You make the perfect cake batter. It tastes like pure heaven. You bake it and when you turn it out you find that it’s full of air holes and pockets. Find out today how to stop this from happening!
I was asked over the weekend “How do get your cakes to not have those funky hole-y type textures and holes all through out it?”. It was from that discussion that I found that they really didn’t understand some cake baking simple concepts – room temperature ingredients, creaming butters, sifting dry ingredients, prepping the cake pans to air pockets in the batters. Stuff that, honestly, I tend to take for granted as I’ve been baking for decades that I just assumed people knew the basics. Shame on me. So today, let’s cover one of the basics – air bubbles in your batter.
The type of flour you use is important. When I make cakes most of the time I use cake flour as it doesn’t have as high of a protein count as AP flour. The higher the protein, the more gluten. Like you would never use bread or pizza flour to make a cake. Well you could if you wanted a chewy cake. But even if you use cake flour, if you over mix it you can cause gluten to form. Thus leading to holes in your cakes.
But if you’ve mixed it perfectly all you need to do is give your filled cake pan(s) a few good whacks against the counter. No, seriously. I pick mine up about 8 inches from the counter and let it drop down to the counter. Okay it’s not like you’re letting it free-fall. I put a tea-towel beneath it and give it a few really good whacks against the counter. What this does it agitate the air bubbles to the surface to either pop from the impact of you can just pop with a spatula.
Now if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can always run a skewer, spatula or knife through the cake batter after you’ve poured it into the pan. This will loosen the air pockets, allowing them to rise to the surface. Though personally, I would still give it a few taps against the counter.
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