Claire Teaches You Cake Baking (Lesson 1) _ Baking School _ Bon Appétit

**The Art of Cake Making: A Step-by-Step Guide**

Whipping eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment until they become very light and foamy is an essential step in making cake. The mixture should be emulsified in oil, adding it slowly to prevent overwhelming the egg mixture. Next, dry ingredients are added, alternating with wet ingredients, including carrots, starting and ending with dry ingredients. The mixture is then folded in walnuts divided into pans, and baked in the oven.

**Doneness Indicators: What to Look For**

There are several indicators that can be used to determine if a cake is ready to come out of the oven. Three examples include cakes at various stages of baking - one that's perfectly done, another that's underdone, and one that's overdone. The first example shows a yellow cake that's perfectly done, with a nice even golden color on all surfaces, including the center. A cake tester inserted into the very center comes out clean, indicating that the cake is tender and fully baked.

The second example demonstrates an underdone cake, which still has batter clinging to it when the cake tester is inserted. The cake will sink as it cools because the eggs have not fully cooked, and there hasn't been a souffle action. When cut into, the cake will still have raw and cooked batter in it. In contrast, the third example shows an overdone cake that's dark on the surface, hard to the touch, and dry in the interior.

**Removing Layers from Pans**

To remove layers of cake from pans, you need to follow a few steps. The first step is to line your pan properly with parchment paper or a similar material. Next, cut around the sides of the layer with a thin blade or an offset spatula. Invert the rack onto the pan and flip the whole thing over, allowing it to cool slightly. Finally, tap the pan gently on the counter to remove it from the oven, and peel back the parchment paper.

**Tasting and Evaluating Cakes**

There are three types of cakes - yellow cake, white cake, and carrot cake. Each type has its unique characteristics, texture, and flavor profile. The yellow cake is light and tender, with a subtle almond flavor, while the white cake is also light and airy, with a slightly sweeter taste. In contrast, the carrot cake is moist and heavy, with a strong carrot flavor that's balanced by cream cheese frosting.

In terms of flavor, the main goal was not to overwhelm with sugar, but rather to balance out the sweetness with other flavors. The cakes were tested for doneness by inserting a toothpick or cake tester into the center. The yellow cake was perfectly done, while the underdone cake still had batter clinging to it, and the overdone cake was dry and hard.

**The Importance of Cake**

Cake making is an art that requires patience, attention to detail, and practice. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can create beautiful, delicious cakes that are perfect for any occasion. The main takeaway from today's lesson is that cake making is a lot of work, but with dedication and practice, you can achieve wonderful results.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is an irresponsible amount of batter for this bowl size i just want people to know that if chris morocco were here he would be horrified this is all about like you know use the right tool and everything hi everyone i'm claire and this is episode one of ba's baking school we are showing you everything you need to know about layer cakes from the cakes themselves to the fillings to the frostings putting the whole thing together decorating in a five episode series and by the time you watch you should know everything there is to know about how to make a layer cake at home whether it's your very first and you're a novice baker or you're more experienced and just want to get better over the course of the series we're going to be making three specific layer cakes to demonstrate these universal techniques and here are those cakes so here i have our three individual layer cakes a layer cake is a construction of multiple layers of a sponge separated by a filling and then the whole thing is iced and decorated let me break down each of the cakes and how they're different cake number one is our birthday cake it is composed of three layers of classic yellow cake the layers are soaked in a vanilla milk the filling is a whipped chocolate ganache the frosting is chocolate sismering buttercream and the decor is rainbow sprinkles pressed around the sides but if someone made this cake for me on my birthday it would be like it would like cry it would be so touched for our coconut cake here's what we got six layers of white cake coconut milk soak in between the layers coconut caramel outside and on the top we piped italian meringue torched and then toasted coconut on top it might look intimidating but you really can make this at home so um you just have to watch all five episodes just get comfortable our third cake is our carrot cake it's enormous we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts the filling is very thin layers of pineapple vanilla compote then in between the layers and around the sides and top classic cream cheese frosting the decorations are candied carrot ribbons they're not supposed to be this big i made a mistake and then we couldn't reverse we couldn't reshoot it i did some bad math sorry episode one is all about the cakes themselves how to mix the batters the different recipes all you need to know about the cakes that go inside of our final compose layer cakes so to make the layers for any kind of layer cake there are essential tools that you must have a large whisk heat