White Cake Taste Test

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A few members on Cake Central recently kicked off a Great Scratch Off - White Cake Taste Test. Yeah, White Cake! I’ve been on the hunt for the "perfect" white cake recipe so I joined the fun. Eight recipes were selected for the comparison (see list below). I would have liked to try them all, but I was pressed for time so I selected four to sample: one made with shortening, one with buttermilk, one with just butter, and one with sour cream.



Here are links to the eight recipes that Cake Central selected for the comparison:

1. King Arthur Flour - Tender While Cake recipe - I would have liked to try this recipe. It is the standard "butter" recipe, but it also give the option of using vanilla yogurt or whole milk. I've always wondered how yogurt would impact the taste/texture of a cake, but I didn't have any King Arthur Flour so I had to scratch this one from my "to bake" list.



2. Rebecca Sutterby's (developer of the WASC recipe) - White Velvet Cake recipe - Buttermilk recipe with vanilla bean paste. I didn't have any vanilla bean paste, so this one got scratched also.



3. Cook Book Maniac's adaptation of Rose Levy Beranbaum's: The Cake Bible - White Velvet Cake recipe - This is a butter recipe which also uses heavy cream. Sounds delicious, rich, and oh-so-fattening. I really wanted to include this one and make a five layer cake, but I was confused by some of Cook Book Maniac's instructions. In particular the instruction of cook at 175 degrees (no mention of Celsius or Fahrenheit) and only use one 9x2" pan. I could make the assumption that the temperature was Celsius, but the one pan had me stumped. Seemed like too much batter for one pan. I also had a run-in last year with the Rose Levy Beranbaum's folks when I included her Red Velvet Cake in one of my taste test. I didn't want a repeat of that drama, so I dropped this cake from my lineup.



4. Cook's Illustrated - White Layer Cake recipe (note, you need a subscription to see the actual Cook's Illustrated recipe, but the link given goes to a blog that posted the CI recipe and directions)- This is a Butter recipe with lots of egg whites. I included this recipe in my taste test. Here is what the finished cake looked like:



5. Elisa Strauss The Confetti Cakes - Vanilla Cake recipe (note: scroll down through this long post.  The recipe is near the bottom of  Post #1)  - This is another Butter recipe with lots of egg whites very similar to the Cook's Illustrated recipe.



6. K8Memphis' version of Sylvia Weinstock's yellow cake from  Sylvia Weinstock's Sensational Cakes  - Sylvia's famous Sour Cream Yellow Cake recipe was modified (reduced the egg yolks) by K8 to make the baked cake look less yellow. Here is what it looked like.



7. GroupRecipes' Delicate White Cake recipe - This is a Shortening based recipe with no butter. Here is what it looked like. Very snowy isn't it? No butter in the batter makes the cake very white.



8. Rebecca Rather's from the book The Pastry Queen - White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe - Lots of butter and buttermilk in this recipe. Not intended for anyone worried about their cholesterol.

So here are all the cakes stacked and waiting to get iced.



For this taste test I had 11 lab rats (oops, I mean family members). They were told to evaluate just the cake and not the cake/icing combination. Each taster was given a slice of cake and I interview each and made notes of their comments. They were asked to rank the cakes from 1-4. #1 being their favorite and #4 being their least favorite.

And based on the ranking of my lab rats,

The WINNER of my White Cake Taste Test IS ...........

