In this article we’ll learn how to create a great cake recipe using the “Baker’s Formula”. The information in this post is the culmination of all our Cake Batter classes, but can also stand alone. If you’d like to follow the classes in order visit the Baking School/Science of Cake Batter page.
The secret of how to make a cake moist & soft:
Before we start creating our perfect recipe, I’m going to introduce an important concept; the “Baker’s Formula” or “Baker’s Percentage”.
The Baker’s Formula
A successful cake recipe balances the ingredients that strengthen the cake structure (flour and eggs) with the ingredients that weaken and tenderize the cake structure (sugar and fat).
The Baker’s Formula is used to calculate the proper percentage of each ingredient for a successful recipe. The flour in the recipe is designated at 100% and all the other ingredients are designated relative to the flour. This is a very important point, so keep it in mind as we get deeper into it.
Lean Cakes:
Some of the earliest cake recipes, called “quatre quarts” (four fourths), were simply equal weights of flour, sugar, butter and eggs. I find that a cake made following the traditional recipe is less than ideal. It’s fairly dense, a little chewy and has a slightly flat taste.
That quatre quarts recipe produces a so-called “lean cake”. A “lean cake” has a very simple 1:1 formula balancing the structure-builders with the tenderizers.
The only liquid in the original recipe comes from the eggs (egg whites are 90% water). Liquid brings together the structure builders and the tenderizers in the batter. The liquid activates the gluten and swells the starch in the flour. The liquid also dissolves the sugar and helps disperse the fat throughout the batter and, of course, provides moisture.
High Ratio Cakes:
Because we’re using cake flour, with it’s finely ground starch that absorbs extra moisture, we can change the Baker’s Formula to allow for more liquid.
We can also use an emulsifier in the batter to help bind the liquid and fat in the batter. This allows for even more liquid in the recipe, and thus more sugar since you need liquid to dissolve sugar.
A cake made with cake flour and an emulsifying agent is “High Ratio” because the ratio of sugar to flour can now be higher than 1:1 without compromising the structure.
Adjust the Percentages for A Better Pound Cake
I used the original quatre quarts recipe as the basis for all the cake batter classes because the simple 1:1:1:1 ratio makes it very easy to measure changes. So that is the recipe I will use to show you how to use the baker’s formula to improve a cake recipe.
I wanted to lighten the crumb a bit, make it taste a little sweeter and produce a cake that is tender and rich enough to be eaten without buttercream. But I was careful to keep the characteristic even crumb and melt-in-your-mouth texture of a really great pound cake. I was not going for “light and fluffy” with this cake.
The first step was to lighten the crumb a tiny bit, so I added a little baking powder to the recipe. A pinch of salt and a teaspoon of real vanilla extract were added to enhance the flavor.
Now that the cake was lighter I wanted to sweeten things up a bit. The Baker’s Formula for a high ratio cake allows for up to about 140% of the weight of sugar to flour. I found in my testing for the “sugar” class that I like pound cake with a ratio of 125% sugar to 100% flour. With this in mind I increased the sugar in the recipe from 8 oz to 10 oz.
I also wanted to add a little extra liquid for moistness, so I needed an emulsifier in the batter. Vegetable shortening will act as an emulsifier, but I prefer an all-butter cake for the unparalleled flavor.
Instead of using shortening in the batter, I used a few extra egg yolks because yolks are great emulsifiers and also add a little extra fat and flavor to the batter. I changed the 8 oz of eggs in the recipe to 4 whole eggs and 3 extra yolks.
Now that we have cake flour and emulsifying eggs yolks in the recipe we can add a little more liquid for additional moisture. I added whole milk as the liquid for a basic pound cake recipe.
The revised recipe makes the perfect melt-in-your-mouth buttery pound cake.
Adjust the Percentages for A Lighter Vanilla Layer Cake
Of course the Baker’s Formula is not only useful for perfecting pound cake recipes. We can continue to test the limits of the structure builders and tenderizers to create a whole world of cake recipes.
I’ll give you another example. As I said, the perfect pound cake should have a dense, buttery texture that doesn’t need any icing at all. But a Vanilla Layer Cake is meant to be filled and iced with frosting. So a great Vanilla Layer Cake should be a little lighter and softer than a pound cake.
