GoodCook One Pan, One Batter, 3 Flavors - SPONSORED

Creating several different flavors of cake to be able to appease everyone's favorite flavor is extremely time consuming but not with this new pan. This good cook pan is amazing. It has three different divisions and you can bake multiple things at one time. So I'm gonna give you one simple recipe. We're going to change it up in three different ways to create three different flavors of cake. And I'm going to give you three different toppings, everything from macerated strawberries and raspberries with whipped cream. I'm even going to share my favorite recipe for candied oranges. So this pan literally created all three of these cakes at one time. It's a time saver for sure in the kitchen and super helpful for making sure everyone has their favorite cake available at your next celebration. So let's get started with this recipe. The beauty of this particular cake recipe is that you can really adjust the flavor profile to meet whatever needs you have. I am going to be using some citrus flavors and it is a wonderfully light profile that uh really is great for any time of year. Now, the recipe that I'm using has a cake mix base. Um You can use your favorite cake recipe that you have. Uh whether it be scratch or a box mix is your choice. So, to get started with the cake itself, I've got eight ounces of sour cream. This is a half a cup of oil and a half a cup of water. Four eggs. And then this is our cake mix along with a little bit of pudding and instant pudding is the only kind that really works in our cake mixes like this. And then we're going to go ahead and get it right on to the mixer and you just want to put the mixer on low and it really only needs a minute or two to combine all of those ingredients together. This is super easy, super simple. Again, if you're using a box cake mix, you can just follow the instructions on the back or feel free to try my recipe as well. What we're looking for is simply to have no more clumps left of the flower mixture looks pretty good. I'm just gonna use a spatula to clean off that blade. And then I'm gonna scrape the bottom and just make sure we don't have any of that mix left now because I start with the wet ingredients at the bottom that really helps all those dry ingredients uh stay where they need to be and become incorporated. So this is what our batter looks like. It's just a nice traditional thick vanilla batter. And I know that my recipe, uh, yields a certain amount of batter. So I'm going to be dividing this into three and one of the tricks that I have for you is simply to place this on our scale the whole thing. Um, and you're just gonna go ahead and tear it out and that just simply means to bring it to zero. Now, if you want to eyeball this and do three portions, you need three bowls, we've got a pan with three sections in it. So we're going to do three different flavors. And, um, what I'm gonna do here is simply a look at how much weight I'm pulling out of the container and I know that I need 14 ounces placed into all three. So I have zero on my scale and I'm going to watch until it hits 14 ounces. Ok? Once I get 14 ounces out of the bowl, I'm just gonna tear it off again and I'll be able to pull another 14 ounces and put it into the final bowl. Now, the fun part about this is, again, you can eyeball it, but it just allows us to have the most even distribution of batter between each of the pans and that just leaves 14 ounces in the bottom of our bowl here, which makes our lives really easy, making sure that we've got even distribution of batter throughout. Not a necessary step. But if you want things a little bit more precise. I definitely encourage you to do that. Now, I'm choosing to use lemon lime and orange and the only thing that we're doing is using the zest of a half of one of those fruits, plus one tablespoon of the juice. And so it's a super simple process. You just want to make sure that you that first. So into this first bowl, I'm going to go ahead and place my good cook, Zer here. This is a great Zer. You can just both directions which makes Zine twice as fast, nice and smooth, easy to do. It's a micro plane. So it really, I mean, just it, it makes it so easy. All right, once you have the zest off of half of your citrus, give that A T you can then use either. Go ahead and that the rest of this if you need to use it for something else, but then you can cut and it. So I'm gonna go ahead and just slice that in half. And we know that approximately one half of a citrus fruit is one tablespoon of juice for your lemon and your lime. It's a little bit more for your oranges depending upon the size. So again, this juicer is great because it catches all of your seeds. You're only using one piece of equipment and then we've got a tablespoon in there. I'm just gonna go ahead and pour that right in and I'm done super easy trick. Now, for our other two batters, I already have our lime zest and juice and our orange zest and juice. And what you want to do is go ahead and stir those together. You want to fold it. Uh It's one of those things that you want to have your zest ready to go. Once