************************************************************************
With an overall score of 1.6 .............

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The pure BUTTER recipe from Cook's Illustrated White Layer Cake recipe

Yeah, Three Cheers for Cook's Illustrated White Layer Cake !!!!
************************************************************************
The score board is as follows (note: the lower the number the better the score):

#1 - First Place went to Cook's Illustrated Butter cake with a score of 1.6,
#2 - Second Place went to Rebecca Rather's (The Pastry Queen) Buttermilk cake with a score of 2.4,
#3 - Third Place went to Group Recipes' Shortening cake with a score of 2.5,
#4 - Fourth Place went to K8Memphis' Sour Cream Cake with a score of 3.4



Under the guidelines of the Cake Central Great Scratch Off - White Cake Taste Test the
Judging Criteria included:
1. Flavor
2. Texture/Crumb
3. Moistness
3. Ease of Recipe
4. Cost of Recipe
5. Ability to convert into cupcakes

So here are my remarks on each cake:


* The Sour Cream Cake (left most cake in picture, 4th Place Winner) K8Memphis'  version of Sylvia Weinstock's Yellow Cake from the book Sylvia Weinstock's Sensational Cakes 

1. Flavor - Nice flavor when eating, but leaves a strong after-taste in your mouth. Most of the lab rats described the cake as having a strong, unidentifiable flavor.
2. Texture/Crumb - Very dense but you can still see the crumb.
3. Moistness - Very moist almost to the point of wetness.

* The Butter Cake (second from left in picture, 1st Place Winner) Cook's Illustrated White Layer Cake recipe

1. Flavor - Rich, buttery flavor. Very nice smell.
2. Texture/Crumb - Medium crumb. Not as fluffy as the shortening cake but not as dense as the buttermilk or sour cream cakes. Crumbs visible when you cut into the cake. Nice, fluffy, moist feel in mouth.
3. Moistness - Perfect moistness. Not dry and not too wet looking or tasting.

* The ButterMilk Cake (third from left in picture, 2nd Place Winner) Rebecca Rather's (The Pastry Queen book) White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe

1. Flavor - Great flavor, rich and complex.
2. Texture/Crumb - Dense, but you can still see some crumbs.
3. Moistness - Very moist, a little wet looking, compacts in your mouth when you eat it.
4. Other Notes: Best flavor but did not like the texture as much as the shortening or butter cake. Cake was very rich and overpowered the normal vanilla buttercream icing. Tasted much better when paired with a rich, chocolate icing. Also did not work well as cupcakes: lots of collapsing and shrinkage.

* The Shortening Cake (right most cake in picture, 3rd Place Winner) Delicate White Cake recipe

1. Flavor - Sugary flavor, not enough extracts. Would add more vanilla and also some butter extract.
2. Texture/Crumb - Light, airy, fluffy. Loose crumb, lots of little crumb holes.
3. Moistness - A little dry. If more moisture (and butter flavor) could be added to the cake it would be perfect.
4. Other Note: Not enough batter, layer not thick enough. Baked for the suggested 20 minutes but next time I would only bake for 18 minutes.

So did this taste test help me to find that "perfect" white cake recipe? Well to be honest, No.

I loved the flavor of the Buttermilk cake, the texture of the Butter cake and the light, airiness of the Shortening cake. If only I could smash all the cakes together, I would have the perfect White Cake recipe.

Hummmm....

I wonder if I could start with the Shortening recipe, use buttermilk instead of milk, double the vanilla, add some almond and butter extracts..... I wonder what it would taste like? Any thoughts, any opinion?

Hummmmm......

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Red Velvet Cake Taste-Off: Round 2

In mid-November I conducted a taste test of Red Velvet Cake recipes (see blog entry here). I baked 8 different cakes and recruited 25 people to sample and rate the entries. The undisputed winner of the Red Velvet Taste-Off : Round 1 was:

Cake Man Raven's Red Velvet Cake
But the day after I compiled my results, I ran across yet another distinctive Red Velvet Cake recipe. This one was from Rose's Levy Beranbaum book Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The actual cake is called Rose Red Velvet and for its fat is uses butter and oil. It also uses more eggs than any of the other recipes I tested. The person who brought this cake to my attention said it was better than Cake Man Raven's! That got my attention. Better than Cake Man Raven? Red Velvet Cake Taste-Off #2 was on.

