Baking: suggestions to refine recipe

[Katiepie]

So about a month ago, I was looking for the understanding principles to produce a recipe for cake from scratch. In the simple terms through it all I have produced a recipe of my very own, and have already made one adjustment, with little success to make my cake slightly less dense.

Maybe by anyone interested in baking or even someone who has a lot more experience as a baker, can help suggest ideas, that will fine tune this recipe I have thus far.

Ingredients:

2 Cups flour
1 Cup sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/4 Cup cocoa powder

4 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

6 egg yolk
4 ounces canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ounces milk

Directions:

Blend the flour, baking powder, salt, and half cup of sugar together and sift twice.

Blend the milk and the rest of the sugar together. Add the oil, vanilla extract, and egg yolks. Mix thoroughly.

Slowly mix powdered ingredients into liquid ingredients.

Whisk egg whites until slightly bubbly. Add cream of tartar. Whisk until stiff peaks are formed.

Throw egg whites on top of batter, and fold into the mixture until well mixed.

Baking at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a cupcake pan, fill each pocket roughly half way, or an 8 inch round pan fill about halfway.

Baking time for cupcake pan 20 - 25 minutes.
Baking time for 8 inch round 28 - 35 minutes.

So this is my construct in which I so far have tried once, well the first time was with less milk, and then I had to justify more to make the batter less brownie like. At the moment, once the cake is cooled it becomes quite dense, and has more of a consistency of gingerbread, rather than cake. Overall it is a very light chocolate flavor in which you get the subtle notes rather than a heavy in your face chocolate flavor.

If there may be any suggestions on what I can do to make it more of a lighter feel, and more cake like, I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Also if anyone else that may be interested in baking this in itself, feel free to do so, either in current form or when it gets remastered to a proper cake.

[Devlyn]

I love cooking but not baking, measuring things is too finicky for me! Alton Brown  (food God) says that cake mix really is the way to go because they have access to things that we don't  (modified food starches, other things). So I  don't have advice on the recipe, just know that even the pros don't always make things from scratch. BTW, you can send samples to me for testing. 

Hugs, Devlyn

[sarah1972]

There are usually three possibilities for this to happen:
1. the ratio of the ingredients is off
2. The dough / batter is not mixed well
3. the baking time / temperature is not matching.

Here would be a similar recipe, maybe this helps:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/71003/coconut-cream-pound-cake/?internalSource=hn_carousel%2002_Coconut%20Cream%20Pound%20Cake&referringId=1377&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&referringPosition=carousel%2002


While cake mix is an option, they do have access to ingredients usual people do not have and frankly: those are ingredients you do not want in your cake at all. In order to ensure a good result, they add so much chemicals...

My wife for example makes some outstanding sourdough bread. No chemicals, all organic ingredients, hand made sourdough and it holds forever. Any store bought bread we had usually collects mold after a week even though they have all the chemicals and preservatives. Her bread can sit on the counter for 3 weeks and the only thing happening is that it gets dry, so the natural preservative of sourdough is much better than any chemical...

Poke around on allrecipies - they have a lot of good options.

And: don't give up. It does take a lot of practice and trying!

[KarynMcD]

Try cake flour instead of All-Purpose.

Try blending the egg yolks and all the sugar first, then blend in the oil, then the rest of the liquid ingredients.

Throw egg whites on top of batter, and fold into the mixture until well mixed.

That's not a proper folding technique.
Try a third at a time. and you don't won't it well mixed, just blended.

cocoa powder

Are you using dutch processed or regular. You might need to add some baking soda in addition to the baking powder if using regular.

[Dena]

I do bread instead of cake but each ingredient has a function and you need to review each ingredient to determine what it does in the recipe. My issues are with yeast as temperature and quantity will greatly alter the loaf. To little results in an undersize loaf but the bread has a good texture. To much and the bread over inflates then collapses resulting in an ugly looking loaf. The bread I make doesn't use eggs but instead I need bread flour for the toughness to hold the gas in while rising. For your cake, your main controls would be the eggs and rising agents. You might try an additional egg instead of extra fluid then adjust the cream of tartar. By the way, make sure the cream of tartar is fresh because as it ages, it will lose it's power to preform.

[DawnOday]

Baking you measure everything or the chances of failure improve markedly. I eyeball my chocolate chip cookies because I have been making them forever.  First thing first. Cake requires cake flour to keep cakes soft. There is less gluten than GP flour. GP is good for coffee cakes, muffins and pizza . For better pizza dough you need to add gluten. The cake flour is softer and less dense for a finer crumb. Also use a tablespoon of vinegar to activate the baking soda. This also works for pancakes for light fluffy flapjacks if you don't have buttermilk..

[Katiepie]

Once I do eventually get this cake crafted just right. I just may overnight you a cake Devlyn.

Sarah
My radio's could be off by a decent margin, as I do not have a food scale to make sure my ratios are fully balanced, so I may need to invest with that. For that matter, my baking adventure in crafting my own recipe was mainly on a see-if-I-can method, so it's not too big of a deal if it doesn't work out.
I have searched a few different baking sites and recipe sites to give myself an idea, along with figuring out the flour/sugar ratios, sugar/liquid ratios and so on. So I'm in a basic scientific method for this, which with more testing and other help to do so.
I have grabbed a recipe from allrecipes, for a Chinese sponge cake (gai don go), and which I do bake on a more frequent basis, and have more experience with. Maybe I can instead work with that base and hand-craft?

Karyn
I have had that suggestion by a co-worker, so I could try it out. Cake flour is a finer texture than all purpose, and made with different grain, which is more meant as a cake flour base, so I could attempt it as such and gather information with that.

With the folding method, it seemed the easiest for my lack of kitchen space for the moment, but nonetheless, that is only an excuse. Thank you.

And I currently have an organic regular cocoa powder.

Dena
Thank you, and much appreciated. I did make sure to toss the old stuff I had laying around from long ago, and have everything fresh for my baking needs as of close to the time I started baking again.

And much appreciated Dawn.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and expertise in the matter. I may get a chance sometime this month to try again, otherwise I may not have time to bake up until sometime August. I will keep this going for as lo g as this recipe needs tuning, and even so, I could keep it up for future recipes and/or talk on baking.