As a comparison, let’s look at the Baker’s Percentages for my Pound Cake Recipe vs. my Vanilla Butter Cake Recipe: (Both recipes can be found, in full, at the end of this post)
| Pound Cake | ||
| Flour | -8 oz | 100% |
| Fat | -9 oz | 112% |
| Sugar | -10 oz | 125% |
| Eggs | -9 oz | 112% |
| Liquid | -8 oz (w/eggs) |
| Vanilla Cake | ||
| Flour | -9 oz | 100% |
| Fat | -10.6 oz | 116% |
| Sugar | -12 oz | 133% |
| Eggs | -6.6 oz | 73% |
| Liqui | -12 oz (w/eggs) |
Ok, that’s a lot of information. But lets look at the percentages. (Remember: all percentages are relative to the weight of flour in the recipe.)
By just looking at the percentages you can guess that the vanilla cake will be a little more tender (more sugar and fat), a little sweeter (more sugar) and a little more moist (more liquid) than the pound cake.
The vanilla cake recipe also has more leavening and I whip the whites before adding them to the batter. So the vanilla cake also has a more open and light crumb than the pound cake.
Whew!!! So, all those small changes to the basic formula created a lighter, sweeter and softer cake. That’s just what I want for a cake that will be filled and iced with buttercream.
The takeaway here is that every cake recipe in the universe is some variation on this formula. The type of fat or liquid can change, additional ingredients can be added, but it’s always about the balanace between structure and softness.
It’s the variations that create the myriad of cake recipes that we can invent and perfect.
Pound Cake Perfection
A really great pound cake should have an even crumb with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and buttery, vanilla flavor. This is a really great pound cake!
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs plus 3 yolks (9 oz, 255 g) room temp (112%) See Note #1
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup (2 oz, 60 ml) whole milk , divided
- 1 ¾ cups (8 oz, 225 g) cake flour (100%)
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/4 cups (10 oz, 285 g) granulated sugar (125%)
- 2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons (9 oz, 255g) unsalted butter, room temp (112%)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to at 350°F. Butter and flour a 9"x5" loaf pan or 12 cup bundt pan.
- Combine the eggs, vanilla and half the milk in a small bowl, whisk to combine and set aside.
- Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the sugar to the flour and mix at low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter to the flour and mix until combined. Add the other ½ of the milk and increase the speed to medium high. Mix for a full 2-3 minutes. The batter will lighten in color and texture. If your using a hand mixer add another minute or two to the mixing time.
- Scrape the bowl and paddle thoroughly. On low speed, add the egg mixture in 3 increments, scraping the bowl after each addition.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth to an even layer.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (about 55 minutes).
Notes
#1 The percentages listed for each ingredient represent the baker's formula percentage. Flour is set at 100% and the percentages listed for the other ingredients are in relation to the weight of the flour. Please read the full post for details about baker's percentages.
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Vanilla Butter Cake
Perfectly tender and buttery vanilla cake layers. Super soft, yet strong enough for sculpted or wedding cakes.
Ingredients
- 6 large egg yolks at room temperature
- 1 cup (8 oz, 230g) sour cream at room temperature, divided
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups (9 oz, 252g) cake flour
- 1 1/2 cups (12 oz, 336g) granulated sugar, 1/4 cup separated
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 sticks + 2 tablespoons (9 oz, 255g) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3 large egg whites at room temperature
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two 8" round cake pans with a circle of parchment paper or butter and flour the bottom of the pans only, not the sides.
- Combine the yolks, 1/2 the sour cream and the vanilla in a small bowl, whisk to combine, set aside.
- Into a mixer bowl put 1 1/4 cups of the sugar, sift in the flour, leavening and salt. Mix on low speed for 10 seconds to distribute the leavening. Add the butter to the flour mixture. Mix on low until the butter is incorporated and the batter looks like a paste. Add the other 1/2 of the sour cream to the flour and butter mixture. Increase the speed to medium and mix about 3 minutes until the batter lightens in texture. If you're using a hand mixer add another minute or two to the total time.
- Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. With the mixer on low, add 1/2 the egg yolk mixture. Mix until mostly incorporated. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the rest of the egg yolk mixture. Scrape the bowl and mix until incorporated.