For this round I baked three different recipes:

• Rose's Red Velvet - Rose Levy Beranbaum - the challenger
• Cake Man Raven's - because it had won the first round of the taste test
• Waldorf Astoria recipe with a tweak - My original reason for conducting this taste test was to find a recipe that mimicked the Red Velvet Cake sold at Piccadilly Cafeteria (the absolute best RVC). Flavor and color wise I think the Waldorf cake comes the closest, but it is not nearly as moist as Piccadilly's. So in this test I added 1/4 cup of light corn syrup hoping to give it a little more moisture. Sadly my tweaked Waldorf did not produce a copy cat of Piccadilly RVC. Granted my tweak cake was better than the original, but still not measure up to Piccadilly's caliber.

So here are the three cakes all stacked up:



And sliced open:



So which do you think won? Which do you think looks the best?

Well the winner yet again was Cake Man Raven's Red Velvet Cake.

The Waldorf cake came in second and the Rose Red Velvet cake came in third. In this round I only had 9 taste testers, as opposed to the 25 testers in round one. Two of the tasters (the kids) picked the Rose cake as their favorite (they said it was the sweetest), but the other 7 had it as their least favorite. One of the biggest complaints about the Rose RVC was that it was too dry and two people remarked that it had a spongy, angel food cake texture. If you want to see a spreadsheet listing all the results click here.

So after two unbiased tests, the oil based Red Velvet Cake is still reigns as the undisputed favorite.

BUT even as I write this someone handed me yet another RVC recipe. It is Red Velvet time of the year. This one used uses brown sugar instead of white and a 1/2 cup cocoa. I must test this recipe, so stay tuned for round 3 of the Ultimate Red Velvet Taste-Off (some time around Christmas).

Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Taste-Off: 8 Cakes, 25 Testers, 1 Winner

I've always been a big fan of Red Velvet Cake, and my absolute favorite RVC comes from Piccadilly's Cafeteria. Their version is very dense and moist and full of tangy, buttermilk flavor. They used to put pecans in the icing, but they stopped doing that because of nut allergies and law suit threats. What a sad, sad day that was when the waitress handed me that piece of cake sans pecans.

But I digress; the point of this blog post is to share the results of my Ultimate Red Velvet Taste Test. Here are the contenders all stacked up.



I started the experiment by scouring the internet for Red Velvet Cake recipes. There were a LOT! But most of the recipes fell into three categories: those containing Oil, those containing Shortening, and those containing Butter. There were also a few that used combinations of the three different fats, and some that deviated drastically from the norm.

My first step was to build a spreadsheet to help compare and contrast the different recipes and help decide which cakes to test (click HERE to download the spreadsheet). A lot of the recipes I looked at were exactly the same, so the spreadsheet only has recipes that are different in some way. The recipes fall into specific categories of: butter, oil, shortening, combination, and other. In the butter, oil and shortening categories I selected one recipe as the base, and noted how the other recipes in that category deviate from the “base”.

The largest percentage of recipes I found used BUTTER as the fat. The butter recipes I included on the spreadsheet are:

• Sylvia’s Red Velvet - from Emeril’s site
• Joy of Baking’s Red Velvet (same as Epicurious’ Red Velvet)
• Grandmother Paula’s Red Velvet – from Paula Deen at the Food Network
• Montclair Martha’s Red Velvet – from Martha Stewart
• Hummingbird’s Red Velvet
• Magnolia Bakery’s Red Velvet
• Brown Derby Red Velvet
• Cooks Country Red Velvet
• Christmas Red Velvet - from The Pastry Queen, Rebecca Rather

The recipes are very similar with just minor changes in sugar, cocoa, and vinegar content. In the end I selected Paula Deen’s version as the "typical butter” RVC . I also selected Rebecca Rather’s version because it added sour cream in addition to the butter.

