Sugar plays an important role in any cake recipe. Without the inclusion of sugar, a cake would be bland and uninspired in relation to flavor, but did you know that your cake would also be pale in color, squatty and dense? Sugar’s effects on cake are quite diverse. To really get a feel for the importance of sugar in a recipe, I baked cakes with anywhere from no sugar at all to one and a half times the standard sugar weight (2:3 sugar to flour). How does changing sugar volume affect your cake? Read ahead and you may be as surprised as I was by the results.
Sugar is first and foremost a flavor maker, but it has other critical roles in cake baking as well. Here is a list of its known jobs:
Before this baking experiment I believed I had a fairly good understanding of how sugar contributed to a final cake product. Nonetheless, I was very surprised by the outcome of testing. I expected the sugarless cake to be relatively fluffy since sugar would not be present to undermine the structure due to its tenderizing effects. I also believed that the high-sugar cake (150% sugar in relation to the standard) would collapse due to structural modification. The result was quite the opposite.
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I failed to predict the great effect of moisture attraction on leavening. In this experiment, I did not cream sugar with butter, so I did not believe the leavening differences between a sugarless and high-sugar cake would be incredibly noticeable. Instead, the leavening seemed to be the most obvious dissimilarity between cakes. The cake with no sugar was very short and dense while the high-sugar cake was the most light and fluffy. Shocking! It seems that as the sugar holds on to water, it provides a venue for liquid to gas expansion that creates a great deal of rise in the cake.
In addition to the height/leavening differences, it was clear that the no-sugar and low-sugar cakes were quite pale compared to the golden-brown color or the normal and high-sugar volume cakes. This translated to taste as well, with the higher-sugar cakes having much greater depth of flavor than their low-sugar counterparts.
In the above photo, you can see the effects of tenderization, especially between the cake with a normal amount of sugar (100%) and the high-sugar cake (150%). The high sugar cake is fluffy but also crumbly and loose. This cake was so tender it was barely holding itself together. The high-sugar cake, with 150% the weight of sugar in a standard recipe, was quite sweet but it was still amazingly unoffending. The cake with half the sugar was mild but maintained a nice, sweet taste. This goes to show, there is a lot of wiggle room when playing with the sweetness factor in a cake recipe.
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Sugar has a wide variety of properties in a cake but leavening and flavor seem to be the most noticeable factors. While sugar in a standard volume of 2:3 sugar to flour results in moderate sweetness and leavening, you can easily modify your cake by either increasing or reducing the amount of sugar you use. Let me know how much sugar you like to use in your cake recipes.
Summer's love of baking and science, plus a bit of a rebellious spirit, leads to all sorts of crazy experiments in the kitchen and beyond. She also blogs at CakePaperParty.com. Read more about Summer on her bio page.But the one on the left shows streaks – areas of dense, sodden cake. Taking a bite, you'd think it was under-baked – even though it's actually completely baked.
One of my fellow King Arthur Flour test bakers, Frank Tegethoff, recently called me into the test kitchen for show & tell.
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We bakers often do this with one another – Hey, wanna see something interesting? someone will say, pulling a deflated loaf of bread, ultra-flat cookie – or perfectly shaped muffin – out of the oven.
We then gather around for a quick lesson in the particular area of baking science demonstrated by said unsuccessful (or super-successful) baked good.
Frank said, Both of these slices of cake are from the same recipe. Same ingredients; same pan. Same baking time and temperature. Why do you think this one has this pasty middle, and the other one looks fine?
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I considered the question. Preparation method must be the variable. Ummm... something about how you put together the batter? (The girl's a genius!)
Frank explained that's true, but creaming (beating together sugar, butter, and eggs) has to be done slowly; no higher than medium speed.
And once any flour is added, the mixing has to be slower still. Developing the flour's gluten too much means the cake will rise beautifully in the oven – then sink (a little, or a lot) as soon as you pull it out.
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Since you can't be right here in the test kitchen with us, we offer you the next best thing: our toll-free baker's hotline, staffed by test kitchen bakers. Next time your cake collapses, your cookies crumble, or your bread behaves badly, call us: 855-371-BAKE (2253). We're here to help.
PJ Hamel grew up in New England, graduated from Brown University, and was an award-winning Maine journalist (favorite topics: sports and food) before joining King Arthur Flour in 1990. Hired to write the newly launched Baker’s Catalogue, PJ became the small but growing company’s sixth employee. ...
This super-plush yellow cake skips the butter (and the oil!) What exactly is whipped cream cake, and why is it so tender and rich?
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The easiest way to upgrade cake is with a soak. Here's our guide. A little liquid can take your cakes a long way.This is the only guide you will ever need to make delicious, moist, perfect classic pound cake! A comprehensive step by step recipe with all the troubleshooting tips to ensure success!
The perfect pound cake is dense but soft, rich, buttery, and moist, and is easy to make. This extensively tested, foolproof recipe will guide you to make the best pound cakes that you’ve ever made!
Pound cakes first originated in Europe. They’ve been around since as early as the 1700s, and the term traditionally referred to a cake that weighed four pounds. That’s because a classic pound cake consisted of 1 pound of each of the following FOUR ingredients,
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A classic pound cake doesn’t rely on any leavening agents (such as baking powder or baking soda) to give the cake any lift, or any extra liquid to make the cake moist. The result is a dense cake, that is also somewhat dry (especially when over-baked).
As pound cakes have become more popular throughout different parts of the world, different variations of the classic pound cake have emerged, that are lighter and more moist.
Each region (or country) has their own version of a classic pound cake, incorporating different ratios of the main ingredients, and sometimes including extra liquid and baking powder too.
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Start with good ingredients. Well, that’s a given, but it’s especially true with pound cakes. Rather than using generic ingredients, try and use brand name ingredients when possible.
Make sure to get cane sugar because it has a finer grain than other white sugars (if it doesn’t say cane sugar, then it’s probably beet sugar). If you can get your hands on pure cane caster sugar (superfine sugar) that’s even better!
Use GOOD quality butter. Not margarine, not spreadable butter, but classic butter. I prefer to use unsalted butter, but you can use salted butter as well. However, due to the higher water content in salted butter, there’s a higher chance for inconsistent results when using salted butter.
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I prefer to use eggs that are about 1 week old and here’s why. The egg whites in fresh eggs are tighter and thicker whereas in older eggs, the egg whites are thinner and looser. These older eggs mix into the cake batter more easily and readily, resulting in a pound cake that’s lighter in mouthfeel and crumb texture.
Another reason is that fresh eggs are heavier than older eggs – so 8 fresh large eggs would be way heavier than 1 lb, while 8 older large eggs would be closer to 1 lb.
But you can also use cake flour instead. This is lighter, and has less gluten than AP flour. Resulting in pound cake that rises a little more, and has a tender crumb.
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If you choose to go with pastry flour, you can substitute cake flour for AP flour at a 1:1 ratio – BY WEIGHT (not volume).
We add salt to balance the sweetness of the cake. Without salt, the cake can either taste too sweet or a little bland. A little salt goes a long way to improve the flavor of the cake.
Baking powder is a chemical leavener (read more about it in my baking powder vs baking soda article). The acid and base react in the presence of liquid and create CO2, which helps to expand the batter and rise. However, unlike other cakes, pound cakes rely on air and eggs to rise. So it’s inherently a
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