ABaking coffee cake for an early morning meeting. I understand from an earlier thread here that it is practical to make and hold cake batter, but it seems to work against the rising power of the BP. Would it work to leave out the BP until just before baking the cake? Or is it too hard too incorporate fully?

I sense an experiment in my near future.

AI'd be concerned that the batter would be overmixed by the time the baking powder is fully incorporated - or that it may not incorporate fully, but if you try it - let us know how it turns out!

Ait is worth an experiment. However, if I scale everything the night before it is only 10 minutes or so to mix. It will take the oven longer that that to pre-heat.

AYeah, that would probably be what I'd do, pre-measure everything the night before. I've had one too many failed 'experiments' for events that I am serving something (whether it be cake or dinner, etc). I prefer to go the safe route if it's anyone other than just me and the family - and do the trial and error in personal baking first :)

You should be fine mixing everything together and putting the batter in your fridge. Tomorrow just bake as usual. I've done this for 30 plus years with no problems.

Refrigerating (or freezing) batters is common practice in retail/commercial bakeries. There might be some recipes that won't work properly, but I've never had a problem. All my muffin, coffeecake, cake, cookie batters and doughs were mixed in a 30 qt mixer.

All ingredients are incorporated, including leaveners. Batters are poured into tubs and placed in the cooler. The morning baker (usually me) scoops out muffins and pans coffeecakes right from the refrigerated tubs. Oil-based batters are only slightly thicker but butter based batters are quite thick. No matter, just pan and bake immediately.

This method allows bakeries to have a variety of scratch-made products without having to mix and bake small batches. 

AThanks Mimifix. That is helpful info. Spooky but helpful. it makes great sense that baking lends itself to an industrial kind of usefulness and working in catering kitchens we'd use all sorts of chilled and frozen batters and doughs as well as cooking and holding anything under the sun that had to go out the next day.

Baking has this lore of time sensitivity, scaling sensitivity, method sensitivity, precision and on and on but some of my favorite breads and treats have come from wildly over-proofing, under-proofing spacing out the bake time, under baking, wrong ingredient list and misreading lists. Food has a forgiveness to it.

What got me through my practicals in culinary school was always saying to myself, "It's just cooking".

AAnd to you too.

Love this website, I've been wondering for years if its okay to "hold" batter(even if its just for an hour or two)! And now I found this thread

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/make-ahead-coffee-cake

http://www.plainchicken.com/2013/12/overnight-coffee-cake.html

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/make-ahead-sour-cream-coffee-cake/

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/overnight-coffee-cake/