In the OIL category of RVC are:

• Cake Man Raven’s Southern Red Velvet (same as Apple a Day and Saveur)
• Rachel’s Red Velvet – from Martha Stewart
• Sara Moulton’s Southern Red Velvet
• Smitten Kitchen's Red Velvet Cake from “The Confetti Cakes Cookbook” by Elisa Stauss
• Bobby Flay’s Red Velvet Cake

Because it is so famous, I selected the Cake Man Raven version. I also selected Bobby Flay’s version which uses a combination of oil and butter.

Next were the SHORTENING RVCs. This category had the smallest number of recipe variations but it includes the most famous of them all: Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake. I also found a variation of the Waldorf recipe that included Cane Syrup. The syrup recipe looked interesting (could Cane Syrup possibly be the secret to Piccadilly's unique RVC?) so I included it in the baking lineup.

Last but not least is the OTHER category of RVC recipes. I recently received a copy of Melissa Gray’s book All Cakes Considered which includes a RVC recipe that contains no buttermilk. Hummm. I was curious enough to add her version to the experiment.

So in the end I settled on 8 different RVC recipes to use in my taste test:

1. Grandmother Paula’s Red Velvet Cake – Paula Deen (butter)
2. Cake Man Raven’s Southern Red Velvet (oil)
3. Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake (shortening)
4. Bobby Flay’s Red Velvet Cake (butter & oil)
5. Louisiana Red Velvet (shortening & cane syrup)
6. The Pastry Queen, Rebecca Rather’s Christmas Red Velvet Cake (butter & sour cream)
7. Melissa Gray’s Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake (no buttermilk, sour cream)
8. Duncan Hines Red Velvet Box Mix – YES a box mix. I wanted to see how a box mix compared to the scratch recipes.

On the morning of November 16, 2009 the baking began. I set up an assembly line, preheated the oven, and began to mix, whisk and bake. Seven hours later I was finished. Whew, what a marathon. The next morning I hauled everything to work: eight cakes, a huge tub of cream cheese icing, plates, forks, and a stack of scoring sheets.

Once at work (I got there an hour early), I unwrapped and iced all the cakes and added sprinkles to each so the taste tester could identify them. Blue sprinkles, green sugar, yellow balls, each cake had its own unique topping.

Each cake was sliced into thin wedges and a wedge of each was placed on a plate.


The tasters themselves were carefully selected because of their love of cake and their familiarity with Red Velvet Cake in particular. There are over 200 people in the office and only 25 of them got cake. Some people where kinda pissed that they weren’t “selected”, but hey, you can only get so many slices from a cake. It is also worth noting that the cakes were frosted but the testers were asked to base their cake critique on just the cake and not the cake and icing combination.

The result sheets trickled in during the day (some people didn’t want to eat their cakes until lunch), and I was amazed at the variety of responses. What really gave me pause were the critiques of the icing (remember I told them that the icing wasn't part of the test). One person, in addition to the cake ratings, rated the icing. She loved some of the icings and hated others. She said one had a “flour” taste and another she said didn’t have enough sugar. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that all the cakes had the exact same cream cheese icing. The only thing I can figure is that the icing took on different flavors and nuances when eaten with the cake. Strange how the mind and taste buds work.

But on to the results. I know you are dying to know which cake WON.

Drum roll please.

The winner of the first Ultimate Red Velvet Taste-Off is...

is...

Cake Man Raven’s Red Velvet Cake
The oil based cake beat out the butter. Are you surprised? Shocked?

Here is a detail ranking of cakes.

Note that “1” is the best possible score, and “8” is the worst possible score. The cakes were ranked 1-8 with the taster's favorite cake given a score of "1" (first place), their second favorite given a score of "2" (second place), and so on. Their least favorite cake was given the rank of "8" (eighth place). Also, 5 people didn’t give me back my sheets (yet).

In FIRST place: Cake Man Raven’s Red Velvet Cake – score 2.85

• 11 people gave it a “best cake” scores of 1 or 2, 8 people gave it an “average” score of 3, 4, 5, or 6, and 1 person gave it a “worst cake” score of 7 or 8.