- In another bowl, whip the egg whites on medium high until they form soft peaks. Turn the mixer to medium low and slowly add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. Turn the mixer to medium high and whip the whites to full peak. Fold the whites into the base in 2 parts, folding just until there are no streaks of egg whites.
- Divide the batter between the 2 pans and spread so it's level.
- Bake until the center of the cake springs back when lightly pressed or a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.
- Cool 10 minutes in the pan and then turn out onto a cooling rack. When fully cooled, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours or overnight before filling and assembling the cake.
Notes
The cake is very soft the day that it's baked. If you'd like to trim the crust and split the layers allow it to chill in the refrigerator until it's firm enough to handle without breaking. The filled cake can be kept at room temperature for several days (unless it has a perishable filling). The cake cake be frozen for several months.
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Check out the companion eBook to this series. My Perfecting Pound Cake eBook includes 6 exclusive pound cake recipes not available on the blog, including Chocolate Pound Cake, Whipped Cream Pound Cake and an Improved Gluten Free Pound cake.
More from the Cake Batter Series:
Namita
Hello Eileen,
I came to your site to comment on the BreadBakers event but got lost in the lovely post on the basics of baking cake. For the last one hour, I have been intently reading the posts on baking. Your posts are so helpful, giving technical aspects of baking. Can’t thank you enough, Eileen.
Eileen
Oh, thanks so much Namita! You have no idea how happy that makes me. Sometimes we spend all the time researching and writing this stuff and don’t know if it’s helping! You’ve made my day!
Suzette
Hello Ellen,
I found this place on Pinterest and have been enjoying this very much. I was wondering about banana cake. Would you use the reverse mixing method or the regular method for a banana cake? Also how about the egg white method for this as well?
Thank You
Eileen
It depends if the banana cake uses butter or oil as the fat in the recipe. I’d really have to see the recipe to say. Do you have a recipe already or are you looking to create one?
Ruth
Eileen,
Is it possible to make a lemon pound cake (that has the same taste and texture as Starbucks lemon loaf) by replacing the vanilla with lemon oil and/or lemon juice
in your Perfect Pound Cake Recipe?
Eileen
Hi Ruth. I’ve never tasted Starbucks lemon loaf so I can’t say for sure what the texture is, etc. But you can certainly turn my pound cake recipe into a lemon cake by adding lemon flavor. I like to use fresh lemon zest (that’s where the oil is) and a little lemon extract. The juice of the lemon has more acidity than lemon flavor. But I do like to use the juice to make either a syrup or a glaze for the cake to give it a puckery finish.
Michael
Please forgive me for writing a book in your comment section. I absolutely love your posts that get into the science of baking. I’m a HUGE nerd and am consistently unsatisfied with nearly every cake I bake. I’ve spent the last few weeks reading up on all this stuff. I’m putting spreadsheets together to collect recipes and calculate numbers for each. Many of the rules are simple enough, but there are a few things that aren’t clear to me and I was wondering if you’d be willing to provide some insight?
First, how do you determine how much liquid a cake needs? I know that there must be enough liquid to dissolve all of the sugar, but many recipes have MUCH more than that. In my list of 36 white cakes, the baker’s percentage of liquid ranges from 100% to 213%. Comparing liquid to sugar, they range from 94% to 167%. Your own white cake recipe comes in at 147% and 109%, respectively.
Second, for layer-type cakes (not pound cakes), is there a guideline of how much fat should be used, compared to flour? Again, I see huge variations here between recipes ranging from 35% to 90% Your white cake recipe is actually the chart-topper at 90%. Does having too much fat in a cake make it crumbly? I’ve made the 35% cake before, and it was probably the worst, driest cake ever to come out of my oven. So obviously there is such a thing as too little fat.
It’s really interesting to me how these recipes are just all over the place, ratio-wise. One other trend I noticed is that the majority of recipes exceed 100% of sugar to flour. Modern tastes must be for sweeter, high-ratio cakes. Apparently I dislike the firmer texture of “eggy” cakes where they outweigh the fat. I am actually excited to try your white cake recipe, because it seems to fit my preference for a sweeter (sugar is 135% of flour), less eggy (fat is 115% of eggs) cake. Although the numbers seem to indicate a higher probability of collapse due to too many tenderizing ingredients and not enough structure.
