Can you substitute butter in a box cake recipe that calls for oil? [closed]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Conversion rule: how to switch oil and butter?

Most box cake mixes call for adding oil and water. What would be the effect of using butter instead of oil, and what ratio should be used to substitute butter for the oil? 1:1?

Asked by Ryan Elkins

Answer

I would do a 1:1 ratio with the following caveats -

First make sure you are using unsalted butter (if you use salted it will change the flavor and the texture of the cake, usually not in a good way)

Second, I would clarify the butter (i.e. melt it skim off the foamy/cloudy bits that float at the top)

After that I would use an equal ratio. Be warned that the clarification process will reduce your butter a bit (8 tablespoons averages about 6 tablespoons after clarification), so make sure you measure after clarifying.

Answered by djmadscribbler

Check more discussion of this question.

Why is it called coffee cake?

Question

There is no coffee in any of the recipes I've seen for coffee cake, so why is it called that?

Asked by John

Answer

It is traditionally served with coffee when getting together with friends for coffee; kind of like tea-cakes are served at tea-time.

Answered by KatieK

Check more discussion of this question.

How to get rid of the taste of flour in homemade bakery?

Question

I usually get random cookie and cake recipes from the internet and try them. They are good but all of them have floury taste to me. Possible culprits are the flour I use and how I mix and bake dough. I use Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour and my hands to mix ingredients, having no mixer. What can I get wrong? Is there an easy fix?

Asked by puri

Answer

Assuming you aren't very unlucky and happen to download a series of bad recipes I think it's one of a few things.

It's possible you could be undercooking your goods. Fully cooked baked goods should not taste like flour.

It's also possible that you could be mixing insufficiently. If this were the case though you'd likely have some cookies that weren't floury.

The most likely culprit though is packed flour. If you are using volume measurements (most likely given the source) for flour, it's quite possible to use nearly twice as much flour as the recipe intends simply because your flour is packed down more than the author's was.

I recommend using either a food processor or a sifter to sift your flour adequately before measuring. Don't undo your sifting by rapping your measuring cup on the counter either! Simply scoop, scrape to level and dump it in the mixing bowl.

See Also:

• What Kinds of Recipes Should I Sift/Aerate The Flour?
• How can I make sifting easier?
• Sifting dry ingredients

Answered by hobodave

Check more discussion of this question.

How should I organize making a cake days ahead?

Question

My wife's birthday is coming up and I want to make a cake for her.

I was thinking of making a layer of sponge cake, amarena cherry sauce (cherries, wine and sugar), chocolate mousse, another layer of sponge cake with sauce, Diplomat cream and amarena cherries on top.

The problem is that I won't have time the day we eat the cake (Saturday) and the day before (Friday), so I need to make it in advance. I'm thinking of preparing the sponge cake, cherry sauce and chocolate mousse on Thursday and build the bottom layers and put it in the freezer. I can make the Diplomat cream on Friday morning, save it in the refrigerator, and build the rest on Saturday (after we'll arrive home).

Does this sounds like a good plan? is it better to just make the pastry cream on Friday and mixed it with the whipped cream on Saturday? Can the cake and the mousse wait for two days?

Asked by yuchtman

Answer

I wouldn't make the layers fully in the freezer. It will be hard to seal up and may dry out. Also, frozen layers are easier to work with. The freezer will dry out unsealed cake extremely fast.

I'd bake all the cake, trim and level them, wrap tightly and freeze on Thursday. Make the sauces and creams on Friday and put them in the fridge. Assemble all on Saturday.

Answered by rfusca

Check more discussion of this question.

How to stop cupcakes from collapsing?

Question

I made two kinds of cupcakes recently from Who You Callin' Cupcake? and both of them collapsed in the center.

The cupcake that collapsed the most was the Devil's Food Cupcake. This contained:

• all-purpose flour
• sugar
• cocoa powder
• baking soda
• salt
• canola oil
• vinegar
• vanilla
• hot coffee

I baked them in a dark cupcake pan with white paper liners. Why did this collapse and how can I stop this?

