,

but even grease, like the black grease, maybe you need to put it in your door because maybe it's making that weird sound.

Right. So to grease something is to add oil or to add butter in order to keep something from sticking.

That's right. OK. So a lot of words there. Now, why don't we pass on to some phrases?

Let's start with some fluency builder.

Now, at the beginning of the dialogue, we talked about the oven.

The real phrase you're going to see in a cookbook is preheat the oven.

That's right. So we have the prefix there, pre, to preheat something.

And that means to begin or to start heating.

Now, this is because when I turn my oven on, right, Marco, it's not 450 degrees.

It takes some time to become hot.

So we preheat the oven. We turn it on before we need it in order to make sure it's ready when we do need it.

That's right. So you're going to see it in every recipe. If you're baking something, you need to preheat the oven.

And now when we were actually mixing some of the things, we came up on this interesting phrase when we said we need to sift the flour and the baking powder.

All right. Now, these are both white substances. They're soft.

They're dry. And sometimes they are. They're bumpy. They have lumps in them.

So we need to make sure that there are no lumps.

And we have a special tool that will help us sift the flour and sift the baking powder.

So it's like a wire mesh tool. And you rotate the handle. You turn the handle.

And it will flatten out this flour so that there are no more bumps. It's all smooth.

OK. I think I've heard it also when they're talking about gold, right?

Don't they say that they were sifting for gold in the rivers?

That's right. Well, you have a tray and you shake the tray to make sure the small gold falls down, but the big, the chunks stay on top.

That's the same idea. Yeah.

OK. So that's what we're doing here. We're sifting the flour and the baking powder.

And now we put our cake in the oven and we ask, well, so how long do we bake it for?

And we say, well, we can leave it in there for about 25 minutes.

So the phrase here, to leave it in, means to keep the cake in the oven.

And this is something we can say about a lot of things.

So maybe the turkey that we're cooking is in the oven. It's been in the oven for four hours.

And I look at it and I say, is it ready yet? My mom says, no, leave it in. Leave it in.

So that means don't take it out. Keep it in the oven. Leave it in.

So we don't really need to say leave it inside the oven or we don't need to be too specific.

We can just say leave it in. Keep it cooking. Keep it cooking. That's right.

OK. So let's listen to our dialogue one last time.

OK. So are you ready to learn how to bake a cake?

Almost. Let me just put my apron on.

OK. So the first thing we're going to do is preheat the oven.

That way we have it at the desired temperature once we finish preparing everything.

Set it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Got it.

Now we're going to make the batter.

Take some butter and sugar and mix it lightly until you have a nice consistency.

Then add some vanilla extract and eggs and continue mixing.

Do I have to use the whisk or can I use the electric mixer?

Go ahead and use the mixer, but put it on medium speed.

I'm going to sift the flour and baking powder separately

and then we can mix it with milk and the rest of the ingredients.

OK. So now we need a baking pan, right?

Yeah, but grease and flour it first so the cake won't stick to it when it bakes.

Done. So how long do we bake it for?

We can leave it in there for about 25 minutes.

Then we let it cool for 10 minutes before we remove the cake from the pan.

Wow. This is a lot easier than I thought.

So baking a cake seems easy enough.

Now maybe there are some other things that we can add that we didn't mention.

Like, for example, vanilla extract. It's mentioned in the recipe.

So that is a liquid, right?

It's a liquid. It's a flavor.

So extracts are used to give different foods flavors.

You can have orange extract and vanilla extract.

Vanilla comes from a bean, a brown bean.

They take the oil from this plant and that's what gives things like cake a vanilla flavor.

Now what about this baking pan?

This is specifically for cakes.

Now what if you're making something like muffins? Is it also called a baking pan?

No, you'd have a muffin tin or a muffin pan.

And so those are a different shape.

They're round. They're circular.

They're made of that tin material.

They're not very heavy and they can go in the oven and not break.

But normally we have a baking sheet which is flat.

Or a baking pan which would be for a cake pan.

It's got sides on it.

And we have a muffin tin which is for muffins.

And what we didn't mention is we actually have our cake

but then there's something that we always add on top of the cake or all over the cake.

Yeah, well not always but most cakes, at least most tasty cakes, have frosting.

So that's something that you add after the cake has finished cooking.

That's right. So frosting is like a cream or something that you add around the cake.

It's actually just sugar and water.

Sugar and water. Oh really?

You can add milk if you want to make it thicker.

But when I make frosting, I like to make it from scratch.

That means I make it by myself.

I use water and powdered sugar.

Powdered sugar. And then you mix it.

You mix it. You whisk it.

And then you get the frosting.

Very interesting.

And well, maybe this recipe is actually real.

Although we didn't give the amounts, the quantities.

But maybe you can try baking a cake and let us know how it goes.

Or maybe you can give us a cake recipe.

That's right. Our website is EnglishPod.com.

We hope to see you guys there.

All right. Bye.

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