- I have a question for all the people on here that bake from scratch. How do you start a cake recipe from scratch. I don't want your recipe I just want some help a boost if you will I just need a little help.
Hi, many scratch recipes on this site. I also google any recipe i want and need. Just go by the recipe and practice , practice, practice. Just google scratch white cake recipe, chocolate, lemon , strawberry, etc. This will help you more than anything. Be sure you have nice cake pans and do exactly what the recipe says.
AYou could google bakers ratios to get an idea of how different (%) ingredients relate to flour. Then read up on cake ingredients to understand how they function and react with other ingredients. This will help you with stuff like whether to use baking powder vs soda. From there you determine what kind of cake you're going for. For example, a high-ratio cake is one where the weight of sugar is equal to or exceeds the weight of flour. So say you decide on 7oz cake flour (if you've read up on your ingredients you'll find that cake flour a.k.a high ratio flour does well in this application because of its inherent properties), you sugar would be at least 7 oz (in bakers ratio, your sugar is 100%-- flour is the basis for determining bakers ratios, so 7 oz flour is 100%. If you decided on 9 oz of sugar, your sugar would be about 114%) Typically with high ratio cakes your sugar can be up to an upper limit of I believe 140% before you start to tread shaky ground.
Now you know how much sugar you need, your liquid needs to be about equal the amount of sugar (you need sufficient liquid to dissolve the sugar), so for 9 oz of sugar, I'd probably do 4oz of milk and 3 eggs (~ 5oz). Are you making a yellow cake? Then you'd be looking at egg yolks. White cake? Egg whites. Leavening, typically, 1 tsp of baking powder per cup of flour for this recipe I would start with 2 tsp baking powder.
After you have your recipe on paper, you can compare it to other successful scratch recipes you've tried, to tweak your numbers if you like.
Next comes the recipe testing. Baking-tweaking-baking-tweaking. Large coarse crumb with big fat tunnels in the cake? I probably need to reduce my baking powder. Overly sugary sticky top? Maybe I should cut back on sugar. Wet soggy center, I'll have to reduce the liquid and/or modify my baking temperature.
You'll notice that most of my measurements are in weights, so you'll need a scale. Volumetric measurements won't cut it.
As you can imagine, this takes a lot of time and energy and resources. But once you get it, it's pretty much easy from there. Just yesterday I was working on an Italian Cream cake recipe and stumbled on a few slight modifications that yielded THE BEST white cake I have ever had. Fun stuff.
You could google bakers ratios to get an idea of how different (%) ingredients relate to flour. Then read up on cake ingredients to understand how they function and react with other ingredients. This will help you with stuff like whether to use baking powder vs soda. From there you determine what kind of cake you're going for. For example, a high-ratio cake is one where the weight of sugar is equal to or exceeds the weight of flour. So say you decide on 7oz cake flour (if you've read up on your ingredients you'll find that cake flour a.k.a high ratio flour does well in this application because of its inherent properties), you sugar would be at least 7 oz (in bakers ratio, your sugar is 100%-- flour is the basis for determining bakers ratios, so 7 oz flour is 100%. If you decided on 9 oz of sugar, your sugar would be about 114%) Typically with high ratio cakes your sugar can be up to an upper limit of I believe 140% before you start to tread shaky ground.
Now you know how much sugar you need, your liquid needs to be about equal the amount of sugar (you need sufficient liquid to dissolve the sugar), so for 9 oz of sugar, I'd probably do 4oz of milk and 3 eggs (~ 5oz). Are you making a yellow cake? Then you'd be looking at egg yolks. White cake? Egg whites. Leavening, typically, 1 tsp of baking powder per cup of flour for this recipe I would start with 2 tsp baking powder.
After you have your recipe on paper, you can compare it to other successful scratch recipes you've tried, to tweak your numbers if you like.
Next comes the recipe testing. Baking-tweaking-baking-tweaking. Large coarse crumb with big fat tunnels in the cake? I probably need to reduce my baking powder. Overly sugary sticky top? Maybe I should cut back on sugar. Wet soggy center, I'll have to reduce the liquid and/or modify my baking temperature.
You'll notice that most of my measurements are in weights, so you'll need a scale. Volumetric measurements won't cut it.
As you can imagine, this takes a lot of time and energy and resources. But once you get it, it's pretty much easy from there. Just yesterday I was working on an Italian Cream cake recipe and stumbled on a few slight modifications that yielded THE BEST white cake I have ever had. Fun stuff.
Great post!
And this makes my 1,400th post on CC!! I need to get a life. 
Ahttp://pinterest.com/pin/9148005466350846/ Also that might be helpful with the info that vcgea gave you. (Sorry I don't know how to share pics that aren't cake on here other than linking to pinterest. )
Nothing taste better than a good scratch cake. The principle for most of them is the same: Start with mixing the butter, add the sugar and mix until soft and fluffy, add the eggs one by one (do not ever beat, just incorporate) and than add your dry and liquid ingredients alternating, finishing with dry.
The important thing here is to not over mix. Mixer on low, and keep adding without waiting to fully incorporate. As soon as you add your last dry ingredients, switch your mixer off and finish mixing by hand.
If you follow these principles, you will never go wrong. I wish you all the best.
My recipes start by creaming the butter. I don't use any oil based cakes. I used boxed until I found scratch recipes that worked. It was a lot of trial and error but I don't regret it one bit. The cakes taste SO much better.
This turned out awesome!! I used blueberries but I think I will experiment with fresh peaches. It reminds me of a cake my grandma made.Thank you very much
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%