Company: Electronic Controls Design Inc. (ECD)

Website: www.ecd.com

Equipment Snapshot: ECD BakeWATCH has announced the latest innovation in its range of sensor devices for the commercial and artisan baking industries. With a unique fixture design, ECD’s new CakeOMETER tool resolves the dilemma of accurate temperature sensor placement and stability within cake batter, allowing cake bakeries of all sizes to generate reliable in-oven temperature data for high-quality, repeatable cake production. 

“CakeOMETER is a market-first,” shares ECD Baking Product Manager, Ray Pearce. “The ability to reliably capture cake temperature transformation in the oven is a breakthrough for the cake baking industry. While there is certainly an art to baking a cake, leveraging oven time and temperature data, along with the impact of ingredient variation, lends more precision and quality assurance for high yield production.”

To compensate for the low viscosity of cake batter, CakeOMETER is designed with four base legs that remain on the pan bottom for stability, while the three probes are adjusted and connected to a M.O.L.E. data recorder to measure various baking conditions: 

• The ambient probe simplifies the tracking of consistent oven temperature. 
• The depth gage insertion probe, held in a position within the batter just above the bottom of the pan, measures cake internal temperature at one depth.
• A third insertion probe, placed slightly higher in the batter, validates even heating throughout the cake.

In recent testing at the Portland, OR-based Wheat Marketing Center, CakeOMETER’s accuracy and reliability were confirmed as it precisely and repeatably measured internal temperatures during the cake baking process. What’s more, one set of experiments revealed through CakeOMETER data capture that slightly raising the oven temperature while reducing bake time resulted in a superior product with preferable moisture content versus that of the control cake. It is this type of information that can help bakeries standardize cake processing for more consistent results. 

Highly versatile, the all-in-one CakeOMETER solution can be used in round or rectangular pans with a 6” width minimum. The sensor device integrates with ECD BakeWATCH 3-channel V-M.O.L.E. and 6-channel SuperM.O.L.E. Gold2 thermal profilers for data collection. This enables bakeries that already use M.O.L.E. technology for other baked goods profiling to seamlessly integrate CakeOMETER into their operations. 

“Not only does CakeOMETER help set data-driven specifications for cake bakers, but it also aids in ingredient optimization and waste reduction through assurance of ongoing high-yield output,” notes Pearce in summary. “This has been a much-needed tool for cake bakeries and ECD is proud to have engineered a solution.”

CakeOMETER will be available for pre-orders beginning April 15, 2022 and more information is available here. For those interested in seeing CakeOMETER in action, join Dr. Lin Carson of BAKERpedia for a live “Thermal Profiling for Cakes” seminar on April 7, 2022. Reserve a seat by registering here.