Understanding butter cakes! This page is about butter cakes not sponges. The key difference is that these cakes have butter or ghee and a lot less liquid than a sponge cake. This is not a recipe page either, I’m just laying out the key ratios, understandings and basics of making a butter (thick batter) cake.
All it takes is to have a good electronic scale and a measuring jug.
Here’s the low down on what I’ve learned the past few days:
Eggs and flour = structure
They keep your cake standing and correct ratios means no sunken middle.
Too much of either and you end up with a dry cake!
Sugar and fat = tender
They keep the cake tender and moist. But too much will mean your cake won’t set properly!
Three key calculations :
Eggs in weight without shell = or > than fat.
Sugar in weight = or > than flour
Weight of liquids including egg weight = or > than sugar.
Why?
Eggs emulsify and balance the fat. So more fat means more eggs.
Liquids dissolve the sugars so your liquid content must be at least equal to the sugar to make sure all that sugar is dissolved!
Leaveners:
In a butter cake that is your baking powder , baking soda or both. In addition to your beaten butter & eggs as the beating adds air to your cake batter. So far I am still only using baking powder even for the orange cake and it works a treat.
So for a butter cake, for a 25cm (10 inch) diameter cake tin using the following core ingredients (The full recipe will be in a separate post):
Eggs
Flour
Sugar
Butter
Milk
175 ml
290 gm
335 gm
170 gm
185 gm
The weights of the key components are calculated below and you see that the total liquids is higher than the sugar weight, egg weight and butter weight are almost equal and the total “Tender” column is slightly higher than the total “Structure” column.
| Structure | Tender | Liquid |
| Flour = 290 gm | Sugar = 335 gm | Milk = 185 ml |
| Egg wt = 175 gm | Butter = 170 gm | Egg wt = 175 gm |
| Total = 465 gm | Total = 505 gm | Total = 360 gm |
This means I have a good structure, more moist than dry and will fully dissolve my sugar content. The max variance between your “structure” and your “tender” components should not vary more than 20% though.
How far to go in the percentages?
Here’s are great table from Franks Recipes about that:
The 100% is always the flour!
Eggs
Flour
Sugar
Butter/solid fat
Baking Powder
Salt
Liquid inc eggs
30%
100%
100%
30%
3%
2%
100%
60%
100%
145%
60%
6%
4%
125%
The cake recipe (above) weights and % are all aligned with Franks table above and the ratios discussed too!
Intersting notes:
- Butter is not all fats! It’s about 80 to 85% only, the rest are milk solids & water. Vs Ghee which I also use, which is 100% fat resulting in a more moist cake.
- You can sub cocoa powder for a portion of flour for a chocolate cake.
- Cocoa powder gives a more chocolaty taste than melted chocolate!
The mixing:
I use the creaming method which goes like this:
Cream butter with sugar till the colour lightens and sugar is fully mixed in with the fat. Don’t over beat please!
Add the eggs in slowly and in stages. So a third in, then beat till combined. Add a quarter of the flour then beat in till combined. Add another third of the eggs and beat till combined. Another quarter of the flour and beat till combined. Add the last third of the eggs and half your liquid and beat till combined. Add another quarter of flour and beat till combined. Add the second half of your liquid and beat till combined and finish off with the last quarter of your flour.
Every once in a while use a rubber spatula to lightly scrape the bottom of the mixing bowl to make sure nothing is lurking down there not being mixed or beaten in!
Again you don’t want to overbeat! Just get the batter to the thick ribbon stage as below:
It sounds like a hassle but it isn’t really. You are just alternating wet and dry ingredients to maintain a stable batter. Too wet or too dry and you won’t get a good incorporation of the ingredients. And don’t overbeat so you don’t curdle the eggs or deflate the mixture. If your eggs do separate from the batter (liquid floating around a bumpy batter) just add a little flour in and beat so it absorbs the extra liquid. No reason to worry or panic!
There are other methods to mix your cake batter which I will post later after I test them 🙂
Lining & getting ready to bake:
You want to get your cake into the oven as soon as you’re done mixing so you don’t wind up losing the power of the baking powder! You also want the cake to come out easily & not stick so have your cake tin ready before you even start making your cake!
- Choose a cake tin with high sides & a movable base.
- Brush the tin base & sides with oil and line the base with grease proof paper.
- Dust the sides and base if you like with flour for white cakes & cocoa powder for chocolate cakes (however I don’t like to do this anymore as sometimes you find spots on the sides of your cakes). In the pic below I’m lining with cornmeal for the cornmeal cake.
- Gently spoon in the batter and lightly smooth the surface of your cake with a rubber spatula. If you are using one cake tin for all your batter then make sure not to go higher than half the side height. If you split between 2 tins (to make layers for example) then you want to get to quarter the tin height.
The baking:
The cake is baked in a medium low oven at 180 C or 160 C convection oven. You want to give time for the baking powder to act and rise the cake before the batter sets.
DO NOT PEAK IN THE OVEN! For the first 30min of baking don’t open the oven please! Those 30min are critical for it to set properly, and opening that door oven is just inviting disaster! Open after 35min; the top should be set & golden. Give the pan a gentle nudge to check its set or insert a thin skewer in the centre, if it comes out clean you are done. If not, give it an extra 5 min and check. It shouldn’t need to go beyond 45min.
Take it out and place it on a wire rack to cool for 20 or 15minutes.
Then take it out of the pan and place it on the wire rack to completely cool down before slicing & eating it.
The end result!
Well rising, no sunken centre, moist cakes with a slightly sticky top! Yummy!
Understanding the ratios/percents gives you so much freedom!
For a lot more in-depth analysis please see these two excellent websites:
Riham's Messy Kitchen! 