From Morning to Midnight: These Are the Perfect Cake Recipes For Every Time of Day (2024)

FAQs

What makes a pound cake different from a regular cake? ›

The differences include: Ingredients: Pound cake has more fat than regular cake, and has four ingredients: butter, eggs, flour, and sugar. Regular cake has the same four ingredients plus more ingredients. Regular cake also has baking powder, baking soda, and buttermilk or milk.

A steady 325-350 degrees is ideal when it comes to baking pound cake. Position the pan in the middle of the oven, and rotate it once, halfway through the baking time, as it bakes to account for any hot spots.

Take cakes, for example. Each ingredient has a job to do. Flour provides the structure; baking powder and baking soda give the cake its airiness; eggs bind the ingredients; butter and oil tenderize; sugar sweetens; and milk or water provides moisture.

Brown Sugar Lends Caramel Undertones And Helps Lock In Moisture. Incorporating brown sugar into your chocolate cake recipes can elevate them from good to unforgettable. Tasting Table's recipe developer, Molly Allen, demonstrates this beautifully in her elegant yet simple death by chocolate cake recipe.

Oil Cake. Oil cakes follow the same principles as butter cakes, but use oil as the source of fat. Because oil is liquid at room temperature, oil cake recipes skip the step of creaming the fat and sugar; usually the oil is incorporated into the wet ingredients, which are whisked or folded into the dry ingredients.

A naked cake is easily recognized by its absent or minimal outer layer of frosting, which shows off the cake's natural texture and filling. Some naked cakes have zero frosting on their outer edge, while others have just a wisp of buttercream. Copy link CC BY-SA 4.0. edited Jun 25, 2020 at 8:27.

Use cake flour in recipes where you want an extra-light, extra-fluffy texture, like Angel Food Cake, Cream Cheese Pound Cake, or Buttermilk-Chocolate Cake. You can also use cake flour to bring a more tender crumb to other sweets, like Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

Generally speaking, a sheet cake baked in a standard 9x13 inch pan will take between 25 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius).

Can I substitute all-purpose flour for cake flour? Yes, you can. You'll wind up with a similar cake, just with a slight difference in texture and crumb. Both flours perform the same in recipes — they'll mix into identical batters — but the final results will differ to a small degree.

Mayonnaise: The Hidden Gem in Cake Recipes

Made up of eggs and oil, mayonnaise acts as an emulsifier, adding creaminess and moisture to your cake. This unexpected addition can take your cake recipes to a whole new level. To incorporate mayonnaise into your cake batter, simply add a couple of tablespoons to the mix.

What makes a cake Fluffy? ›

Most cakes begin with creaming butter and sugar together. Butter is capable of holding air and the creaming process is when butter traps that air. While baking, that trapped air expands and produces a fluffy cake. No properly creamed butter = no air = no fluffiness.

Overmixing

Overworking the batter, especially if it contains gluten, will result in a tough, chewy cake.

LIGHT/DARK BROWN SUGAR: It adds colour and a deeper caramel flavour. It's very moist and will increase the tenderness of a cake. Store sealed in a cool dry place to prevent it from drying out.

Your cakes will still hold up if you use granulated sugar as both the flavour and water content are the same. Caster sugar, however, is much finer and dissolves much easier than granulated sugar which is coarser in texture.

"Chocolate often has a problem of being dry in a cake," she notes, so adding oil to the batter—on its own or in addition to butter—improves the texture and makes the cake more moist, which causes the taster to perceive it as having a more satisfying, chocolatey crumb.

The original recipe was essentially a cake that was made from a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of butter, and a pound of eggs. This is actually where the pound cake received it's name. Each ingredient added to the cake weighed one pound.

Shortened cakes are lighter, airier, and less compact than pound cakes, but they're more dense than foam cakes like angel food, and they still have a very rich flavor.

The texture of Pound Cake and Angel Food Cake are almost completely opposite. Pound Cake is a dense cake with a moist texture while Angel Food Cakes have fluffy and airy foam interiors. The texture of Pound Cake is rich and solid, which makes it perfect for topping with icing or a dollop of whipped cream.

Butter cakes (also referred to as creamed cakes) have a lighter texture and greater volume than pound cakes. Pound cakes (named because they originally contained one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour) tend to be denser.