Asked by Kyra

Answer

One strong possibility is that the recipe is overleavened, which will cause it to blow up fast and then collapse. BakeWise (by Shirley Corriher) recommends 1 teaspoon baking powder or 1/4 teaspoon baking soda per cup of flour as a guideline. If your recipe is much beyond that, suspect that is the issue.

Answered by Michael at Herbivoracious

Check more discussion of this question.

Making cake icing look professionally smooth

Question

So you've got a nice, flat-topped cake after learning on Seasoned Advice how to eliminate doming and now you wish to ice it as perfectly smooth as you see it sometimes done commercially: no ridges with a even sheen.

Any secrets beyond patience and an artistic flair?

I already use a long, flat icing spatula.

Asked by jontyc

Answer

Professionals ice on a turntable. Turntables for home use are affordable, and make icing much easier.

Your spatula should reach to about the centre of the cake when held steady and comfortable. As @rfusca suggests, heating it for buttercream is a good idea. You can also wet it for other icings, to make it glide smoothly.

For the icing process itself, start with the top of the cake. Apply a generous amount of icing; you will be thinning it out with the spatula, not smearing it right and left to get an even thickness. Hold the spatula to an angle to the cake, tip at the centre, and rotate the turntable. Let excess icing drop to the side of the cake. When you have done the top, smear icing thick on the side, hold the spatula vertically, the edge at 45° to the cake side surface, and again turn the turntable. When you have finished, you will have raised icing on the edge of the cake. To finish the cake, smooth these edges.

To do this, you need enough icing. "The professional chef" recommends 340 g (12 oz) for a 20 cm (8 in) cake and 454 g (1 lb) for a 25 cm (10 in) cake.

Answered by rumtscho

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I intensify the orange flavour in orange cake?

Question

The ingredients I followed are:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white sugar
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder

Cooking time 35 minutes at 180 C.

I didn't put zest.
I couldn't feel the strong orange flavor in the cake. The cake was rather dry.

If next time I put 2 cups orange juice, what other thing do I have to increase to maintain the balance?

Can I put half cup brown sugar to maintain the moisture?

Can I put the Orange "pulp" in the cake? Will that make any positive difference? If yes, then what's the way to use it properly?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

Citrus zest is where most citrus flavour in a sauce or baked good actually comes from because it remains in solid form, like herbs and spices. The juice adds some flavour but it turns into solution and gets spread out over a very large surface area/volume.

I don't know why you decided not to use the zest - are you using commercial orange juice? If so, that may be part of the problem too - processed juices are not going to be as flavourful as homemade, in part because of the mechanical separation of pulp (even if it is subsequently re-incorporated to make a juice "with pulp").

Orange juice is effectively your water in this recipe so doubling it means you need to double everything else. In other words you'll have exactly the same ratios and therefore exactly the same taste.

If it came out too dry then that means you either (a) baked too long, (b) overworked the batter, (c) didn't use enough oil or (d) didn't use enough sugar. Nothing to do with the OJ content.

If you really want to add more orange flavour beyond what the original recipe would give you, use orange extract, it's a highly concentrated orange flavour and is usually derived from (surprise!) the zest, or made to taste like one. But I would suggest to try following the recipe correctly before doing this.

Answered by Aaronut

Check more discussion of this question.

How much difference does the placement of the shelf in the oven make to the final outcome of a cake?

Question

Unknowingly, I used to keep the cake on the center shelf in the oven, then I realized that the shelf can also be placed at the bottom of the oven.

Does this make a huge difference in the final outcome?

If I put the shelf on the bottom, and then stack the cakes on the top of each other in a 28lts oven, will that make sense?

