Not only did we have to use the original “quatre quarts” recipe, we were required to cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon, by hand. When I was in culinary school, our first lesson in the “cakes” section was the basic pound cake. Cake Batter – Creaming vs Reverse Creaming It’s called “quatre-quarts” (four-fourths) by the French. Pound cake got it’s name based on the original formula of 1 pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Pound cake is a great tool for our purposes precisely because it’s a simple recipe with just 4 ingredients.
We’ll work with a very basic pound cake as our test recipe for the “Cake Batter” classes. We must make adjustments thoughtfully to keep the recipe in balance. But first we’ll look at two cake batter mixing methods.Ī baker can’t just haphazardly change around the ingredients in a recipe and expect a good outcome. We’ll look at the role each ingredient plays in the batter. Start with a base recipe, then tweak the ingredients and/or techniques to get a cake more to your own taste. This is how you can perfect your own recipes. Over the course of the series we’ll test how changes to cake batter mixing technique and ingredients can alter a cake’s taste and texture. This is the first in a series of 7 “Cake Batter” classes.
