Why Vanilla Cakes are so Difficult / #007

A look at what makes a good vanilla cake / In search of good cocoa powder

Hello and welcome to Crumby Data #007!

It’s nice to be back! I often take periods away from socials to do heavy R&D on recipes. Here’s a quick debrief on what I’ve been working on…

The Vanilla Cake Paradox

A great vanilla cake is one of those things that every baker should know how to bake. It’s versatile, comforting, and a classic choice for most occasions/desserts. And the goal of many great vanilla cakes is simple - fluffy, vanilla-scented, creamy-rich crumbs - a joy to eat. Yet, I find it is one of the hardest cakes to make well.

Vanilla cakes are difficult because there is nowhere to hide.

Vanilla cake’s minimalism increases its difficulty. The flavor often comes from basic baking ingredients - butter, flour, sugar, etc., and because vanilla flavor can be quite subtle, the texture of the cake is usually under more scrutiny. And this can be deceiving: with fewer ingredients, the recipes will often look easier, but ultimately, I think it is a bit more challenging because it showcases your abilities as a baker.

If you think about this in contrast to, say, a chocolate cake (most of which are in the category of most forgiving cakes to make), the chocolate flavor pulls so much weight that even slip-ups with the texture are not as detrimental to the overall eating experience.

Overbake the chocolate cake a bit - sure, then you may get something a little drier, but for some reason, even those are acceptable somehow because it hits a chocolate receptor. And no, this is not scientific, but as a chocolate-lover, I can assure you we have something that triggers a sense of ultimate enjoyment when eating most anything chocolate ;).

This Chocolate Indulgence cake is slightly underbaked, because you can see the direct center is a bit mushy. Still a great cake to eat.

Underbake and you’ve got a fudgy-textured cake, which even has categories of its own, such as mudcakes and lava cakes.

But in vanilla cakes, these two scenarios (overbaking + underbaking) are often undesirable. And this makes vanilla cake a bit more complex.

The better a vanilla cake becomes, the less it actually tastes of vanilla.

There are two reasons for this.

First, vanilla, due to its subtle aromatic profile, is typically described as a “flavor enhancer.” Think about various vanilla desserts you like to eat. There’s a good chance that the vanilla is enhancing the buttery-rich flavors in your chocolate chip cookies or the eggy, umami-laced custard in your crème brûlée. I like to think of it as flavor symbiosis, where the aromatic profiles are directly benefiting from each other’s presence.

Second, when it comes to vanilla-flavored desserts, I feel as if we’re looking for a combination of flavors with textures. And this could certainly be true for other flavors, but I think it’s pretty important with vanilla desserts.

When you want vanilla ice cream, what you’re probably craving is a creamy, rich texture with dairy fat infused with vanilla.

With vanilla sugar cookies, perhaps it’s the sandiness of the crispy cookie crumb flavored with eggs and flour scented with vanilla.

And with a vanilla cake? There are a few directions we could go, but maybe it’s fluffy crumbs fragrant with butter, vanilla, and cooked flour with a slight umami from the eggs.

My most recent cake made me think more deeply about the interplay between flavor and texture.

That’s because I’ve been working on a vegan vanilla cake. And, it sounds contradictory, but I learned so much about eggs, butter, and liquid dairy when baking without them.

I first started developing my vanilla vegan cake recipe over a year ago, aiming to create a cake with a fluffy, aerated crumb that was pleasant to eat.

Most of the vegan cakes I’ve tried in the past were somewhat successful in that they baked up looking okay, but they had an unpalatable texture, turned to mush, or collapsed into a paste when eaten.

Then there’s the flavor - what happens when you remove all ingredients contributing to the flavor complexity of a vanilla cake? When you’re left with just vanilla, flour, sugar, oil (or vegan butter), there’s not much left. It tastes so empty.

As I mentioned earlier, the interplay of flavor and texture is so important in these vanilla cakes. When it’s underdeveloped like this, it takes a lot away from the eating experience.