Eileen Gray
Please don’t apologize, Michael, I appreciate your passion! First to address the fact that modern cakes mostly have more sugar than flour. As I noted in my recipe testing, I personally found a slightly higher percent of sugar to flour improves the cake texture and flavor. So I agree with you there. Instead of addressing each of the other questions I refer you back to the last line of this post, “It’s the variations that create the myriad of cake recipes that we can invent and perfect.” As I always say “baking is an art and a science.” The cake formula explains the science of the how the ingredients work, but the art of baking is figuring out how to manipulate those ingredients and the technique to get the best results. The cake formula is not a set of “rules” really so much as a way of explaining how a cakes texture is affected by the variation of ingredients. You can push the limits with any of the ingredients to get the texture you’re after. In fact, in my white cake post I acknowledge that the cake will “settle” as it comes out of the oven because it is a tender cake. I’m fine with that because I like the final texture of the cake. There is no such thing as “correct” or “perfect” cake recipe. That’s where the “art” (and fun!) of baking comes in.
Holly Watson
Eileen,
I have appreciated reading through your cake series. I bake often and I try to develop my own recipes and it’s been fairly successful for the most part. Once I realized that I needed to adjust liquids, flour, sugar and leaveners for elevation, I started having consistent success. However, I am in the middle of developing a Twinkie recipe and it’s stumping me. My issue is finding a recipe that will keep the inside tender enough to move out of the way of the cream filling while staying intact. Annoying, right? I’ve tried manipulating a reverse creaming recipe by folding in whipped egg whites in at the end but it still seems a little dense after cooling. I’m using organic, European slow churn style butter and I’ve tried using buttermilk and yogurt thinking the acid might help with leavening and tenderness. I’m just not getting the results I need.
The cakes are of course quite tender when warm but once they cool, that darn cake doesn’t want to accommodate the filling. All my testers have requested more cream filling and I happen to agree. I’ve developed a SMBC/marshmallow combo that is pretty tasty! My next plan was to work with a chiffon and sub invert sugar syrup for some of the granulated sugar to keep it moist and more tender. I am not using cake flour because I’m trying to source locally. I am using AP flour and I fully understand it has shortcomings for what I’m attempting to do. It’s just one of the rules of some of the farmers markets I want to attend so I really don’t have a choice. I have to source what I can locally and in Montana, we happen to grow wheat!
Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. I’m having fun experimenting but it would be nice to finally have a recipe that I can consistently reproduce and even convert to chocolate etc… I realize it’s a high bar but I’m creative and willing to keep trying!
Thank you for your lessons, they have been giving me all kinds of new ideas to try!
Eileen Gray
Hi Holly, glad you’re enjoying the series. I think moving towards a chiffon style cake is a great idea. It was a more spongy, open crumb. How you tried using a combination of ap flour and cornstarch to soften the crumb? Use 3/4 cup of ap flour plus 2 Tablespoons of corn starch for each cup of flour in the recipe. Good luck Post a photo if you crack the code.
daiana
Hello Eileen.
Thanks for your recipe, I use it to sell my cakes and everyone loves it.
I wanted to know how long before I can make the cake without filling it. Because sometimes I have to make many orders.
Thank you
Eileen Gray
If you want to work ahead I would suggest freezing the cake. If you double wrap it in plastic you can work several weeks ahead. Just defrost in the wrapping them proceed to fill the cake. Even if you only work a day or two ahead I would freeze rather than refrigerate the cake. The refrigerator make the cake go stale faster.
Rafael Rivera
Hi, Eileen, thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I would like to know, how do you determine the liquid percentage of your formula comparation?
Do you analyze the water content of each ingredient?
Thank you.
Eileen Gray
Hi Rafael. Yes, you would figure the amount of water in, for example, the milk and the egg whites.