• Common Tasters Comments: Moist, light and fluffy, melts in your mouth. Although one person said it was dry, another said it had no flavor, and a third said that it tasted like a “box” mix. Ironically the person who said this cake tasted like a box mix gave the Duncan Hines cake very high marks.

In SECOND place: The Pastry Queen, Rebecca Rather’s RVC – score 3.8

• 6 rated it the “best”, 13 rated it “average”, 1 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Moist, too dense, a little sticky, packs in the mouth, mushy, less sweet. One person said it had a soapy taste.


• I found the the Pastry Queen's cake looked the best. It was light and fluffy and had a bright red color. I did have trouble applying the icing though, the surface of the cake crumbled and the fine crumbs bled/mixed into the icing.

In THIRD place: Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake – score 3.85

• 5 rated it the “best”, 12 rated it “average”, 3 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Dry, good flavor, chocolaty, traditional.

In FOURTH place: Duncan Hines Red Velvet Box Mix – score 3.9

• 6 rated it the “best”, 11 rated it “average”, 3 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Chocolate taste, light and airy, good texture, light flavor, a little dry and bland.

In FIFTH Place: Louisiana Red Velvet – score 4.05

• 7 rated it the “best”, 7 rated it “average”, 6 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Dense, a little sticky, not sweet enough, don’t like the flavor, strange taste, rum-like flavor, traditional red velvet, fruity flavor.


• The Cane Syrup in this cake caused a love-it or hate-it reaction in the taste-testers. This cake definitely had a “different” taste and people either devoured it or tossed it in the trash.

In SIXTH Place: Grandmother Paula's Red Velvet Cake - Paula Deen – score 4.7

• 4 rated it the “best”, 11 rated it “average”, 5 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Buttery, pleasant taste, light & moist, moist but crumbly in the mouth, too gooey, sticks to the roof of mouth, too soft, needs to be denser, needs more texture, okay taste but weird texture.


• I was surprised that the “butter” cake rated so low because in my mind everything is better with butter.

In SEVENTH Place: Bobby Flay's Red Velvet Cake – score 5.75

• 1 rated it the “best”, 12 rated it “average”, 7 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Chocolate taste, a little drier than others, don’t like, fluffy, bland, no flavor, good taste but more like devil’s food than red velvet.


• It really surprised me that Bobby Flay’s recipe ranked so low. I thought the combination of butter and oil would produce a winning cake.

In EIGHTH Place: Melissa Gray's Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake– score 7.1

• 0 rated it the “best”, 6 rated it “average”, 14 rated it “worst”.


• Common Tasters Comments: Does not taste like Red Velvet, dry, bland, slightly bitter, more like devil’s food cake, too dense and firm.


• This cake was universally disliked in RVC taste test. In my opinion the cake itself had a good taste, if slightly on the dry side, but it just didn’t taste like Red Velvet. It was more like a yellow pound cake with red food color and cocoa added.

Click HERE to see all the results.

So what do you think of my results? Do you agree or disagree. I was really surprised at the diversity of opinions on each the cakes and I’ve come to realize that one cake will never satisfy all the people all the time. Next time I bake a three layer Red Velvet Cake I’m going to make each layer a different recipe: Cake Man Raven, The Pastry Queen, and Waldorf Astoria. Hopefully my Threesome Red Velvet Cake will satisfy everyone.


PS: I’m also thinking about doing another round of RVC testing. I still can’t believe that Bobby Flay’s recipe came in so low (did I do something wrong?), and I found another recipe by Rose Levy that uses butter and oil (like Bobby’s) but only uses egg whites instead of whole eggs. I still have some buttermilk and red food color left over from the first round, so I’m going to preheat my oven and start RVC baking again.

Update December 3, 2009:
To see the results of the Red Velvet Taste-Off - Round 2 click here.