I’ve hit several walls with my initial experiments trying to solve these problems. Whenever this happens repeatedly, I often have to shelve the recipe because I know my knowledge is just not there yet.

A brief overview of my experiments:

So I started breaking down the ingredients, one by one. Specifically, I had to isolate the functions of each ingredient and their contributions to flavor, taste, and structure (and therefore, texture).

And for my experiments, I take pictures of the cross-sections of my test cakes. This allows us to see structure and texture. You’ve got the crumb in and of itself (How big is it? What’s the moisture level?) and then the crumb network (how aerated? Any deflation? Sogginess at the bottom? Concave centers?) It’s like studying the trees, then taking a bird's-eye view to see the forest as an entire ecosystem.

All of these observations are essential in determining what ingredients do.

Oof - a tight gummy crumb AND concave center. Sometimes that’s due to underbaking, but in this case, it’s a lack of protein in the cake recipe.

Ok - so I fixed the concave surface, but now we have mushy crumbs. For this cake, I was testing the limitations of fat (type and amount). This one used vegan butter. These types of cakes don’t fare too well with vegan butter, so in my final recipe, I’ve opted for oil.

Butter was the easiest to substitute, milk and buttermilk were pretty straightforward, but eggs… geez, those are the hardest ingredient to substitute by far. It serves so many functions (emulsifier, structure, flavor, aeration, resilience, gelation) that I had to tackle each one experiment by experiment.

And by developing this recipe, I think I made some headway. Vegan cakes are traditionally and strangely protein-deficient. I now know that to get a texture that doesn’t immediately turn to mush or is extremely fragile, we have to increase the protein content. And the type and concentration matter.

And there’s a longer story to this as I tend to think about these sorts of problems for extended periods of time and how it all stemmed from my love of dosas, but to get to the important stuff, I ended up using chickpea flour and gluten (I know - it’s weird to bring up gluten with cakes) to get the texture of the vegan vanilla cake I wanted - fluffy with light, creamy crumb.

If you’re interested, I’ve written about it in detail in my Vegan Vanilla Cake Recipe.

And once I had the vanilla cake version, the chocolate vegan cake was pretty straightforward. As I said earlier, chocolate is one of the most forgiving styles of cake, and this one is no different.

Of course, I have other vanilla cake recipes for you to try, each with its own texture and flavor profile, and I’ve designed them for a specific purpose. It’s hard to pick favorites since I spend a good amount of time with each recipe, but my family really enjoys my Vanilla Chiffon. I make it for every birthday request and for my family’s huge New Year's Sheet Cake.

The hunt for a great (affordable) Dutch-processed cocoa powder

Are you all just as sad every time you hear news about the decline of cacao trees? From climate change to botanical virus outbreaks to market volatility, our relationship with chocolate is likely to change in the near future.

If you need a quick chocolate current events debrief, this short podcast by NPR’s ShortWave is great.

I was just getting used to paying more for my chocolate bars and cocoa powder, but I think last year’s shutdown of Droste, the maker of my favorite Dutch-processed cocoa powder, was super depressing. And now I’m reading that Ghirardelli is no longer making its small bags of Dutch-processed cocoa either. (Although it looks like they are still selling the huge foodservice containers of their Magestic Dutch-Processed Cocoa Powder.)

Since late last year, I’ve been desperately searching for a good, all-purpose, affordable Dutch-processed cocoa powder.

So far, I’ve had success with Rodelle flavor and texture-wise, which I buy in bulk at Costco.

It’s a big bag at 25 ounces, but at 68 cents an ounce, it’s pretty economical.

If you’re still baking chocolate desserts, what type of cocoa powder are you all using?

Thank you so much for reading today, and happy baking!

🧁 Adriana

Hi, it’s Cookie! I have been quite busy these past couple of months. There have been so many crumbs that need addressing now that Mom is starting to bake more and film videos. Hopefully, she will be done soon, so I can resume napping 90% of my day!