Types of cakes and how their ingredients balance

24 min

Let's begin

A cake is at the centre of many celebrations in Rwanda, from birthdays and graduations to weddings, and small bakeries in every town sell cupcakes, sponge cakes and loaf cakes every day. All of these are made from the same few ingredients: flour, fat, sugar, eggs, a raising agent and a liquid. What makes a crumbly rock cake different from a soft sponge or a moist carrot cake is the proportion of those ingredients and the method used to mix them. In Senior 1 you learned what each baking ingredient does; this lesson shows how they balance in a cake, and how cakes are classified.

Definition

Cake: a sweet baked food made from a batter of flour, sugar, eggs and usually fat, made light by air and raising agents.

Batter: a mixture of flour and liquid soft enough to pour or drop from a spoon.

Plain cake: a cake in which the fat is less than half the mass of the flour, usually made by rubbing in. Rich cake: a cake in which the fat is half the mass of the flour or more, usually made by creaming.

Sponge: a light cake made by whisking eggs and sugar, with little or no fat.

Ingredients in balance

A cake must be strong enough to hold its shape yet tender enough to melt in the mouth. The ingredients pull in two directions:

Builders (give structure)	Tenderisers (soften)	Moisteners
flour: its proteins and starch set in the oven; eggs: their proteins set when heated	fat: coats the flour so less gluten forms; sugar: softens the crumb and keeps it moist	eggs, milk, water, oil, grated carrot or fruit

Too many builders give a tough, dry cake; too many tenderisers give a cake that collapses. That is why cake recipes are written in careful proportions, and why ingredients must be weighed, not guessed. A classic example is the pound cake, made with equal masses of flour, butter, sugar and eggs: a ratio of 1 : 1 : 1 : 1.

Classifying cakes

Worked example

Worked example 1: plain or rich? Classify each recipe by the ratio of fat to flour, and name the likely method.

Recipe A: 225 g flour, 100 g margarine. $\frac{100}{225} \approx 0.44$ , less than $\frac{1}{2}$ : a plain cake, made by rubbing in (e.g. rock cakes).
Recipe B: 175 g flour, 175 g butter. $\frac{175}{175} = 1$ , more than $\frac{1}{2}$ : a rich cake, made by creaming (e.g. a Victoria sandwich).
Recipe C: 3 eggs, 75 g sugar, 75 g flour, no fat: a fatless sponge, made by whisking (e.g. a Swiss roll).

Worked example

Worked example 2: the egg-weight method. A traditional Victoria sandwich uses equal masses of eggs (weighed in their shells), fat, sugar and self-raising flour. Three eggs weigh 186 g in their shells. What should the other ingredients weigh, and what is the total mass of the mixture?

Fat = sugar = flour = 186 g each.
Total: $4 \times 186 = 744$ g, less the shells (about 10% of the egg mass, roughly 19 g), so about 725 g of batter.
This is enough for two 18 cm sandwich tins. Weighing the eggs first adjusts the recipe for small or large eggs.

Warning

Common mistake: measuring by guess. A heaped spoon of baking powder instead of a level one, or a "cup" of flour pressed down hard, can upset the balance and make a cake rise and then sink, or come out heavy. Use scales for flour, fat and sugar, and level measuring spoons for raising agents.

Tip

Memory hook: "No fat, whisk it; little fat, rub it; lots of fat, cream it; melted fat, stir it."

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Practice

Define a plain cake, a rich cake and a sponge.
Name two "builder" and two "tenderiser" ingredients in a cake, and say what each does.
Why must cake ingredients be weighed?
A recipe has 300 g flour and 125 g fat. Is it plain or rich? Show the ratio.
Four eggs weigh 236 g in their shells. Using the egg-weight method, what mass of butter, sugar and flour is needed for a Victoria sandwich?
Which method would you use for (a) a Swiss roll, (b) a carrot cake made with oil, (c) rock cakes? Explain each.
A baker replaces half the fat in a rich cake recipe with extra flour to "make it healthier". Predict the effect on the cake, and suggest a better way to reduce fat and sugar.

Show answersHide answers

Plain cake: fat less than half the mass of the flour, usually rubbed in. Rich cake: fat half the mass of the flour or more, usually creamed. Sponge: a light cake of whisked eggs and sugar with little or no fat.
Builders: flour (proteins and starch set and hold the shape) and eggs (proteins set when heated). Tenderisers: fat (coats flour, less gluten, softer crumb) and sugar (softens the crumb, keeps it moist).
The ingredients must stay in balance; too much of a builder makes the cake tough and dry, too much of a tenderiser or raising agent makes it collapse.
$\frac{125}{300} \approx 0.42$ , less than $\frac{1}{2}$ : a plain cake.
236 g each of butter, sugar and self-raising flour.
(a) Whisking: there is no fat, and air whisked into the eggs makes it rise. (b) Oil method: the fat is liquid, so it is stirred in with the eggs. (c) Rubbing in: a little solid fat is rubbed into the flour.
With more builders and fewer tenderisers, the cake will be tougher, drier and paler and may not rise as well. Better: choose a plain or oil-based recipe designed for less fat, use grated carrot or mashed banana for moisture, serve smaller slices, and reduce sugar slightly while keeping the recipe's balance.

Sources and credits

Lesson text, Figure 1, table, worked examples and practice: written by Ganzaa.
Photo: Chocolate cake and Victoria sponge, Acabashi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo: Rock bun - T @ The Dials, Andy Li, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

1Ingredients in balance

2Classifying cakes

Ingredients in balance

Classifying cakes