hi all

I just made this for a work party, and the cake is so crumbly!!
Has anyone run into this or perhaps I did something wrong?
I usually make the cream yellow cake to great results!

-Miriam

Hi, NYC!

Did you weigh your ingredients?  If you measured them, too much flour could have gotten in.  I’ve made this before with no crubliness.  Unless it’s overcooked, that’s the only thing I can think of.

Thanks for the info on the cream yellow cake—I’ll have to look that one up!

—ak

hi!

I actually did weighh them, which baffles me, I usually just do measuring cups.
For now, I think I"ll stick to the cream based yellow cake, it’s always been fabulous!
best
Miriam

My pleasure!  More experienced bakers here might have additional thoughts for you.  Another fabulous yellow cake (my fave so far) is the Golden Luxury Butter Cake!

I just had a similar experience with the yellow cake - I measured carefully, next time I’ll weigh it too.
The cake was totally crumbly and dry. I tried to cut one of the cake to build a layer and despite an even cut, the upper half just fell apart when I went to
lift it up. Sigh. Huge cake fail - now I need to figure out why that happened. ;(

nycbeginner - 15 April 2011 12:32 PM

cake is so crumbly!!

My experience, too.  The last one was so crumbly that I was a bit embarrassed.  I have a hypothesis that my mixer beater blade, which is a SideSwipe with silicon fingers, might be overly effective in mixing and might be overmixing the batter.  Next time I plan on shortening the mixing time and see what happens.

Maybe using bleached AP flour would work better than cake flour for this particular cake?

Considering that most here appear to be mystified by reported crumbliness, I’m thinking this is akin to asking someone why they think the glass is half empty when it’s clear that it’s half full.  In other words, everyone is seeing the same cake, but some call it tender, others say that it’s crumbly.  A cake that falls apart easily under the action of our teeth also tends to fall apart easily with any physical stress, such as slicing or handling, producing crumbs.

Hi, CharlesT!

Yes, terminology can be confusing.  Let’s all hit our Socrates and define terms!

tender = crumbly = it breaks easily

I used ‘tender’ because that’s the word Rose uses, so when they see it elsewhere in the book “x contributes tenderness” or “this cake is very tender BUT” or “certain cakes become very tender after syruping”

—ak

I agree with Charles, Rose’s trademark butter cake texture is a very tender, velvet texture.  She feels the tenderness is highly desireable in producing a cake that is the best texture for eating.  This is also her priority in frostings, some of which can be a little on the soft side-perfect for eating but then they require temperature adjustments for piping.  A small decrease in tenderness/crumbliness can be achieved by increasing beating times a bit, but if you need to prioritize ease of serving over a tender texture for eating, you may want to head in a different direction.  Sometimes a sharp, serrated knife can help minimize crumbliness as well. 

For a cake that slices neatly I would probably choose pound cake, golden butter cream cake, golden luxury cake, or any sponge cake cut with a sharp serrated knife (genoise, chiffon, biscuit). 

I must admit that I haven’t liked the butter cakes as much when made with bleached AP instead of cake flour.  They develop a fudginess that seems sticky or gummy to me.

They develop a fudginess that seems sticky or gummy to me.

I actually think this is a good description.  To me the ‘gummy’ seems like moistness and toothsomeness, but you could also describe it as a slight gumminess.  The fudginess is a nice choice, too—of course, not to the fudginess of chocolate, but again, slightly toothsome.  Think of a really fluffy bread that’s sweet—it’s not as ‘gummy’ as bread is, of course, but it’s a bit like that.  Good word finds, Julie.  Like I said, our language needs a lot more words to describe baking textures accurately!!!