Demystifying Cake Textures: Baking Tips From Our Team

Birthday cakes, holiday cakes, cakes for an after-dinner dessert… no matter the occasion, life is sweeter with a slice of cake! Just as there are many types of cakes, there are several types of cake textures. Use this guide to cake textures to help you achieve the perfect baked cakes every time.

How to Make a Cake Fluffy and Light

Butter cakes are known for their tender crumb and rich flavor that make them ideal for special occasion cakes like birthday cakes. They’re also among the easiest cakes to bake, especially when you follow these tips for how to make a butter cake fluffy and light.

• Make sure your ingredients (butter, eggs, and milk) are at room temperature to ensure they come together evenly and thoroughly when making the cake batter.
• Start by beating softened, room temperature butter with sugar, a process known as creaming. This technique incorporates air into the batter, creating the fluffy and light texture you’re looking for. The fluffier the cake mixture, the lighter the texture of your finished cake will be.
• Read your recipe carefully for instructions on how to incorporate liquids into dry ingredients. For example, many cake recipes will tell you to add eggs one at a time. Adding the eggs in this way allows them to blend with the butter evenly; beat well after the addition of each egg. Similarly, alternating wet and dry ingredients when beating them into the cake batter avoids toughness in the batter. If you beat in the flour all at once, proteins in the gluten of the flour develop, creating a coarse and dry-textured cake.
• During beating, stop the electric mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beater to ensure all the ingredients are incorporated evenly. This occasional scraping will help you avoid lumps in the batter.

How to Make a Cake Dense and Moist

Dense cakes are built like brick houses. Pound cakes are a classic dense, moist cake because of the equal proportions of the ingredients–butter, sugar, eggs, and flour–in the batter. Fruitcakes are another example of a dense, moist cake. These cakes are usually laden with dried fruits and chopped nuts, then soaked with an alcohol-based glaze to keep them moist.

Here’s what you should know about how to make a cake dense and moist:

• Once you remove the cake from the baking pan to cool on a wire rack, brush the cake all over with a liquid, such as sugar syrup. You can flavor the sugar syrup with citrus zest or slices of fruit before brushing on the cake. To make sugar syrup, combine 1 cup granulated sugar with 1 cup water in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool slightly before using.
• Add two to three tablespoons of sour cream to your cake batter to create a moist texture in the cake. The texture of the sour cream will keep your cake from becoming too dry while baking.
• Select a cake recipe that calls for all-purpose flour instead of cake flour. Cake flour is a low-protein flour milled into a fine consistency. Cakes baked with cake flour will have a softer, more tender texture than cakes containing all-purpose flour.

How to Make a Cake Light and Sponge-Like

Angel food cakes are a classic light, sponge-like cake. Achieving the desired cake textures for sponge cakes involves a few simple techniques to achieve perfect results:

• Sift together cake flour (not self-rising) and sugar several times to break up any lumps in the dry ingredients.
• Fold beaten egg whites into the batter carefully to avoid deflating the egg whites and preventing the cake from rising correctly. Use a gentle folding motion when preparing the batter: With a rubber spatula, cut down into the batter, across the bottom of the bowl, then up and over the batter.
• After transferring the batter to an ungreased tube pan, run a knife through the batter to release any air bubbles.
• After baking, invert the cake pan over the neck of a wine or similar bottle to cool completely.

Slice Into the Sweet Life at Frost Artisan Bakery

When life’s special occasions arise, make them extra sweet with a special occasion cake from Frost. Contact or visit us today to place your order.