Damiano Carrara shares professional pastry and baking tips

Pastry chef Damiano Carrara provides professional insights into achieving high and soft cake textures. He explains that cakes are essentially whipped masses, which can be categorized as light, medium, or heavy depending on their fat content.

For light whipped masses, such as sponge cake, Carrara advises that ingredients should be folded in from top to bottom to maintain aeration. He also warns against over-whipping egg whites, suggesting they should only reach about three-quarters of their total volume to prevent the cake from collapsing after baking. Medium and heavy masses involve adding fats like butter, cream, or oil to the sugar, eggs, and flour.

Additionally, traditional apple cake remains a popular dessert choice. A classic recipe involves using three apples, 250g of flour, 150g of sugar, three eggs, 100ml of milk, and 80ml of seed oil. To ensure a moist texture, apples can be incorporated both into the batter as cubes and on the surface as thin slices.