Hi! I’m new to making cakes. Recently I had read quite a few cake recipe books and a few questions kept lingering in my mind after the reading. Here are a few:
a) Why some cake recipes need to fold in the dry ingredients into the fluffy egg batter where else other recipes just need to mix in the flour into a well mixed mixture of sugar and eggs ( the egg batter was not beaten to a fluffy stage)? What are the reasons behind these two methods?
b) What is the difference between i) beating whole eggs until fluffy and ii) just beating egg yolks and add in cake flour or self raising flour and followed by folding in fluffy egg whites into the cake batter?
c) Why some recipes need to blend eggs and melted butter until the fluffy stage?

Will very much appreciate it if anyone is able to clear my doubts! Thanks!

Hi

The difference in the preparation for various batters all boils down to the type of cake you would prefer. For light and fluffy sponge cakes. You would need to beat eggs and sugar until they reach the ‘ribbon stage’ or as you have said, fluffly stage in order to incorporate as many air bubbles into the batter as possible. These air bubbles expand during baking which causes they cakes to rise while baking. You need to fold in the dry ingredients so as you would not destroy all the air bubbles which is essential for the rise of the cake while it’s baking. Because the structure of such cakes depends more on the proteins of the egg foam rather than the flour, it has such soft and fluffy texture which a butter cake does not have.

Different mixing methods will give you different types of cakes, it just depends on what type of cake you prefer, something light or something dense.

For b, both are sponge cakes recipes, just that you may get different results. It’s just back to how you want your cake to be

For C, it also the same. Recipes are made most of the time based on the taste and preference of the creator. Her/his taste and preference will decide the mixing method. You can go read up about different type of mixing methods and different types of cakes