FRANCINE E BROZEK
Hi Eileen,
I am a cake decorator and I was in love with your vanilla butter cake recipe. It is wonderfully moist and has that homemade taste and texture I love so much. I will archive that one !! Yesterday, however, I made the pound cake. All ingredients were measured precisely and I had high hopes. At 50 minutes, I noticed the top and perimeter of top was slightly darker than I like so I removed from the oven. I used a Fat Daddio 9×5 loaf pan. The pound cake was very dry. Perhaps I baked it too long. My oven is definitely calibrated because I have a 2nd thermometer to be sure. I don’t know what when wrong and I’m afraid to try it again. Really was a bummer!!
Eileen Gray
Hi Francine, I can’t say exactly what went wrong. Was the cake baked in the middle? Perhaps it was in the oven a little too long. The times listed in a recipe are always just an estimate. The actual baking time will vary based on the temperature of the batter, the material of the cake pan, etc. I baked this cake, literally, hundreds of times and the crust can get fairly brown, but the interior shouldn’t be “very dry”.
jillian moodie
Can I adapt the vanilla butter cake to a pistachio cardamom cake simply by adding ground pistachio when I’m folding in the egg whites and cardamom to the dry ingredients
Eileen Gray
Yes to the cardamom. Depending how much pistachio you’re adding you might want to replace some of the flour with the ground pistachios. Nuts have a lot of protein and if you just add a lot of nuts without changing anything else the cake might end up dense. For example, you can reduce the flour to 1 1/2 cups and add a 1/2 cup of ground pistachios.
Jillian Moodie
Hi Eileen
Turned out beautifully with the Pistachio and Cardamom, and I topped it with a Rose water Swiss meringue buttercream. Divine! Thanks for your web site, it has taught me so much about good baking skills.
Eileen Gray
Oh, wow, that sounds absolutely fabulous! Thanks for the feedback.
Trish
Hi, how many cup cakes would the vanilla butter cake make? How can this recipe be changed to make a chocolate cake? Thank you!
Eileen Gray
You should get about a dozen regular size cupcakes from the vanilla batter. Here is a Chocolate Cake recipe.
Junior
HI there.
Thank you for writing such an informative article!
I’m a bit confused with your egg weights in the formula’s vs the recipes.
You mention in the vanilla butter cake (high ratio) recipe, that the eggs are 9oz in the percentage breakdown.
But I keep doing the math, and I always come up short.
6 egg yolks (roughly 0.6oz each) is 3.6oz.
3 large egg whites (roughly 1oz each), is 3oz.
so 6.6oz? I’m confused where the 9oz comes from.
In the pound cake breakdown, you mention the liquids are 6oz, but the eggs are 8oz? But the liquids contain the eggs, so how are the liquids less than the eggs?
I’m just a bit confused,
Thanks for your help!!
Eileen Gray
Hi Junior. Actually, the 9 oz weight for the eggs in the vanilla cake was a typo. Thanks for catching it! I think I must’ve either copied it from the pound cake list or mistakenly counted the 6 yolks as whole eggs. I’ve edited the list.
As far as the liquid — The reason there is less liquid than eggs is because the eggs are not all water. They also have fat, protein, etc. Whole eggs are about 75% water, whites are about 87% water and yolks are about 50% water. So the 4 whole eggs (6.4 oz total weight) would have about 4.8 oz water in them (6.4oz x .75 = 4.8oz). The 3 yolks have a total of 1.5 oz. So 4.8oz + 1.5oz = 6.3 oz total liquid in the eggs. There’s also some water in the milk for a total of about 7 oz liquid in the entire recipe (I updated that number too).
Thanks!
Junior!
Thank you Eileen, I will check this out!
Emma
Hi Eileen,
I have always love to learn the fundamental of baking, esp cakes & tarts. This blog is just exactly what I have been looking for.
Much respect & appreciation on your years of experiment to share these knowledge for everyone.
Cheers.
Eileen Gray
Thanks!
Emma
Hi Eileen,
What role does sour cream play in the recipe?
Can I substitute sour cream with whole milk/ coconut milk ?
Thank you.
Eileen Gray
Hi Emma, Sour cream has fat and liquid. Yes you can replace the sour cream with whole milk, coconut milk or buttermilk. I just adapted my vanilla cake recipe to a spice cake and switched out the sour cream and used buttermilk with good results. Milk will have a little more liquid than sour cream, but this recipe can handle a little more liquid.