proof spatula liquid measuring cups dry measures mixing bowls at least two light-colored identical cake pans these are nine inch parchment paper and scissors for cutting out rounds non-stick cooking spray and a stand mixer i really don't recommend making a layer cake by hand sand mixer will make it so much easier so the first thing you have to do always before starting to build your batter is line your cake pans and that's because a layer of parchment on the bottom ensures that your cake releases when you turn it out i'm just tracing around the very bottom of the pan with a pen you can use a sharpie i'm going to trace the second one right next to it and now i have the outline of the pan because this one doesn't actually fit in the bottom of this pan because they're not the same size these two fit nicely in the bottom i'm gonna use a little bit of non-stick cooking spray to coat the pans and now i line the parchment in the bottom sometimes i like to fold it in half like this so that helps to eliminate air bubbles as i place the parchment in the pan another light coating of spray on the parchment itself to really ensure that the cakes don't stick i dust everything with a layer of flour now i tap the flour while rotating the pan all the way around so that it coats not only the bottom but the sides any cake that you bake in here will slide right out if you were to skip this step it could lead to disastrous consequences it's time to find out what would happen if we didn't prep our baking pan this is just a batch of our regular yellow cake so i'm going to scrape in no parchment no butter no flour not even a spray of pam so i'll bake this for the regular time about a half an hour and we'll see what happens okay here is that cake layer that's cooled a little a little worried there's no parchment so there's nothing that's creating any kind of release on the bottom it's pretty stuck all right this guy it has to come out in pieces unfortunately it's like an arrested oven like and that's why you always prep the pan disaster otherwise so now that the pans are prepped we're ready to move on to the batter i'm going to show you three distinct cake recipes using three distinct methods for mixing each of our three cakes has a different texture and that's because of the way the different ingredients are mixed together that produces different amounts of gluten so i'm going to show you what gluten looks like gluten is produced when the proteins in wheat flour interact with water different amounts of gluten development affects the overall texture when water comes into contact with wheat flour two proteins gluten and gliadin produce what's called gluten and it's these long stretchy strands that give bread dough for instance their chewy texture the more i mix this the more structure i'm giving it that's what we wanted bread dough not what we want in cake batter here i have two examples of baked goods with different amounts of gluten development so i can show you what the final result is first i have it's really like a muffin i mean i'm not let's be honest a muffin is cake anyone that doesn't know that kind of i don't like muffins i'd just rather eat cake so this is an example of lower gluten development the texture is light and fluffy unlike cake the object when you're making bread is often to develop as much gluten as possible when i press down and it springs back up that's because of all that gluten super springy very chewy i can see little flecks of the whole grain in it by changing around the order and method of mixing together the batter we can change the amount of gluten development there's more than one way to bake a cake so i'm going to show you the three different mixing methods for each of our three layer cakes cake number one is our birthday cake very classic yellow cake for our coconut cake we got six layers of white cake our third cake is our carrot cake we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts these are the three different cakes that we're going to make we're ready to start building our first classic yellow cake and we're going to use the traditional method for bringing the cake together which starts with creaming the butter and sugar and this is going to result in a nice fluffy cake with sort of a beautiful domed lid and a very nice texture here all the ingredients you need to make classic yellow cake using the traditional creaming method granulated sugar unsalted butter large eggs buttermilk vegetable oil vanilla extract baking powder kosher salt baking soda and cake flour okay so the first thing i want to do is combine all my dry ingredients but i am using a whisk to combine dry and this is also going to eliminate any lumps that could form pockets of flour in the batter so i'm just combining all these wet together in with the buttermilk yellow cake is so named because it has a really large amount of egg yolks in it and the yolks contribute a nice sort of golden cue to the cake so yellow cake equals egg yolks so i'm using 11 yolks and just one whole egg so this is my 11th yolk and then the last egg is just a hole how did i screw up cracking the whole egg okay so the general order of operations is butter and sugar go in first we want to work a lot of air into that and then we add eggs followed by wet ingredients and dry ingredients alternating beginning and ending with dry all right i shut the mixer off as soon as those last streaks of flour disappeared because if i kept mixing i would be at risk of overdosing the gluten which would be very very bad for our cake what would happen if there is the problem of overworking your batter i have that same yellow cake batter that i'm gonna just continue to beat in the mixer all right i think