Results - June Yellow Cake Scratch-Off

A group of scratch bakers over at Cake Central have been having a "Scratch-Off" in which 15 different Yellow Cake recipes were baked and reviewed. 18 bakers participated and a total of 40 votes were cast.

The fifteen yellow cake recipes compared were:

1. Great American Cakes by Barbara Kafka
2. Lita829's Yellow Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
3. Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow Cake - missing link - See comment section for recipe
4. Sylvia Weinstock's NEW Yellow Cake -  missing link - Same as Classic version but with 1 additional cup of milk.
5. Not So Lemon Lemon Cake adapted from Magnolia Bakery - missing link
6. Paula Deen's 1234 Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake
7. Whimsical Bake House Gold Cake - missing link
8. All-Purpose Buttery Yellow Cake - The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
9. Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from Sky High
10. White on White Buttermilk Cake
11. The All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake - missing link
12. Cakeman Raven's Red Velvet Modified by Maryjsgirl into a yellow and lighter cake see post #11 for recipe
13. K8Memphis Golden Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
14. Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake
15. Toba Garett's Moist Yellow Cake

(drum roll please)

The WINNER with 6 votes and final score of 8.83) of Cake Central's June's Yellow Cake "Scratch-Off is ...

Wait,
Wait,
Wait for it...

Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!!!!!

#1 - Sylvia Weinstock's Original Classic Yellow Cake - with a final score of 8.83
#2 - White on White Buttermilk - 8.33
#3 - Not So Lemon Magnolia Cake - 8.25

Congratulations Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!

PS: a lot of the testers tried Sylvia's NEW recipe (which is her old recipe plus 1 cup of milk) and 90% of testers considered it a total flop. So be warned.

July's Scratch-Off will be CHOCOLATE CAKE. Yummm. Nothing better than chocolate.

White on White Buttermilk Cake

This weekend I was able to kill the two provable birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off" and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

So this time I tried the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe.

The recipe called for your standard mixing steps. 1) sift the dry ingredients together. I didn't have any fresh buttermilk in the fridge, so I used the powdered stuff. 2) Cream the butter and sugar. 3) Add the eggs and vanilla. 4) Mix in the dry ingredients in three stages alternating with the buttermilk. I mixed the last stage of dry ingredients by hand. 5) Add in the crushed Oreo cookies. I was lazy and didn't feel like getting out the food processor to crush the cookies. I chopped them up by hand, so the pieces ended up being a little large.


Here are the cupcakes all baked up.


Here are the insides. See how big the cookie chucks are. Don't they look good?


One without any Oreos.



The final product.


Overall the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe was good, but not the best. I found it had a strong buttermilk tang that didn't appeal to all of my tasters (the kids especially). Maybe if I had used fresh buttermilk the flavor wouldn't have been as strong, but either way the buttermilk cake was not a good complement to the Oreo cookies.

I think this will be the last yellow cake recipe that I test from the June "Scratch-Off" challenge. It was a fun experiment, but I'm getting a little burned out on yellow cake. July's challenge will be cheesecake.

Come on July.....

Sylvia Weinstock's "NEW" Classic Yellow Cake

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The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #3

A group of scratch bakers on Cake Central have gotten together to test, rate and critique different cake recipes from a predetermined list. This week I decided to try Sylvia Weinstock's NEW Classic Yellow Cake.  (Ms. Weinstock has some great books like Sensational Cakes.)

click here for Sylvia's "new" yellow cake recipe (oops - now this recipe is gone too. So much for data hanging around forever on the internet.  The new recipe was like the old with an additional 1 cup of milk added - yes, one full cup.)

click here for her "original" recipe  - (oops, broken link - see comment section for recipe)

Here is my finished product. "Look Glinda, I'm defying gravity."


The ingredients....