Do any special care have to be taken in these situations?

http://www.bajajelectricals.com/Majesty-OTG-2800TMC-pc-391-66.aspx

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

Yes, it makes a difference. In a conventional oven (even one with a convectiono fan), anything placed on the bottom rack is going to absorb less radiation heat from the oven element. That means longer cooking times and possibly the need for a higher temperature setting.

If you're following a recipe then it's best to use whichever rack the recipe says. If the recipe doesn't specify, it's usually designed for the center rack.

Now, using a different rack is completely different from actually baking one thing on top of another thing, on a higher rack. That will have a significant effect on whatever is underneath, and if it is particularly sensitive to the time and temperature (many baked goods are) then it is very likely to fail entirely. I once tried to bake two layers of cream puffs and the ones on the bottom were still practically raw by the time the top was done. I doubt you'd find much better success with cakes.

A convection fan may help in this case, but I still don't think it's enough to compensate for the temperature gradient you'd create by "eclipsing" one dish underneath another in the same oven. You are literally blocking the heat from reaching the bottom dish.

Answered by Aaronut

Check more discussion of this question.

Bundt Pan Substitution?

Question

I have a cake recipe that calls for baking in a bundt pan (it's a sweet potato spice cake). Can I use another kind of pan, or will it affect the quality of the cake?

Asked by SarahVV

Answer

The best substitution would be a a simple tube pan.

Besides the unique appearance, bundt and tube pans are used for particularly dense and moist batters. They might be used for a cake that might dry out on the outside before the center cooks through.

If you don't have a tube pan, then there are a couple alternatives. You can use two loaf pans, this should approximate the bundt pan. Another alternative is to use a deep circular cake pan with a ceramic ramekin in the center of it to create the hole. With either method you may need to adjust your cook time a bit depending on your results. (likely 25F lower and baked for a little longer) It also might simply just work without changes.

Answered by hobodave

Check more discussion of this question.

What can I use in place of allspice?

Question

I have a recipe for Dutch apple raisin cake that calls for a half teaspoon of allspice, which I don't have. Would ground cloves or nutmeg or a combo of both work? I know that allspice is a spice unto itself.

Asked by kiamlaluno

Answer

The closest thing is to combine equal parts of ground cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and black pepper.

Answered by hobodave

Check more discussion of this question.

What is the difference between quick bread and cake?

Question

Quick breads, like banana or zucchini breads, seem to be assembled in an identical method and with similar ingredients as cake. Many recipes have comparable quantities of fat and sugar.

So what is the difference and how can you tell whether a baked good should be called a quick bread or a cake?

Asked by Sobachatina

Answer

This question has become blown out of proportion. I was just curious- then I started getting answers that quickbreads and cake are the same thing- which they "obviously" aren't. So I started doing my own research.

Wikipedia says that the term quickbread was probably invented in the US after the discovery of chemical leavening. The Wikipedia references and some dictionaries corroborate this definition. Basically anything leavened with soda is quickbread.

This doesn't work. There are a great many things leavened with soda that can't be called quickbread. A good example is plain old white cake. Obviously this is a semantic issue but one that needed solving.

Two American cookbooks that I consider canonical recipe resources, The Joy of Cooking, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, both have a separate quickbread section. In it are a variety of fruit breads as well as some biscuits and scones.

On Food and Cooking muddied the water a bit by differentiating between quick breads such as biscuits and batter breads such as banana bread. These were grouped together, however, and contrasted against cakes. This book says that cakes are higher in fat and sugar and have a more delicate texture.

Ratio, as linked in this answer, confused the terms a bit more also including a term "quick cake" but it differentiated between the different products with distinct ratios for the flour, fat, and sugar.