that's enough i can tell that it's over mixed because the texture of the batter is droopy you can see how stretchy the batter is which is an indication of gluten okay so i'm going to put this into the pan into the oven 30 minutes and see what happens all right it has dramatically shrunk away from the edges as the cake bakes the gluten strands kind of like snap together and contract so you get that shrinking well the crumb almost has sort of like a bready consistency and i can tell that it has sort of a tough texture but it's definitely chewy not what we're going for in a layer cake on the other end of the spectrum what happens if you under mix your batter i have yellow cake batter with just the very last bit of flour added you can see there's a little bit of flour still visible hardly any gluten has been developed at all but we're going to bake it for 30 minutes and see what happens here is that cake layer right away big dip in the center so it's sunk quite a bit that is because there isn't enough gluten structure to support the weight of the cake oh wow so you can see a much more open crumb super super crumbly it almost like turns back in a batter when you eat it the key to mixing your batter when you're making cake is make sure all the flour is in there mix by hand at the end is really useful to make sure it's well mixed and everything is incorporated but don't go any further than that that will give you the best result in the final texture of the cake so now i want to work it a couple times with a spatula by hand to just make sure that the stuff that's at the bottom mixes evenly with the stuff that's at the top i have my kitchen scale here i'm going to use it to weigh out the batter to ensure that i have exact amounts equal between the three so each one is 750 grams and now i have a small offset spatula a tool which you will find indispensable for layer cake making and i'm going to use this to level out the batter and also work it into the side so there's no air pockets around those corners we're going to bake these cakes at 350. so i'm going to start with two in the upper position far to the sides and then one in the middle and the idea is to prevent the two on the top from blocking heat to the bottom i'm also going to rotate them a little more than halfway through baking so here's what we did for mixing cake batter using the traditional creaming method we started by beating together the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy then we beat in the eggs followed by the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients that we added alternating starting and ending with dry then we scraped the batter into the prepared cake pans dividing evenly and weighing to guarantee perfectly even layers i smoothed them with an offset spatula and we put them in the racks of the oven preheated to 350 on the upper third and lower third to bake until done so now i'm going to put together the white cake batter and i'm going to show you the technique it's called reverse creaming it produces a cake with a very fine crumb and also a really flat top and here's what you need for classic white cake cake flour granulated sugar baking powder kosher salt baking soda unsalted butter buttermilk vegetable oil large eggs vanilla extract and almond extract so it's called reverse creamy because you don't start with the butter and sugar you actually start with all the dry ingredients in the bowl first and then you work in the fat so i'm combining all the dry ingredients in the stand mixer bowl plus my sugar so i'm going to plug my dry ingredients into the mixer and now i have room temperature butter here in the traditional creaming method for the yellow cake we didn't add a flour until the very end and now we're starting with all the dry ingredients here and adding the butter directly to it so this will seem really counter-intuitive for a lot of cake makers out there but it's a wonderful method it works really well what i'm doing here is i am working the butter into the dry mixture so that the fat and the butter is coating the flour and that is going to inhibit gluten formation when i add the liquid ingredients a little bit of vegetable oil i like to add almond extract to white cake because it's sort of a classic touch and also some vanilla extract just gonna whisk these together okay i'm gonna add about half of the buttermilk this is gonna start to build a little bit of structure in the cake so i'm gonna let this mix pretty well so now i'm ready to add my egg mixture and i'm gonna do it in two additions now the batter is fully mixed all the ingredients are added because there's so little gluten that we've formed so far we actually have to work the batter quite a bit and this is our chance to work some air into it because we don't have that part where we cream the butter and sugar so i'm going to let it go on medium high for a good two minutes and this also will help incorporate some irritant batter to lighten it okay now i'm ready to divide my batter into my pans these go into the same 350 oven same orientation of the pans so here's how we put together the white cake batter using the reverse creaming method we started by combining all the dry ingredients plus sugar in the bowl the mixer whisk that to combine then i added all the butter and worked that in with the paddle added all the buttermilk and a little bit of vegetable oil worked that into a batter then added the eggs whisked together with the extract into a liquid i added that in two editions and beat very well afterwards until i had a light fluffy batter divided that into the three prepared cake pans and into the 350 oven carry cake is an oil-based cake there's a different method for putting