that batter has been sitting for a while, it really, it activates the leine in it. And so you'll start to see a lot of air. If you let this sit for too long before you do all of your zest and juicing, then you'll end up with a batter that starts to deflate. So I do recommend if you can zest and juice your fruits uh before you make the batter, uh if you're pretty quick about it, no stress. In addition, if you have any sort of allergens to uh any of the citrus fruits, um It's a, a less common allergy for sure. Uh Definitely use separate spoons here to fold your batter. It will help with uh decreasing any cross contamination. But for this purpose, uh we have three citrus flavors. They're all gonna meld together. Well, so I have no problem with that. All right. Now, once all of your juices are mixed in, we're going to go ahead and prepare our pan. So let's bring in our pan. This is the good cook, multi meal pan. This is the largest of their three pans and it has three compartments that are much more narrow in comparison to some of the other pans that are a bit more um for roasting, you know, things that you're gonna really contain a really large layer of something in it. Uh like a crumble bar. For instance, I mean, these are a little smaller, this is more of a thin sheet pan, something like a jelly roll pan is the way I look at it. Of course, from the baking perspective, I I think dessert any time I look at any pan, but this is a great pan because it has this diamond texture. It allows air to get under whatever you're baking, which allows it to least easier as well, especially with the non stick coating it while it is non stick. I do still recommend spraying this with either your pam and flour mixture, baker's joy, something of that sort. That's what I do if you want to grease and flour this. You're certainly welcome to do that as well. This is more of a safeguard for cake. We have uh lots of pores and bubbles that are forming. This is a different process compared to something like a crumble bar or a pie where we're baking shell that's going to lift out of this for something like our batter here that we know is light and fluffy and airy. I do recommend making sure that you get this coated well, so that you don't have any problem releasing it and then of course, we're just gonna pour our batter into each section. So I'm gonna start with our lemon. Just wanna make sure you use the back of your spatula and spread it out a little bit. The tendency for a cake uh when it rises is to ball up in the middle. Uh we call that Doma. So uh just making sure that you push your batter to your outside edges, that always helps me a little bit when it comes to making sure that I don't have a huge dome. Sometimes it'll still dome up but it won't be quite as high. Our center one is going to be the lime and our last section is going to be orange. Now, you could absolutely change up your flavor profile here. If you didn't want to do citrus, you could do vanilla almond and coconut and just simply swap the juice and, and uh the zest for a different extract. And that would be about a teaspoon to a tablespoon. Somewhere in that range of an extract does depend a little bit on which extract you choose. Some of them are a bit stronger than others. But that's the beauty of this particular pan is you really have, you have three choices if you have family members who love vanilla and some love chocolate and some love coconut. Well, then you can bake all three off just with one recipe and some minor little changes to the ingredients and you're baking it all in one pan rather than having to make three entire cakes. Uh, in three different flavors, you have the ability to make three flavors of cake in one pan. It's one batter with some minor alterations and it's just fabulous. So let's get this into the oven at 350. It's going to take about 20 to 25 minutes. Just keep an eye on it. What you're looking for is the edges will start to pull away just a little and a little bit of golden color on the tops of our cake layers. OK? Our cakes are baking in the oven. We're gonna give that about 20 minutes. But in the meantime, there's some prep we can do for some simple additions to the tops of our layers. What I'm going to do is get some water and sugar started on the stove. Uh These are the ceramic pans by good cook. They are fabulous for cooking down simple syrups, which is simply water and sugar cooked down to make almost like a glaze. Uh We're going to be doing some candied orange slices. So what I have here is a cup of sugar, a half a cup of water. And you can see, I already have my candy thermometer in place. This particular recipe for the candied orange slices requires us to take it to a temperature of 220 degrees. We're gonna add in our orange slices at that point and let it continue to cook until it hits about 240. And that's going to give us a beautiful, beautifully sugared orange that we can then lay on top of our cakes. This is a really easy recipe. Um, all I'm doing is shaking the pan just a little bit to incorporate that sugar and water together. There's no need to stir anything. It will do its own thing in the pan on