Cake: 2 / Evie: 0

[phoenixw]

I feel like I've stepped into an alternate universe. I used to know how to bake. And this weekend I've had two cake recipes turn into nasty things that were barely edible.

First I tried this recipe from Martha Stewart a lovely Coconut cake. It turned out very egg-y and flat and not good at all. I wanted to e-mail Marth and tell her to put down the

Comments

[trappergraves]

Pureed beets will add too much liquid and fiber to the mix. Go back to the food colouring. And subbing coconut cream won't work. Part of the deal is that the sour cream reacts with whatever you're using for a raising agent (BP or soda), while coconut cream won't. Sifting the flour gets the lumps out, but really shouldn't affect it that much. Try only subbing the Splenda for the sugar and see what happens.

[trappergraves]

Yep, after looking at the recipes, the sour cream substitution is definitely the reason for it being flat. I suspect with the red velvet cake that the beets are reacting unfavourably with the buttermilk/soda/vinegar combination, which is what makes the cake rise.

[phoenixw]

Thanks, babe. Much appreciated. I'm still not clear what the chemistry of the milk is in a cake -- and I want to try soymilk but I don't want a flat cake. Maybe I'll look for some recipes developed for non-milk cakes. I expect one could increase the leavening (of which there wasn't much in that coconut cake) to make up for anything lost through substitution.

I wondered about the beets, which are fairly acidic, I believe. They are actually part of the traditional recipe for Red Velvet cake, so they must have worked somehow.

[trappergraves]

Nope, don't use the soymilk. Buttermilk is acidic, as is the vinegar, and reacts with the soda. In the case of the beets, they might have been strained originally, so that all you get is the liquid...or they could have been cooked first. Have you thought about checking the Splenda site to see if they say anything about cakes? It may be that you'll have to do a halfnhalf of sugar and Splenda to make it work.

[tryst_inn]

Have you considered whipping the eggs before you put them in the mixer? Sometimes that helps those eggy recipes.

[phoenixw]

This particular egg-y cake doesn't use egg whites at all, and barely any other leavening. My confidence in the recipe is not so great. :-(

[phoenixw]

Ahahahahahahaha!

*gasps*

Fortunately no one in my house puts food into containers except myself, and it was marked correctly. So, yeah, it was flour I used - not powdered sugar.

[loupnoir]

I was all wound up, ready to pontificate on the wonders of baking, and someone already beat me to it.

Substitution is always tricky.

Splenda, for me, is tehevil! Coconut cream and sour cream are totally different. Pureed beets vs. red food coloring! Ack!

Guess I'll have to go have a scoop of my homemade vanilla ice cream. Poor me.

[phoenixw]

Yeah, and apparently it's trickier in cake than other baked goods. *sigh*

Amusingly, beets were the origin of the red color in Red Velvet cake, back in the day. But not with this recipe. Heh.

[fiatincantatum]

Sugar does more than just make the cake sweet... it helps incorporate air in the mix when you cream it with the butter (the sugar crystals are large and create air pockets.) It also prevents the gluten from over-developing to the point that you get a tough, bread-like texture by taking up the moisture in the mix. You can mix batter containing sugar longer and harder than you can batter that does not have sugar.

Sugar is also what provides a carmelized crust on the outside of the product. Without sugars of some sort, you get a pale, undercooked-looking product.

[phoenixw]

This makes me very sad. I've had good luck substituting various things for sugar in other baked goods, but cake? It's looking like this may be nearly impossible for a home baker. :::weeps:::

Amusingly I was just reading this when I got your reply: When fat and sugar are mixed together - the process is called creaming - little bubbles of air are being trapped in the mixture, each one surrounded by a film of fat...

[fiatincantatum]

I'd try cutting down on the amount of sugar, rather than substituting. Splenda only tastes sweet, you don't get the same reactions at all. Better to use a small amount of sugar and get the results you want (and reduce sugar elsewhere to make up for it, if you're on a restricted diet of some sort) than to eat nasty cake.

Since cakes and such in the US tend to be overly sweet anyway, you might start by halving it or something (I'm sure there's something on the web about reducing sugar use while baking)