together the batter and here are all the ingredients and there are a lot of them large eggs granulated sugar dark brown sugar vanilla extract vegetable oil all-purpose flour cinnamon ground ginger freshly grated nutmeg baking powder kosher salt baking soda buttermilk carrots and walnuts so our third cake today is a carrot cake which is an oil-based cake so very different from the yellow cake and white cake because no butter at all and it starts with beating air into the eggs along with the sugar so an oil-based cake tends to be a little bit denser but also because of all the oil in there it's also much more moist i do like walnuts in my carrot cake so we're gonna add them today so these will toast in like a 350 oven for 10 minutes or so until they're darkened a little bit and toasty smelling so what i'm going to do is grate the carrots on the large holes and put them in this bowl and then combine them with the buttermilk because the buttermilk will start to tenderize the carrots now i want to mix together all my dry ingredients again okay now i'm going to start building everything in the mixer i'm using whole eggs and now i'm going to beat the eggs with my sugars i have dark brown sugar and white sugar because i'm not creaming together butter and sugar my chance of incorporating air into the dough is really in this stage and you can see that this mixture is already lightening quite a bit and now i'm ready to do a crucial step in oil-based cake which is emulsifying the oil into the eggs and sugar so this just means that i am combining the eggs and oil so that they thicken basically the oil will disappear into the eggs so i'm going to turn this on medium and stream in the oil very slowly i don't want to overwhelm the eggs with oil so i'm just going to take it pretty slow so you'll notice that there's no oil that's like sitting on top or that's separated it's all incorporated into the eggs now i want to switch to the paddle so i'm going to add about a third of my dry with the mixer on very very low half of the carrot mixture this bull is definitely gonna overflow i'm really nervous okay you know what i have to do at this point i just switched to doing it by hand this is an irresponsible amount of batter for this bowl size i just want people to know that i usually forget at this stage to have the walnuts but i'm not going to forget so i'm going to do that i think mixing my hand at the end is always a good idea it's going to be i mean this thing weighs a ton it's going to be a lot of batter so into the same oven these will take a little while also because denser batter a lot more moisture longer to bake so for our oil-based cake we started by whipping the eggs and sugar in the stand mixer with the whisk attachment until very light and foamy then i emulsified in the oil adding it very slowly so that i didn't overwhelm the egg mixture then we added our dry ingredients alternating with our wet including our carrots starting and ending with dry and then i folded in the walnuts divided into the pans and baked in the oven i want to talk now about doneness indicators so how to know when your cake is ready to come out of the oven here i have three examples of cakes all at various stages of baking so i have one that's perfectly done one that's under done and one that's overdone for this yellow cake that's under done when i put in my cake tester and pull it out you can see that it still has batter that's clinging to it the cake is basically still raw or semi-raw in the center you'll notice that as it cools it's going to sink because they're the eggs have not fully cooked in the cake and there hasn't been that like souffle action and when i cut into it there'll still be some raw and cooked batter in there this cake on the other hand gets over baked you can see it's quite a bit darker on the surface it's very hard and the interior is going to be completely dry this cake is just right so nice even golden color a cake tester inserted into the very center comes out clean this cake should be nice and tender in the middle but fully baked okay so to recap take a look at it it should have a nice even golden color all across the surface including the center touch it should spring back when you poke at the center k-tester will come out clean and also smell it'll smell like incredible birthday cake scent in your kitchen when the cake is approaching doneness a cake that's properly baked should taste good without any frosting at all what we got are you rolling yes oh okay all right these are done one of them sunk a little bit because i took it out too early so even even even i make mistakes all the time this is a layer from the carrot cake that we made i'm going to show you how to unhold a layer from the pan provided that you've lined your cake pan properly all you have to unmold the layer is cut around the sides with a thin blade or an offset spatula invert the rack onto the pan flip the whole thing over give it a nice sharp tap on the counter remove the pan and peel back the parchment right now it's time to do some tasting i have all the cake side by side carrot white and yellow we're going to take a look at what the interiors look like and the differences in sort of the crumb and texture overall based on the different mixing methods and ingredients so first i want to talk about the obvious visual differences yellow cake versus white cake this has a much more golden hue to it because of all the yolks this one was just egg whites both the yellow and white cakes have sort of more openness as opposed to the carrot cake which is weighed down not only by the oil but by all the stuff that's folded into it as well the texture of the white cake the slightest pressure kind of