Let there be cake!

[phoenixw]

I offer for your consideration last night's experiment: a plain buttermilk cake. It turned out really good. Perfectly done, excellent flavor and texture, not quite as raised as I would have liked but not anywhere near flat. I used half sucralose and half sugar, and that was the only substitution that I made. I creamed the hell out of the butter

Comments

[fiatincantatum]

Heh. I really should have said "helps prevent the gluten from overdeveloping" ... the way I said it, it sounds like it's doing it all on its own, which is not the case. But it sounds like you got a good idea of why cakes and such can get tough (gluten, so beloved in bread, is the villain here!)

Still think reducing sugar to the minimum needed for proper chemistry and dispensing with the fake sweetener is the way to go, though :)

[phoenixw]

I think you might be right about the sugar. I'm going to play around with that, try to identify the minimum and see how it goes. I'm also thinking about trying liquid sucralose if I need more sweetness -- at 1 drop per serving I don't think the liquid will affect the structure.

Yeah, the gluten thing confused me. I've been baking bread and quick-breads for years and didn't realize that gluten wasn't good for every baked product. :-)

[ellie_nor]

I've found, in my gluten-free baking, that fructose actually gives a better structure to cake than sugar - and you only need to use ⅔ the amount of sugar. Xylitol works, and makes no structural difference that I've noticed, but can be fatal to dogs - I want to try erythritol, but can't find any in the UK. I've never tried sucralose.

[phoenixw]

Yes! I've used erythritol and its consistency is very similar to sugar - granulated and hard. Granulated sucralose is just too soft to do the job. I was thinking: Hm. The aeration that sugar performs with the fat is a physical effect that could be duplicated with something that has the same physical properties. Ground glass? Nope. Sand? Um, no. Sugar alcohols? Hm. Maybe so.

The drawback to erythritol is the distinctive "mouth sensation of cooling" that you get with it. I find it distracting, though not particularly unpleasant, and I'd rather not have it in baked goods.

I'm not so concerned about browning, which sugar facilitates happening at a lower temperature. I am concerned about the tenderness factor, but I think that using cake flour might help with that.

Thanks for the suggestion about fructose. I haven't been using it because it's not recommended for people with diabetes -- because it's metabolized entirely in the liver. So even though it has a low glycemic index, it's not a good thing for me. Too bad because I think it

[ellie_nor]

Re. fructose - bummer! I didn't know that about its metabolism. I'll read that article, as I'm not diabetic, but have PCOS, which is related to difficulties dealing with sugars / insulin issues.

[phoenixw]

I also meant to mention that if you don't mind ordering from overseas (and paying international shipping -- eep), I get erythritol from these folks: http://www.netrition.com.