I made Rose’s Sour cream butter cake and I was blown away by the texture and taste. I tried making a larger batch ( for a 6 ‘’ 9’’  12’’ squares) of the recipe but the out come wasn’t as expected. It turned out very dense, chewy and dry. I would love to know how I can make larger cakes using this recipe. I tried to use the formular for butter cakes in the cake bible but the base formular for yellow butter cakes does not have sour cream and it also does not have baking soda in it. Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

This sounds very much like a leavening issue.  Rose has a very detailed section on leavening increases and decreases in The Cake Bible and uses the term “the rose factor”.  She has a chart in the book…unfortunately i lent my book to a friend, otherwise I would provide the page number.  This may take a bit of math, but im certain it will clear up your problem.  Hope this helps!!!!  its invaluable!

Thanks pastryprince, I have a copy of the cake bible and I tried to use the master chart but it was a little confusing because it only mentioned baking powder amounts and the base formular for butter cakes calls for milk. The recipe for sour cream butter cake calls for 1/2tsp of baking soda and 1/2tsp of baking powder and instead of milk it calls for sour cream. Here’s the recipe

2.5oz yolks
5.5oz sour cream
11/2tsp vanilla extract
7oz cake flour
7oz granulated sugar
1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
6oz unsalted butter

I am a baking novice. But I am trying.

Is cake flour the same as all purpose? My grocery stores self rising and all purpose but not specifically cake flour? Which is it?

Also, why are my cupcakes pulling away from the sides of my tin after taking it out of the oven? For 3 minutes they are beautiful but after that, poof, they are deflated.

I’m not sure if you have TCB but if you do read pgs 427-428 and 471. In a nutshell: cake flour has less protein that all purpose flour. Cake flour gives your cakes a better texture and crumb and makes it tender. Self rising flour has baking powder and salt added to it already. For best results use the flour specified in the recipe. If you absolutely cannot get cake flour you can use bleached all purpose flour instead but the end result will be slightly different from what the original recipe intended it to be.

B/S BETSY:
  Hello Betsy. Sorry to learn of your baking mishap. Member Rozanne posted sound suggestions to you. Cake flour is a weak flour
& it is best suited for cakes. However, you can subst. PASTRY flour for cakes as well as GOLD MEDAL or PILLSBURY All~purpose BLEACHED flour.  Bleached flour as Rozanne suggested is best for butter style cakes.
Betsy by using A/P flour it is then best you reduce the the amount by about 1 1/2 to 2 TBLS per cup of A/p flour.

  Betsy, If you wish help with your baking mishap you must post the recipe & it’s directions as well as if you are weighing your ingredients. And if you sub’t. any of the ingredients.

  Have a nice day Betsy.

  ~FRESHKID.

Jaypeg, did your 6” and 9” squares turn out badly?  They are not so different from a 9” round- the smaller cake should have domed a little but otherwise been fine, and the 9” square should have been Ok or maybe just a tad sunken in the center.  Did you try to bake them in deeper layers, or change mixing times, oven temp, or flour?

For any size layer, don’t increase the depth (no 3” pans). 

For the 12”, it gets tricky.  Definitely use a heat core or Patrincia’s trick of a flower nail in the center to help conduct heat.  To get the same mellowness of flavor as in the regular recipe, you will need to increase baking soda proportionately along with the rest of the recipe, so that the sour cream is neutralized to the same extent.  However, to strengthen the structure enough to hold up across a larger pan, you will need to reduce the baking powder. 

So the calculation for two 12” layers needs to go something like this: 
1. Increase baking soda proportionately with the recipe (for example, if you are multiplying the recipe by 3.5x, which looks about right, use 3.5x the baking soda, or 1.75 tsp)
2. Find the baking powder equivalent of that much baking soda (in this example, 1.75 tsp baking soda has equivalent leavening to 7 tsp of baking powder- multiply soda by 4)
3. Check the charts in the back of the book to see what the correct amount of baking powder is for your 12” pan.  According to the recipe on p. 484-5, it is 7.75 tsp.  Or, you can multiply the rose factor of 7 by the baking powder level of 3 (1.125 tsp) to get 7.8 tsp (explained on p.489). 
4. Your pans are square, and so may need slightly less leavening because of the additional space in the corners.  Perhaps round down to 7 tsp. 

7 tsp is the exact amount of leavening provided by your baking soda, so you could try just eliminating the baking powder all together in a 3.5x recipe of the sour cream butter cake.  This would appear to be the largest cake that can be made from this recipe, because any larger and the required amount of baking soda to neutralize the sour cream would over-leaven the cake.  I am not sure if the 1/2 tsp reduction is the right amount to compensate for the corners in a square pan, it is possible that the cake will still be a little over-leavened even without any baking powder. 

Good Luck!

Editing to say, oops, I just noticed the dates on Jaypeg’s post.  Oh well, maybe it will help someone, somewhere…

Thanks Rozanne and Freshkid~

Just made a batch of all american choc cupcakes from TCB (I now know what that stands for…Yea…making progress). They came out gorgeous, flakey and did not deflate. I used A/P flour but deceased it as you suggested by 2T/cup of flour. From someone else’s post earlier they suggested then adding 1 T of additional baking power/cup as a substitution. Did that too. I love them, they are perfect.

Maybe someday I can give advise instead of just take…thank you both so much.

Cheers,
BSB

I’m glad they turned out well. Happy baking! 

Bake Sale Betsy - 08 May 2009 08:59 AM

My grocery stores self rising and all purpose but not specifically cake flour? Which is it?

Your grocery store likely carries it, but it’s not in a large bag like the other types of flour.  The only brand I’ve ever seen is “Swan’s Down” and it’s in a red box, not much bigger than a box of pancake mix.  It will be stored near the regular flour.

CHARLES T:
  Good afternoon to you. There is another cake flour brand as well Charles. It is “PILLSBURY SOFTASILK” Both brands are Nationwide & are great quality. They come in 2, pound boxes. I just bought the Pillsbury box at WALMART’S super duper store for $2.44. About 12, months ago I was buying this flour for $1.84 a box. Who sezzz that inflation is very low. Yeh right!!!. I thought you would like to know this information.
  Good luck to you Charles & enjoy the rest of the day.

  ~FRESHKID.

I get softasilk at Wal-Mart too… the price has gone up a bit in the last year, but it’s still less than $2.50 a box.

~FRESHKID - 09 May 2009 02:14 PM

There is another cake flour brand as well

What I find interesting is that cake flour is marketed so differently from other types of flour.  The container quantities are small, they’re in a box, and the grocery store tends to keep a limited supply.  Clearly, not many people bake cakes from scratch.

King Arthur sells a 3 lb bag on their website, but I’ve never seen it in stores.

Hmmm very interesting. We don’t get them in boxes here (Toronto). They are in the regular sized bags (2kg) like AP flour.