dissolves into crumbs so it's really really tender reverse creaming means that you develop overall i think less gluten so less bounciness more tenderness as opposed to the yellow cake which has a little bit more structure to it but still a really tender crumb this carrot cake definitely is a little like heftier really moist much less prone to sort of crumbling all of them are good for layer cakes because they resist drying out pretty well do you want to try these i want to walk you through each one wait hold on i just need you to pretend like they're not dry they're dry flavor's still good they've been only probably they've been sitting out for a little while so yellow cake white cake carrot cake are three different kinds of nibbles very classic yeah to me it's like birthday cake yeah yeah this is nice and it's lightness yeah definitely i like the almond flavor hmm yummy flavor how much do you love cake we love cake i doubled the batter in the bowl how much carrot is in this i don't remember it's not that sweet the thought being that you're going to have cream cheese frosting on top yeah cream cheese frosting the goal with these in terms of flavor was like not to overwhelm with sugar because you always get something to balance out yeah totally i feel i learned a lot today thanks molly i think the main takeaway about cake today is that it's a lot of work but as long as you follow the rules you get such a wonderful versatile result keep watching so you can see how we not only put together all the other components but then also build our final layer takes in the end so don't go anywherethis is an irresponsible amount of batter for this bowl size i just want people to know that if chris morocco were here he would be horrified this is all about like you know use the right tool and everything hi everyone i'm claire and this is episode one of ba's baking school we are showing you everything you need to know about layer cakes from the cakes themselves to the fillings to the frostings putting the whole thing together decorating in a five episode series and by the time you watch you should know everything there is to know about how to make a layer cake at home whether it's your very first and you're a novice baker or you're more experienced and just want to get better over the course of the series we're going to be making three specific layer cakes to demonstrate these universal techniques and here are those cakes so here i have our three individual layer cakes a layer cake is a construction of multiple layers of a sponge separated by a filling and then the whole thing is iced and decorated let me break down each of the cakes and how they're different cake number one is our birthday cake it is composed of three layers of classic yellow cake the layers are soaked in a vanilla milk the filling is a whipped chocolate ganache the frosting is chocolate sismering buttercream and the decor is rainbow sprinkles pressed around the sides but if someone made this cake for me on my birthday it would be like it would like cry it would be so touched for our coconut cake here's what we got six layers of white cake coconut milk soak in between the layers coconut caramel outside and on the top we piped italian meringue torched and then toasted coconut on top it might look intimidating but you really can make this at home so um you just have to watch all five episodes just get comfortable our third cake is our carrot cake it's enormous we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts the filling is very thin layers of pineapple vanilla compote then in between the layers and around the sides and top classic cream cheese frosting the decorations are candied carrot ribbons they're not supposed to be this big i made a mistake and then we couldn't reverse we couldn't reshoot it i did some bad math sorry episode one is all about the cakes themselves how to mix the batters the different recipes all you need to know about the cakes that go inside of our final compose layer cakes so to make the layers for any kind of layer cake there are essential tools that you must have a large whisk heat proof spatula liquid measuring cups dry measures mixing bowls at least two light-colored identical cake pans these are nine inch parchment paper and scissors for cutting out rounds non-stick cooking spray and a stand mixer i really don't recommend making a layer cake by hand sand mixer will make it so much easier so the first thing you have to do always before starting to build your batter is line your cake pans and that's because a layer of parchment on the bottom ensures that your cake releases when you turn it out i'm just tracing around the very bottom of the pan with a pen you can use a sharpie i'm going to trace the second one right next to it and now i have the outline of the pan because this one doesn't actually fit in the bottom of this pan because they're not the same size these two fit nicely in the bottom i'm gonna use a little bit of non-stick cooking spray to coat the pans and now i line the parchment in the bottom sometimes i like to fold it in half like this so that helps to eliminate air bubbles as i place the parchment in the pan another light coating of spray on the parchment itself to really ensure that the cakes don't stick i dust everything with a layer of flour now i tap the flour while rotating the pan all the way around so that it coats not only the bottom but the sides any cake that you bake in here will slide right out if you were to skip this step it could lead to disastrous consequences it's time to find out what would happen if we didn't prep our baking pan this is just a batch of our regular yellow cake so i'm going to scrape in no parchment no butter no