the stove. What's great about these pans as well is well, one that non stick coating, which is absolutely lovely for cooking down sugar. It doesn't allow the sugar to start to build up on the edges like it can in other styles. In addition, this pan can be used on any style of cooktop, including my induction cooktop back here. So what I'm gonna do is let that start warming up. And in the meantime, let's cut some orange slices. So I'm going to be cutting some orange slices and you have a few choices here. You could certainly use a standard oranges I have. You can also use something smaller like a kumquat orange would be perfect for this application. It really just depends on what size you would like for your presentation. Now, you do want to cut off the ends. Um This is not going to provide a very pretty look in our orange. So I'm gonna take a little bit more off so that when we have our slices uh ready. They will just be beautiful and really show off the interior of the orange. Now, as far as how thick or thin to make these, my suggestion is thinner is better if you can get through that orange without slicing it like that. That is probably the most important piece is just to make sure you have full round slices and thick is OK. It's just gonna take a little longer for them to soften and it will be much tastier if it's a slightly thinner slice of orange. And I'm just using the front side of my knuckles there just to kind of guide that knife when I first get started. And that's probably about all that. I'm going to get out of this particular orange. So don't worry about these. You can, uh, you can toss these into uh, beverages. Um, for instance, you can put it into, uh, like an apple cider, uh, orange slices and that are absolutely fabulous. So, don't waste these, use them for something else. Now, we're going to wait until our sugar comes to 220 degrees and then we'll be able to put our slices into uh, the sugar mixture. OK? Our temperature has reached 220 degrees. I'm gonna go ahead and add in our orange slices. OK? I've put in a few of our orange slices. You don't want to overcrowd the pan. We're going to let this come up to 240 degrees and then we'll remove them from the syrup. Ok? Our oranges have hit 240 we're going to go ahead and remove them from the syrup. So our oranges have hit 240. These are gonna be absolutely perfect. Make sure you're very careful uh working with this. This is hot sugar and it certainly can burn you if it gets on your skin. Just be mindful of what you have around you and making sure that everything is uh stable. I have a wired rack and a piece of parchment paper here. Now, you could place these directly onto the wired rack. But what I find is these oranges as they start to dry and that caramelization uh get sticky and then hardens, they get stuck. And so I find that it's much easier to use a piece of parchment. Now, you can use a fork or a knife, whatever you have just to pull these out. You want to let it drip just a moment and then you're gonna go ahead and just lay them out on the parchment. Now, you can see this particular orange slice actually has a little bit of caramelization happening. This one was just on the bottom of the pan and uh probably kept the other ones from browning. I it's up to you. If you want to get in there and move these around, you can just try not to stir too much. I really we want the sugar to do its own thing and not disrupted a whole lot. I personally love the amount of caramelization that's on this particular orange. It's just got a lot of flavor, you know, brown equals yummy, in my opinion, uh too dark and of course, it will be bitter and not be as delicious. But uh this is a great amount of caramelization. Now, these are going to sit for about 30 to 60 minutes until they've had the opportunity to just firm up. The insides are still nice and soft. You'll have just a little bit of that caramelization on the outside. It's a nice addition to any sort of dessert as a topping. Um I love putting these in beverages as well. It's a great piece to add a little bit of beauty as well as flavor and the rest of this is considered an orange simple syrup. Now, you could also add this to a beverage or you could use this inside of a pastry or dessert as well to add flavor similar to how an extract would. And then uh the other thing that you can do with this is you can reserve this and do another batch of orange slices once you do it twice. Um It really does start to get too thick and you'll need to add a little bit of water. Um This solution also can become a little bit bitter the more times that you use it. So I usually recommend two rounds of cooking your oranges and then use it as a simple syrup in something else. So I'm gonna get this moved out of the way and check in on our cakes. All right, our cakes look beautiful. They are golden around the edges and slightly golden on top. They are starting to pull away from this pan just a little bit, which is exactly what we want. That's going to ensure that they are definitely done. They have a bit of caramelization which adds great flavor and of course, is going to allow it to just pop right