With several competing definitions I decided to take an unscientific poll. I called 6 friends in Washington, Utah, Georgia, and Texas. I tried to find a variety of American cultures. Obviously it is biased by the fact that I know all of them.
When asked "What is quickbread to you?" without exception all of them replied "banana bread" When I followed up with: "What is the difference between that and cake" I received the following answers:

"It is eaten at breakfast"
"It has less sugar"
"It is loaf shaped"
"It is more dense"
"It has a more open texture"

My conclusion is that the historical definition of "anything with soda" is no longer useful. In cookbooks it seems to now be applied to chemically risen baked goods that:

• have as a rule of thumb a particular ratio of flour, fat, and sugar
• have less sugar than cake
• refers in particular to fruit breads, biscuits, and scones
• generally has an irregular vs uniform texture

The popular definition (among my extremely limited, unrandom sampling) adds:

• tends to be loaf shaped

And now I can sleep easily again.

Answered by Sobachatina

Check more discussion of this question.

Can oil be replaced with yoghurt in a cake recipe?

Question

A cake recipe is asking for "one cup" oil!!

I don't want to eat so much "oil", can I replace it with yoghurt or something else?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

Short answer - not really. Fat is an essential component in any cake, and milk just isn't very fatty - about 5% for whole milk. You can make cakes with milk, but they require totally different recipes: you can't simply substitute milk for oil.

Bear in mind that you're distributing the cup of oil throughout a whole cake, so that any one slice will only have a fraction of the oil. I assume you'll also be sharing the cake with others, so you'll be 'spreading the calories' somewhat.

You should be using a relatively healthy oil like canola (rapeseed) oil anyway, as it has a relatively mild flavour. A popular alternative these days is to substitute all but a couple of tablespoons of the oil with apple sauce (really), but this can be hit and miss and doesn't work with all recipes - it usually works best with things like quick breads (scones etc).

Of course, there's also the point that cakes are supposed to be a treat, and they'd be less of a treat without the fat, in which case why bother? If you want to be healthy, make a salad. If you want a treat, make a cake and don't worry about the contents too much.

Answered by ElendilTheTall

Check more discussion of this question.

What to add to the batter of the cake to avoid hardening when the gluten formation can't be avoided?

Question

So, over mixing batter forms gluten, which in turn hardens the cake. Fine.

The problem is that I don't want lumps in the cakes, and the above statement prevents me from fine mixing the batter. So, is there something which I can add to the batter (more milk?) to make the outcome soft despite Gluten?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

Milk won't help you - it's mostly water, and gluten develops from flour (more accurately, specific proteins in flour) and water.

The way to reduce gluten development is to incorporate more fat into the batter. Lipids are hydrophobic and will prevent further hydration of the glutenin.

Using a lower-protein flour will also help. If you're not already using cake flour, the reason it's called cake flour is because of the lower protein content.

That being said, have you actually tried leaving the batter coarse? Just because the batter is lumpy does not mean that the cake will have big lumps. The entire mixture is wet, so unless you leave huge lumps of dry flour in the batter, you won't end up with a lumpy cake. There's a difference between "don't overmix" and "don't mix" - you're supposed to mix enough to incorporate, just don't try homogenize it.

Answered by Aaronut

Check more discussion of this question.

Is it a myth or a fact that mixing cake/muffin batter too finely can lead to a hard finally baked cake/muffin?

Question

From here: http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/bakingdesserts/r/plainmuffins.htm

The key to making great muffins is not overmixing the batter. Once the liquid ingredients are added to the dry, mix the batter by hand just until the flour is moistened, for no more than about ten seconds. Too much mixing can cause the muffins to be dry, tough or misshapen.

and

The batter should be visibly lumpy, and you may see pockets of dry flour. That's OK! It's extremely important not to overmix the batter, or the resulting muffins will be too hard.

Is there some scientific reasoning behind this claim?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

The main reason behind the claim is that muffins don't want gluten formation. Gluten in a chemical leavened product like a muffin would make it tough, rather than light, since the protein strands are so sturdy. The sturdy structures that are desired in crusty bread are a problem for muffins and other chemical leavened products.