flour not even a spray of pam so i'll bake this for the regular time about a half an hour and we'll see what happens okay here is that cake layer that's cooled a little a little worried there's no parchment so there's nothing that's creating any kind of release on the bottom it's pretty stuck all right this guy it has to come out in pieces unfortunately it's like an arrested oven like and that's why you always prep the pan disaster otherwise so now that the pans are prepped we're ready to move on to the batter i'm going to show you three distinct cake recipes using three distinct methods for mixing each of our three cakes has a different texture and that's because of the way the different ingredients are mixed together that produces different amounts of gluten so i'm going to show you what gluten looks like gluten is produced when the proteins in wheat flour interact with water different amounts of gluten development affects the overall texture when water comes into contact with wheat flour two proteins gluten and gliadin produce what's called gluten and it's these long stretchy strands that give bread dough for instance their chewy texture the more i mix this the more structure i'm giving it that's what we wanted bread dough not what we want in cake batter here i have two examples of baked goods with different amounts of gluten development so i can show you what the final result is first i have it's really like a muffin i mean i'm not let's be honest a muffin is cake anyone that doesn't know that kind of i don't like muffins i'd just rather eat cake so this is an example of lower gluten development the texture is light and fluffy unlike cake the object when you're making bread is often to develop as much gluten as possible when i press down and it springs back up that's because of all that gluten super springy very chewy i can see little flecks of the whole grain in it by changing around the order and method of mixing together the batter we can change the amount of gluten development there's more than one way to bake a cake so i'm going to show you the three different mixing methods for each of our three layer cakes cake number one is our birthday cake very classic yellow cake for our coconut cake we got six layers of white cake our third cake is our carrot cake we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts these are the three different cakes that we're going to make we're ready to start building our first classic yellow cake and we're going to use the traditional method for bringing the cake together which starts with creaming the butter and sugar and this is going to result in a nice fluffy cake with sort of a beautiful domed lid and a very nice texture here all the ingredients you need to make classic yellow cake using the traditional creaming method granulated sugar unsalted butter large eggs buttermilk vegetable oil vanilla extract baking powder kosher salt baking soda and cake flour okay so the first thing i want to do is combine all my dry ingredients but i am using a whisk to combine dry and this is also going to eliminate any lumps that could form pockets of flour in the batter so i'm just combining all these wet together in with the buttermilk yellow cake is so named because it has a really large amount of egg yolks in it and the yolks contribute a nice sort of golden cue to the cake so yellow cake equals egg yolks so i'm using 11 yolks and just one whole egg so this is my 11th yolk and then the last egg is just a hole how did i screw up cracking the whole egg okay so the general order of operations is butter and sugar go in first we want to work a lot of air into that and then we add eggs followed by wet ingredients and dry ingredients alternating beginning and ending with dry all right i shut the mixer off as soon as those last streaks of flour disappeared because if i kept mixing i would be at risk of overdosing the gluten which would be very very bad for our cake what would happen if there is the problem of overworking your batter i have that same yellow cake batter that i'm gonna just continue to beat in the mixer all right i think that's enough i can tell that it's over mixed because the texture of the batter is droopy you can see how stretchy the batter is which is an indication of gluten okay so i'm going to put this into the pan into the oven 30 minutes and see what happens all right it has dramatically shrunk away from the edges as the cake bakes the gluten strands kind of like snap together and contract so you get that shrinking well the crumb almost has sort of like a bready consistency and i can tell that it has sort of a tough texture but it's definitely chewy not what we're going for in a layer cake on the other end of the spectrum what happens if you under mix your batter i have yellow cake batter with just the very last bit of flour added you can see there's a little bit of flour still visible hardly any gluten has been developed at all but we're going to bake it for 30 minutes and see what happens here is that cake layer right away big dip in the center so it's sunk quite a bit that is because there isn't enough gluten structure to support the weight of the cake oh wow so you can see a much more open crumb super super crumbly it almost like turns back in a batter when you eat it the key to mixing your batter when you're making cake is make sure all the flour is in there mix by hand at the end is really useful to make sure it's well mixed and everything is incorporated but don't go any further than that that will give you the best result in the final texture of the cake so now i want to work it a couple times with a spatula by hand to just make sure that the stuff that's at the bottom mixes evenly