The Temperature Secret To The Best Grilled Cake

Steaks and burgers might be your go-to grillers, but meat isn't the only thing you can cook on a grill. If you know what you're doing, you can grill frozen pizza or char bite-sized summer fruit — and you have to try grilled Hostess Twinkies as a surprisingly delicious dessert. What you may not be aware of, however, is that your grill can even be used for baking. According to Christie Vanover, pit master for Team Girls Can Grill on Food Network's "BBQ Brawl" season four, "A grill, when set up properly, can be used just like an oven, which means you can use it to bake cookies, cakes, and pies."

Grilling a cake may be a little more complicated than baking it in the standard way, since you need to set up your grill for indirect heat. But, even with the extra work, Vanover said it's well worth the effort. "When you use a charcoal or pellet grill, or wood chips on a gas grill, you get the advantage of adding a kiss of smoke flavor," she noted. "The other advantage to cooking a cake on the grill is that you get to be outside. That's one of the primary reasons I like to grill. It's an opportunity to be out in the fresh air and sunshine."

"When baking on a grill, you should use the same recipes that you would use in an indoor oven," advised Christie Vanover, adding that it's only the grill setup that needs to be changed. In order to provide indirect heat, you'll need to create a bit of distance between the heat source and the pan. As she instructed, "If you're using a pellet grill, a deflector is already installed. If you're grilling a cake over charcoal, you'll need to push the coals to one side and cook over the side without coals. When baking on a gas grill, turn an outside burner on and leave one burner off. Bake over the burner that's off."

Vanover also recommended elevating the cake above the heat, either by placing it on an upper rack (if your grill is equipped with one), or securing the pan on top of another inverted pan to raise it up an inch or so. "By lifting the cake higher, you reduce the chances that the bottom will burn," she explained. Instead of relying on the dubious toothpick test to see when your cake is cooked through, she suggested using a meat thermometer. If you stick it right in the middle, it should read somewhere between 200 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit when the cake is baked. With a cheesecake, you can take it off the heat when the temperature hits 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that you know how to grill a cake, you only have to choose which cake you're grilling tonight for dessert.