Gluten is formed when dough is heavily mixed or kneaded, or when the dough remains wet for a long period of time. Avoiding mixing it too much is one way of preventing gluten formation.

Lots of mixing can also cause the chemical leavening (baking powder) to go flat. Baking powder is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, which will release CO2 when in contact with an acid, and an acidic salt, such as cream of tartar (or others). They are inert when dry, but when water hits them, the acid activates and starts bubbling the soda. This reaction doesn't take long to run out of steam, though, so too much mixing can pop or shake out the precious bubbles.

What seems to be subject to some superstition is the exact way to get the "right" amount of mixing. Some people say, "ten stirs only" or other little tricks, but the point is that you just want to integrate the ingredients together, and no more, and to add the liquid to the dry ingredients as close to the actual moment of baking as practical. Dry lumps in the batter are fine - they will hydrate quickly in the heat of the oven.

Answered by Sam Ley

Check more discussion of this question.

What are some of the alternative methods for checking for cake doneness

Question

... without using a toothpick?

EDIT

the spirit of my question was to use a non penetrative device. I like the thermometer idea, but no one seems to know how the heck to use them

Asked by dassouki

Answer

http://www.baking911.com/cakes/data.htm I found some baking times for specific sized cakes. For me, I just use the toothpick method.

If it's a spongecake, you can check by pressing down on it and if it "bounces" back it's done.

Answered by Melly

Check more discussion of this question.

How to make a cake less dense

Question

So I've just recently started baking and I've tried a bunch of cakes using the basic combination of the following ingredients:

225g unsalted butter , softened 225g caster sugar 4 eggs 225g self-raising flour

They're coming out ok but are not really "light and airy", a bit too "dense" compared to a cake made by a pro. I've done some reading and I think I'm maybe not working the butter and sugar (eggs too?) for long enough and/or working the flour in too much.

Can anyone tell me how to make the perfect light and airy cake?

Asked by Amir Latif

Answer

What you are making is a pound cake. Or maybe a sponge cake, depends on the order of mixing the ingredients. Of the two, the sponge cake is somewhat lighter, so if you have been making pound cake (cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then flour), you can switch to sponge (foam eggs and sugar, add flour and fat). But both are hearty homemade cakes, they are supposed to be dense.

The iced cakes you get in a bakery are much lighter, because they use a different type of layer. Most types of cake are lighter than pound and sponge cakes. Try making genoise, chiffon, or angel food cake layers, they are all light. And yes, using cake flour will help too, or replacing part of the flour in the recipe with pure starch (usually cornstarch or potato starch, you can also use wheat starch if you can get it. Tapioca or arrowroot aren't that well suited). For a real "pro" taste, also throw in some lecithine, it makes the mouthfeel softer and smoother - but if you don't feel like hunting around for lecithine, don't bother, a good homemade cake doesn't really need it, I only mentioned it because you asked about "cake made by a pro".

Answered by rumtscho

Check more discussion of this question.

What are those cakes called which don't have an icing on them?

Question

I have eaten some home made cakes which never had any icings, they still tasted brilliant.
What are those cakes called which don't need an icing on them? I heard they are called "Sponge cakes". Is that correct?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

In English, all cakes are called just cake, no matter if iced or not. Sponge cake is a name for a cake made from a specific type of batter - it consists of one part fat, one part egg, one part sugar, and one part flour, made by creaming the fat and sugar (without creaming, a batter from the same proportions is called pound cake). You can make other types of cake - angel food cake, chiffon, genoise, etc - and not add icing, they are differentiated by the type of batter only.

In other languages, there is a difference. In German, the ones without icing are called "Kuchen", and the ones with icing are called "Torte" (and usually seen as a subset of Kuchen"). But in German, a pie is also considered a type of "Kuchen", so this is more of an umbrella term, even though the standard thing someone pictures upon hearing the word "Kuchen" is some kind of iceless cake, usually on the lines of a marbled Gugglehupf. But in English, there is no special term for a cake without the icing.