with the stuff that's at the top i have my kitchen scale here i'm going to use it to weigh out the batter to ensure that i have exact amounts equal between the three so each one is 750 grams and now i have a small offset spatula a tool which you will find indispensable for layer cake making and i'm going to use this to level out the batter and also work it into the side so there's no air pockets around those corners we're going to bake these cakes at 350. so i'm going to start with two in the upper position far to the sides and then one in the middle and the idea is to prevent the two on the top from blocking heat to the bottom i'm also going to rotate them a little more than halfway through baking so here's what we did for mixing cake batter using the traditional creaming method we started by beating together the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy then we beat in the eggs followed by the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients that we added alternating starting and ending with dry then we scraped the batter into the prepared cake pans dividing evenly and weighing to guarantee perfectly even layers i smoothed them with an offset spatula and we put them in the racks of the oven preheated to 350 on the upper third and lower third to bake until done so now i'm going to put together the white cake batter and i'm going to show you the technique it's called reverse creaming it produces a cake with a very fine crumb and also a really flat top and here's what you need for classic white cake cake flour granulated sugar baking powder kosher salt baking soda unsalted butter buttermilk vegetable oil large eggs vanilla extract and almond extract so it's called reverse creamy because you don't start with the butter and sugar you actually start with all the dry ingredients in the bowl first and then you work in the fat so i'm combining all the dry ingredients in the stand mixer bowl plus my sugar so i'm going to plug my dry ingredients into the mixer and now i have room temperature butter here in the traditional creaming method for the yellow cake we didn't add a flour until the very end and now we're starting with all the dry ingredients here and adding the butter directly to it so this will seem really counter-intuitive for a lot of cake makers out there but it's a wonderful method it works really well what i'm doing here is i am working the butter into the dry mixture so that the fat and the butter is coating the flour and that is going to inhibit gluten formation when i add the liquid ingredients a little bit of vegetable oil i like to add almond extract to white cake because it's sort of a classic touch and also some vanilla extract just gonna whisk these together okay i'm gonna add about half of the buttermilk this is gonna start to build a little bit of structure in the cake so i'm gonna let this mix pretty well so now i'm ready to add my egg mixture and i'm gonna do it in two additions now the batter is fully mixed all the ingredients are added because there's so little gluten that we've formed so far we actually have to work the batter quite a bit and this is our chance to work some air into it because we don't have that part where we cream the butter and sugar so i'm going to let it go on medium high for a good two minutes and this also will help incorporate some irritant batter to lighten it okay now i'm ready to divide my batter into my pans these go into the same 350 oven same orientation of the pans so here's how we put together the white cake batter using the reverse creaming method we started by combining all the dry ingredients plus sugar in the bowl the mixer whisk that to combine then i added all the butter and worked that in with the paddle added all the buttermilk and a little bit of vegetable oil worked that into a batter then added the eggs whisked together with the extract into a liquid i added that in two editions and beat very well afterwards until i had a light fluffy batter divided that into the three prepared cake pans and into the 350 oven carry cake is an oil-based cake there's a different method for putting together the batter and here are all the ingredients and there are a lot of them large eggs granulated sugar dark brown sugar vanilla extract vegetable oil all-purpose flour cinnamon ground ginger freshly grated nutmeg baking powder kosher salt baking soda buttermilk carrots and walnuts so our third cake today is a carrot cake which is an oil-based cake so very different from the yellow cake and white cake because no butter at all and it starts with beating air into the eggs along with the sugar so an oil-based cake tends to be a little bit denser but also because of all the oil in there it's also much more moist i do like walnuts in my carrot cake so we're gonna add them today so these will toast in like a 350 oven for 10 minutes or so until they're darkened a little bit and toasty smelling so what i'm going to do is grate the carrots on the large holes and put them in this bowl and then combine them with the buttermilk because the buttermilk will start to tenderize the carrots now i want to mix together all my dry ingredients again okay now i'm going to start building everything in the mixer i'm using whole eggs and now i'm going to beat the eggs with my sugars i have dark brown sugar and white sugar because i'm not creaming together butter and sugar my chance of incorporating air into the dough is really in this stage and you can see that this mixture is already lightening quite a bit and now i'm ready to do a crucial step in oil-based cake which is emulsifying the oil into the eggs and sugar so this just means that i am combining the eggs and oil so that they thicken basically the