out of this pan. I'm gonna let this sit for about 20 to 30 minutes until they're about room temperature. And then I'm actually going to put parchment on and turn them out and then we'll get them plated up. So now that our cakes are cooled, I'm gonna take a piece of parchment and place it right on top and then I'm going to use our cooling rack to turn these out. This is really handy just to be able to have something to allow you to flip. They will allow the cakes to release really nicely as well. You want to see him. We've got a beautiful set of cakes here. Um What we want is to just let these cool a tiny bit longer. We don't want them to be warm. Uh When we put our toppings on these, uh really just need to uh chill just a little bit longer. You can put this in the refrigerator or just leave them out on your counter for a few more minutes. One of the other things I like to do at this point is just to trim any excess that might have been laying over top of the edge of the pan. You know, our batter was perfectly distributed. It looked fantastic, but just in a couple of spots here, we've got a little bit of batter that just ran over the edge. So I like to just trim those off just to make sure everything is nice and clean. And then the next step is just a plate. Ok? So the cakes are fully cooled. At this point, I am going to plate them and you can really use whatever plating system you'd like whether you want to plate them individually or if you have a larger platter, you could certainly put multiple cakes out at one time. Now, these will transfer fairly easily. You just kind of have to keep them in order. So this is the orange cake and you can tell just by some tiny little flecks of that orange zest. Also keep in mind when you're flipping things, you can always remember where they were there. Now, this is a little bit of that simple syrup that was left over. After making our candied oranges, I did put just a little bit of water in to finish it as it was cooling down, which just makes a great syrup and that's going to help, just give a little bit more flavor to our cake. So I'm just gonna do a little drizzle. It's almost like a maple syrup. Uh, but so much tastiness with all of that orange zest that was cooked down. And then we're gonna take our candied oranges and just layer them. I'm gonna cover, use, you know, use your oranges as you see fit. So you can see this one's a little oblong just when it was on the paper. Uh it misshapen, but you know, that's the fun part. You can just kind of move these and arrange them however you need to. So our orange cake is looking delicious. The next cake is our lime. So I'm just gonna peel it off of that parchment just like that. We lost a corner, but that's OK. Just tuck it back in and for our line, we're going to use strawberries and all I've done is put about two teaspoons of some sugar in here, which is starting to release those juices and you could let this sit longer if you would like. But I personally love to have a little bit more texture to my strawberries. And so if you let them sit too long, that becomes a very what I would call mushy fruit. Um So personally, for me, I like them when they're still got a little bit of bite to them and we're just gonna pile up the strawberries. The lime and strawberry combination is absolutely delicious and don't forget that juice. That's a really great added bonus. All right. And you can always just finagle those. How you would like. You could put a little mint on here or a little dollop of whipped cream would be beautiful as well. And our last cake is the lemon cake. And for our lemon cake, we're going to use a few dollops of whipped cream. You could also use a cool whip, for instance, is going to last a little longer if it's been sitting out at, you know, a buffet or maybe you're plating your dessert right before your guests arrive. Uh This is a great alternative. The cool whip is a great alternative just because it's a non dairy product and it will just hold much longer at room temperature. And all I'm gonna do is with the back of my spoon, just give it a little swirl. Doesn't have to be anything super fancy, but just give it a little uh a little fun texture and we had a little more up at the top here. Great and then top it with some fresh raspberries. Ok. And those are our three cakes. They are absolutely beautiful and certainly delicious. We have orange lime and lemon and of course, we have a variety of toppings and these toppings really could be anything that you think might work well with whatever flavor combination you've chosen to do. I like keeping things fairly simple. I like allowing those fresh flavors of our citrus to come out and really be the star of the show. So pairing it with something light like a fruit and maybe some cream or again, just some simple candied oranges. These are great ways to keep your desserts light and refreshing, not too sweet but just sweet enough. And of course, utilizing the amazing good cook pan with the three separations is what allows us to make one recipe with three flavors and it is to die for. I promise any one of these cakes would be a hit at your next party.