Answered by rumtscho

Check more discussion of this question.

Will fresh strawberries make a cake soggy?

Question

I'm decorating a 2 layer butter cake and I was thinking of adding a layer of sliced fresh strawberries in between the two layers together with some strawberry flavored Bavarian cream. I will be serving the cake in two days. Will the strawberries give out too much liquid and make the cake soggy?

Asked by papin

Answer

Generally, no they should be fine. You'd have more of an issue with frozen than fresh. It would take fresh strawberries a long time to release enough moisture to cause any significant amount of sogginess.

The issue you're more likely to run into depending on the size of your strawberries, the density of your Bavarian cream, levelness of your cake, and the weight of your top layer is that they can act like rollers and friction between the two layers will be low. If the cake is tilted wrong, the top layer will just slide right off. I've definitely had it happen - ruined a cake for a charity event :(. Make sure the strawberries are cut into bits - not halves or slices and preferably fold them into the cream to prevent this from happening. All the flavors will still be there, but your cake will be safer.

Answered by rfusca

Check more discussion of this question.

Does it make sense to take out the cake from the oven few times just to check whether it is done or not?

Question

Does it make sense to take out the cake from the oven few times just to check whether it is done or not, before its total time completes?

Is there some other way out to check the same, in order to avoid a miserable failure at the end?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

It's never the best of an idea taking the cake out of the oven during its cooking as you'll probably knock it a bit and knock the air out and then it'll cool down a bit and so take longer too cook. Saying that, the whole thing is when you take the cake out. As a rule don't take your cake out until at least half-way through the cooking time, that way the starch will have started to set. If you take your cake out multiple times 5 minutes before, say, it don't make to much of a difference as by then the cake is practically cooked.

Some cakes are more susceptible: foam cakes (genoise, chiffon, etc) are the most likely to feel the full force of you taking the cake out of the oven as it will likely deflate all of the air you've worked so hard to create, however, butter cakes (pound, fruit, etc) wil not be so effected as these are a lot denser and rely more on chemical leaveners.

There are lots of ways to check if your cakes done. If its a cake with quite a thin batter, open the oven door and give it a tiny wobble (not a great big shake to deflate it) and if it wobbles its definitely not done, if it doesn't wobble you can progress to the next step which is poking in a skewer or knife and if it comes out clean it's done, use this technique for all cake types. Another way is when the cake looks golden (unless it's a chocolate cake), press your finger down on the cake and if it springs back it's done. A lot is made about not opening your oven door, in modern ovens today, this doesn't make much of a difference as they can quickly get back up to temperature, particularly if you just open the door a crack. On a final point having a reliable oven temperature is one of the most important steps. Buying a little oven thermometer is a good investment, they're very cheap and will save a lot of hastle

Answered by Sebiddychef

Check more discussion of this question.

How important is the creaming process while making a cake?

Question

A few of the chocolate cake recipes I read always start with the step - mix butter and sugar until creamy. I've tried a couple of times but failed to create anything near to creamy. But a few recipes completely eliminate the creaming process, wherein the wet ingredients are added directly to the dry mix. I'm looking for a cake which has a light and moist texture. What should I do? All my previous cakes were either too airy or grainy! On a side note, no matter how much time I mix, I'm not getting the sugar to completely dissolve in the butter. Should I be adding more butter?

Answer

The purpose mixing the butter and sugar until creamy is to distribute air through the batter that will help leaven the cake in the oven. Skipping this step can create a denser cake. You want to add the air into the batter before adding the flour in order to prevent over mixing, which creates gluten; causing a tougher texture.

Beating the eggs until foamy and folding them into the batter or adding the eggs to the butter/sugar and beating until fluffy will also create a lighter texture.

The sugar does not need to dissolve in the butter, but it should be evenly distributed. This site gives a good visual on how creamed butter & sugar should look.

Check more discussion of this question.