oil will disappear into the eggs so i'm going to turn this on medium and stream in the oil very slowly i don't want to overwhelm the eggs with oil so i'm just going to take it pretty slow so you'll notice that there's no oil that's like sitting on top or that's separated it's all incorporated into the eggs now i want to switch to the paddle so i'm going to add about a third of my dry with the mixer on very very low half of the carrot mixture this bull is definitely gonna overflow i'm really nervous okay you know what i have to do at this point i just switched to doing it by hand this is an irresponsible amount of batter for this bowl size i just want people to know that i usually forget at this stage to have the walnuts but i'm not going to forget so i'm going to do that i think mixing my hand at the end is always a good idea it's going to be i mean this thing weighs a ton it's going to be a lot of batter so into the same oven these will take a little while also because denser batter a lot more moisture longer to bake so for our oil-based cake we started by whipping the eggs and sugar in the stand mixer with the whisk attachment until very light and foamy then i emulsified in the oil adding it very slowly so that i didn't overwhelm the egg mixture then we added our dry ingredients alternating with our wet including our carrots starting and ending with dry and then i folded in the walnuts divided into the pans and baked in the oven i want to talk now about doneness indicators so how to know when your cake is ready to come out of the oven here i have three examples of cakes all at various stages of baking so i have one that's perfectly done one that's under done and one that's overdone for this yellow cake that's under done when i put in my cake tester and pull it out you can see that it still has batter that's clinging to it the cake is basically still raw or semi-raw in the center you'll notice that as it cools it's going to sink because they're the eggs have not fully cooked in the cake and there hasn't been that like souffle action and when i cut into it there'll still be some raw and cooked batter in there this cake on the other hand gets over baked you can see it's quite a bit darker on the surface it's very hard and the interior is going to be completely dry this cake is just right so nice even golden color a cake tester inserted into the very center comes out clean this cake should be nice and tender in the middle but fully baked okay so to recap take a look at it it should have a nice even golden color all across the surface including the center touch it should spring back when you poke at the center k-tester will come out clean and also smell it'll smell like incredible birthday cake scent in your kitchen when the cake is approaching doneness a cake that's properly baked should taste good without any frosting at all what we got are you rolling yes oh okay all right these are done one of them sunk a little bit because i took it out too early so even even even i make mistakes all the time this is a layer from the carrot cake that we made i'm going to show you how to unhold a layer from the pan provided that you've lined your cake pan properly all you have to unmold the layer is cut around the sides with a thin blade or an offset spatula invert the rack onto the pan flip the whole thing over give it a nice sharp tap on the counter remove the pan and peel back the parchment right now it's time to do some tasting i have all the cake side by side carrot white and yellow we're going to take a look at what the interiors look like and the differences in sort of the crumb and texture overall based on the different mixing methods and ingredients so first i want to talk about the obvious visual differences yellow cake versus white cake this has a much more golden hue to it because of all the yolks this one was just egg whites both the yellow and white cakes have sort of more openness as opposed to the carrot cake which is weighed down not only by the oil but by all the stuff that's folded into it as well the texture of the white cake the slightest pressure kind of dissolves into crumbs so it's really really tender reverse creaming means that you develop overall i think less gluten so less bounciness more tenderness as opposed to the yellow cake which has a little bit more structure to it but still a really tender crumb this carrot cake definitely is a little like heftier really moist much less prone to sort of crumbling all of them are good for layer cakes because they resist drying out pretty well do you want to try these i want to walk you through each one wait hold on i just need you to pretend like they're not dry they're dry flavor's still good they've been only probably they've been sitting out for a little while so yellow cake white cake carrot cake are three different kinds of nibbles very classic yeah to me it's like birthday cake yeah yeah this is nice and it's lightness yeah definitely i like the almond flavor hmm yummy flavor how much do you love cake we love cake i doubled the batter in the bowl how much carrot is in this i don't remember it's not that sweet the thought being that you're going to have cream cheese frosting on top yeah cream cheese frosting the goal with these in terms of flavor was like not to overwhelm with sugar because you always get something to balance out yeah totally i feel i learned a lot today thanks molly i think the main takeaway about cake today is that it's a lot of work but as long as you follow the rules you get such a wonderful versatile result keep watching so you can see how we not only put together all the other components but then also build our final layer takes in the end so don't go anywhere\n"