Baking a cake can be quite a therapeutic activity that yields delicious results. Even if you consider yourself to have fairly decent skills to measure and mix batter that goes into an oven, a cake is always good, no matter how bad it is! It is one of those sweet treats that is hard to not find delicious and is appreciated, irrespective of who bakes it. That said, although most cakes have similar primary ingredients for the sponge, the key to baking a delicious, texturally satisfying cake lies in the manner in which the batter is mixed. From the few diverse techniques that exist, here is what you need to know about mixing cake batter and what technique works best for the kind of recipes you’re looking to try out.
Creaming
Perhaps the most common way of mixing cake batter, creaming is a technique that involves whisking together butter and sugar until they turn into a light, fluffy mass. This technique enables air pockets to form in the mixture. This happens as a result of the sugar cutting through the butter repeatedly, which is ideal for making cakes that must rise evenly. Making Bundt cakes or layered cakes that must have even surfaces yields great results when using the creaming method to bake.
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Reverse Creaming
Also known as the ‘paste’ method, this technique of cake mixing involves mixing the butter or fat directly into the flour or dry mixture, giving it the texture of wet sand or grated parmesan. The sugar is mixed in later along with other wet ingredients but utilising this method while baking cakes allow them to rise evenly and have a velvety crumb. Since this technique eliminates any possibility of overmixing the dry and wet ingredients, like you would while creaming, the fat helps the flour hydrate, thus making it simpler to homogenise with the dry ingredients; perfect for baking cakes with a filling and sheet cakes.
Whipped Whites
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As the name suggests, this method involves beating the egg whites separately to form soft or stiff peaks, depending on the recipe. This way of mixing cake batter was popularised when the Japanese cheesecake took over the internet a couple of years ago. Similarly, cakes like jelly rolls, chiffon cakes or angel food cakes, which are known to have a light, airy crumb tend to be so because of the movement of the whisk stretching the protein present in the egg whites, which then adds a delicate texture and lightness.
Ribboning
This lesser-known way of mixing cake batter needs for the sugar and eggs to be beaten together vigorously until a thick, pale foam is creating on top. A visual cue to tell if your mixture has been whisked properly would be to spot thick trails of the egg mixture falling off the whisk as you lift it away from the bowl, leaving a thick, pale-yellow mixture behind. The crumb of cakes that follow this mixing technique have rich flavours and are light and fluffy in texture which make it ideal for chocolate cakes, Genoise and loaf cakes.