Beautiful cakes don’t have to come from your local bakery; they can be made in your kitchen.
Leavening Agents
Breads, cakes, cookies, and nearly all baked goods require a leavening agent.
These are the key ingredients that make a cake rise.
Credit: Andy Lyons
Since we’re talking about cake and notyeast bread, we’ll focus on chemical leavening.
Baking soda and baking powderaren’t interchangeable.
So what’s the difference?
Baking soda (aka sodium bicarbonate) only activates when combined with liquid AND an acidic ingredient.
So it’s common to see baking soda quick bread recipes like pancakes ormuffins.
If your recipe has baking powder, it’s a complete leavener.
It will do the trick without the addition of an acidic ingredient.
When measuring baking powder, stir it to loosen it.
Scoop up a heaping spoonful.
Test Kitchen Tip:Always keep an eye on the expiration dates of your leavening agents.
Using an expired leavener will result in a flat, dense cake.
Creaming Your Butter Mixture
3.
The cake you make will determine how much beating eggs need.
In a traditional yellow cake, you’d beat eggs individually into the batter for 1 minute each.
Sometimes the yolks and whites are beaten separately.
Use room temperature eggs, they’ll give baked goods more volume if they’re not refrigerator-cold.
Let the eggs sit on the counter 30 minutes before using them.
Too many eggs in the batter can result in a dense or compact cake.
Correct oven temperature is necessary to allow the cake to rise before the structure sets.
If the oven is too hot, the cake will set too fast before the air bubbles have formed.
Bake acake mix cakefor a test run to check your oven temperature.
(verify you’ve preheated your oven, too.)
Use an oven thermometer to see if the temperature matches the setting.
Keepingyour oven cleancan also help it stay consistently heated.
Don’t throw the flat cake out, either!
