Sweets in Auburn

There are many different types of cakes and many different ways of dividing them into various categories, but professional bakers categorize cakes by ingredients and mixing method. (Home bakers tend to categorize cakes by flavoring—i.e., chocolate cakes, fruit cakes, and so on—which is helpful when you're trying to decide what to eat, but not as helpful when you're trying to understand how best to make a cake.) Depending on how the batter is prepared, you will find that the final texture (and color, if it is a yellow or white cake) varies. Below is a comprehensive but by no means exhaustive list of the basic types of cakes. Butter Cake Any recipe for cake that begins "cream butter and sugar" is a butter cake. After the creaming, you add eggs to aerate the batter a bit, flour (and sometimes another liquid, like milk) to give it structure and texture, and baking powder or baking soda to ensure that it rises in the oven. Different types of cake batter within the butter cake family include chocolate, white, yellow and marble; for white and yellow cakes coloring typically depends on whether they have whole eggs, or extra egg yolks in them (yellow cake) or egg whites only (white cake).

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Pound Cake Pound Cake is a relative of butter cake. It's so called because it can be measured as a matter of proportion: a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs, and a pound of flour. In some pound cake recipes, you'll see the eggs separated and the egg whites whipped and folded into the batter, to leaven it; in other recipes you'll find leaveners like baking soda and baking powder, bringing it well into the butter-cake fold. These cakes are usually very lightly flavored and served plain or topped with a simple glaze or water icing. A pound cake is usually baked in a loaf or Bundt pan. Many coffee cakes, sour cream cakes, and fruit crumb cakes are variations of pound cake. Sponge Cake Any recipe that contains no baking soda or baking powder but lots of whipped eggs or egg whites? That's a sponge cake and there are several different types of sponge cake. which will be called different things wherever you are. Genoise In Italy and France, a sponge cake is called Genoise. Genoise lacks much assertive flavor of its own, but it is often used to construct layered or rolled cakes when a lighter texture than a butter cake is desired. To add flavor and moisture, genoise cake layers are always moistened with a flavored syrup, and they are often sliced into thin horizontal layers and stacked with rich fillings such as buttercream. These layer cakes, common in the coffeehouses of Europe, are called "European-style" to distinguish them from American-style butter layer cakes, which generally have fewer, thicker layers. Biscuit Cake Biscuit (always pronounced the French way as bees-kwee) cakes are another type of sponge cake containing both egg whites and yolks, but, unlike genoise, the whites and yolks are whipped separately and then folded back together. This creates a light batter that's drier than a genoise but holds its shape better after mixing. For this reason, it's often used for piped shapes such as ladyfingers. If baked in a tube pan like an angel food cake, it makes a very chewy sponge cake that was popular in the early 20th century but has since fallen out of favor. However, it's still known in a slightly different form as the classic Passover sponge cake, in which the flour is replaced by matzoh cake meal and potato starch. Angel Food Cake are made with egg whites alone and no yolks. The whites are whipped with sugar until very firm before the flour is gently folded in, resulting in a snowy-white, airy, and delicate cake that marries beautifully with fruit. Most angel food cakes have a spongy, chewy quality derived from their relatively high sugar content and the absence of egg yolks. Baked in ungreased two-piece tube pans, angel food cakes are cooled by being inverted, since this type of cake would collapse if cooled right-side-up in the pan or if removed from the pan while still warm. There's also no butter here, so the cake is fat free.