The mixing got a little involved. First the butter and sugar are creamed. Eggs are added one at a time. Milk added to creamed ingredients. Note: I got a little concerned at this point because after the milk was added the creamed mixture looked curdled (sorry I didn't get a picture). But I mixed on.

Next came the sour cream and flour which was added in five stages, beginning and ending with flour. In the final step beaten eggs whites were folded into the mix. I had just seen an episode of Alton Brown called "A Cake on Every Plate", and I decided to follow his suggestion and weigh my pans to make sure I had equal amounts of batter in each pan.


Kinda cool, huh. But I do need one of those new fangled digital scale. Next the equally weighted pans went into the oven.

Whew, it was a lot of work. This had better be worth it!

Just out of the oven and everything looks good.


After 3 minutes I remove the cakes for their pan and set on a cooling rack. The bottom of the cake looked a little "wet", so I place it on a paper towel to absorb the excess moisture.


A few minutes I removed the paper towel and, YIKES, I found this !!!!!! A huge pile of yucky, sticky, gooey mess. What is going on ????




This is the bottom of the cake after the paper towel was pulled away. Notice the big oval patch in the middle where the cake looks REALLY wet. This is not looking good.


But I couldn't worry about the wetness; I had a wedding to attend. So after the cake had cooled to room temperature, I wrapped the layers up in plastic wrap and went off to the wedding.

The wedding was held at The Peristyle in City Park, New Orleans LA




When I got home that afternoon I unwrapped the cake and took a slice. Yuck!! It was gooey and sticky and looked like someone a dipped the bottom third into melted butter.


I took a taste...

Hummmm... not bad. In fact it was delicious. But I couldn't get past the texture. It was wet and gooey and somewhat slimy. It was like eating squishy worms. I threw it in the trash and frantically baked another cake (more on that later).

But the next morning I found the second layer sitting on the counter just waiting to be unceremoniously pitched into the trash. I felt sorry for the poor guy (any guilty about being a wasteful American), so I decided to bring the goopy thing to a family gathering that day and see what other people thought of it.

Well do you know what???? THEY LOVED IT. You could have knocked me over with a feather. They actually LOVED it. Not everyone mind you, about half the taste testers thought it was too moist, but the other half thought it was the BEST CAKE EVER.

Go figure. Teach me to assume that everyone likes dry hunks of sawdust like me.


If you would like to see the final results of the Yellow Cake Scratch-Off, click here. I could just tell you who the winner was, but that would spoil the surprise.

Downy Yellow Cake

The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #4

Scared of baking a cake from scratch? Well then, this is the cake for you!!!

No whipping of egg whites.

No creaming of butter and sugar.

Everything goes into one big bowl and you mix. Nothing could be easier. And it taste pretty good too.


Doesn't the batter look lovely? So thick, so creamy. Why bake, just eat it raw!



So like I mentioned in a few other posts, some scratch bakers from Cake Central have gotten together to test/rate/critique 14 popular yellow cake recipes. The Downy Yellow Cake is the fourth recipe from the list that I have tried.

Here is the original recipe that was a part of the Cake Central challenge:

All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake

6 large egg yolks
1 cup milk, divided (1/4 cup and 3/4 cup)
2-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
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3 cups sifted cake flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
--
12 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, cubed, room temperature (Note: cube the butter while it is still cold)


Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two 8" round pans.

2. In a bowl combine egg yolks, 1/4 cup milk, vanilla. Whisk until combined.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt). Blend with a whisk (or low speed of your mixer).

4. Add butter and remaining 3/4 cup milk to the dry ingredients. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and mix for 2 minutes. This will aerate and develop the gluten in the flour. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.

5. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, scraping down the sides and beating 20 seconds after each addition. Make sure each egg mixture batch is fully incorporate before adding the next batch.

6. Divide the batter between prepared pans and smooth the surface with spatula.

7. Bake 25-30 minutes or until just a few crumbs cling to a wooden toothpick tester. DO NO OVERBAKE or the cake will dry out. Remove from oven just as the cake starts to pull away from the side of the pan.


In the final analysis the Downy cake was a little on the dry side (I may have baked it too long), but man was it easy to mix. Almost as easy as a box mix. I think I will play with the recipe (maybe add some sour cream, and more extract) to punch up the flavor and moisture content. Wish me luck.

Magnolia's Vanilla Birthday Cake

The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #2

I just baked up my second test for Cake Central’s June “Scratch-Off” which features 14 different scratch “Yellow Cake” recipes. This time I selected the Not So Lemon Magnolia Cake. I have an aversion to all things lemon flavored so I subbed the lemon juice with milk and the lemon zest with vanilla extract. This subbed out version of the Magnolia Lemon Cake is also Magnolia’s Vanilla Cake.


The creaming…

The final 1/3 of flour being mixed in by hand…

The scoop. Man was this batter thick, and sweet, and oh so yummy…

Here is a dissected cupcake, showing all of it beautiful crumb...

Just so you know, it tasted as good as it looks. Definitely a 9 out of 10 on the score board.

The Great Scratch Off - June 2009 - Yellow Cake

One of my favorite web sites CAKE CENTRAL is having "The Great Scratch-Off" baking event. Every month a different category of scratch cake is chosen and several recipes are selected for testing. Each participant bakes one or more of the entries and then submits their results/opinions/ratings. At the end of the month the results are tabulated and a winner is announced.

The June 2009 Cake Central Scratch-Off Category is (ta da) YELLOW CAKE .

Not very exciting I know, but where would the world be without Yellow Cake?

14 different yellow cake recipes were submitted for testing. The contenders are:

Great American Cakes by Barbara Kafka
Lita's Yellow Cake Recipe
Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow Cake Recipe
Not So Lemon Lemon Cake from Magnolia Bakery
Paula Deen's 1234 cake
Whimsical Bakehouse Gold Cake
All-Purpose Buttery Yellow Cake from America's Test Kitchen
Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from Sky High
White on White Buttermilk Cake
The All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake
Cakeman Raven's Modified Red Velvet
Doubleday White Wedding Cake
Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake
Toba Garett's Ultimate Yellow Cake


To see all the recipes click here. The recipes are on the 9th post of page 3.

Each cake is to be critiqued on texture, moistness, and flavor.

My first test was Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake.

Texture: The cake had a fine crumb. It was tender but not crumbly. The mouth feel was dense, almost velvety. It held together nicely when cut, so it would probably be a good cake to carve.



Moistness: Very moist, but not wet or gooey tasting. Top and bottom of the freshly baked cakes were sticky, but the sides were crunchy. The cake was cut on the second day after baking. On the third day I brought the leftovers (individual slices that had been stored under a cake dome) to work and everyone commented positively on the moistness and flavor of the cake.


Flavor: A little lacking in depth, but I paired it with chocolate frosting which made the cake perfect. I think the cake needs more vanilla and also some butter extract (especially since it uses shortening instead of butter).

Ease of preparation: Medium. Creaming of fats, and whipping of egg whites.

Cost: Average. I used supermarket brands of flour, vanilla and shortening.

Other comments: The top domed during baking and then sank to near flat after removing from the oven. I over baked it (oops) to the point where the sides pulled away from the pan and no crumbs came out on the toothpick. I removed the cakes from the pans after three minutes of cooling and after an hour I wrapped in plastic wrap for overnight storage on the counter. I frosted the next morning and served the cake late in the afternoon. Everyone thought the cake tasted great, but a few cake aficionados remarked that most of the flavor excitement came from the frosting.


Overall Rating: 8 out of 10. I liked the cake and plan to bake it again, but next time I'll add more vanilla and include butter extract.


At the end of the month, I will post the results of The Great Scratch-Off June 2009 - Yellow Cakes. Till then here is another look at the cake....