Chas, I agree that cake flour isn't a staple in many kitchens. However, I seldom use cake flour, all the flour in that wedding cake was all purpose, King Arthur. None of the recipes even called for cake flour!

My "regular" round cake pans are 8 inch pans, but recipes vary in the amount of batter they make.

Annie

I usually use Gold Medal AP for cakes. It's lighter than King Arthur, but not as light as Swansdown. One thing you get from scratch baking is control over your ingredients. The thing about using a mix is you have to be familiar with the mix to plan a result when you stray from the box.

Chas, I'm confused. Did you use a layer mix? I don't think you meant you used the AF mix for the peach project. If that's so, there are probably a couple of culprits to the doming. One is that the outside of the layer bakes faster so doesn't rise as much before it's solid. The other is that the peach and adjustment might have made the batter too heavy. Adding a little baking powder might have helped. The Swansdown might have also made a big difference. :) Or you can use Cake Strips to keep the edges cool. I don't really like them, but it's something to try if you like.

OTOH, you had a good cake with a nice texture, and I assume it tastes good. I used to make this kind of cake all the time (I don't now because I only make cakes for company nowadays). Throw together some batter and some stuff and bake it and enjoy whatever happens. :) Cake is cake. Cake is good. Good cakes are better. It sounds like a good cake.

They were just talking in the other thread about how cake mixes are smaller than they used to be. 9" used to be the standard layer cake. I have pans from 5"-12". You can get good baking pans on Amazon. I like Fat Daddio. The restaurant supply may or may not be cheaper. At the store near me, the pans are good quality, though anonymous for the most part.

Too hot an oven causes a cake to peak in the center. I suggest an oven thermometer> And I always have cake flour....and I always make an angelfood cake from scratch...there is a huge difference between a mix angelfood and a scratch one. And egg yolks can be frozen for use later in custards or whatever.

Hollandaise!

Things that cause a cake to peak in the center....

1. Batter too stiff - too much flour - or the flour had too much gluten/protein which absorbed more of the liquid in the recipe than using a low-protein flour. If a recipe calls for cake flour and you use a National Brand of bleached all-purpose flour, you may need to use a little less flour due to the increase in gluten/protein.

Gluten is like a sponge. If you use low-protein cake flour (8g protein per cup), you are already assured you have less gluten-development to begin with, and less hydration needed. If you use Bleached National Brands of all-purpose flour (Gold Medal and Pillsbury - 11g protein) you will increase the protein and the potential for more gluten-development which makes for poorer cake quality - especially if the gluten is over-developed during mixing, and the batter may be dryer/stiffer. If Unbleached King Arthur All-purpose Flour is used (13g protein) - that is entirely too high for making cake, and is a flour best used for yeast breads, cream puffs, puff pastry, pasta and pizza - not delicate cakes.

There are also benefits to using bleached flour for cakes over unbleached flour, and flour milled from soft wheat over hard wheat or a mixture of hard and soft wheat. The high amount of gluten needed for yeast breads is disastrous for quick breads, cakes, muffins, pancakes, biscuits and most kinds of cookies.

2. Oven too hot at beginning of baking period (as lindac92 pointed out - get an oven thermometer to check the ACTUAL temperature, and test it in the area of the oven where you will be baking the cake). This will also result in cracks on the top. And cracks on the top can also develop from using the incorrect amount of batter for the pan size.

3. Over-mixed the batter. This happens when the cake batter was beat too long after all the dry ingredients were incorporated, and that over-developed the gluten. This is common when people use a stand mixer for mixing batter (or dough) which don't require a lot of gluten-development - like cakes, quick breads, cookies, etc. - or they use a flour with too much gluten. It's just too easy to let the machine do the work. Chances are there were also channels in the cake crumb, a telltale sign of over-mixing.

The reason cake flour is used is because it has a lower amount of gluten than all-purpose flour to begin with. Cake flour is milled from soft wheat (low-protein/gluten), which is a better choice for making cakes, while all-purpose flour is milled from a mix of hard and soft wheat. Choosing a flour milled from soft wheat (such as cake flour) will improve the cake texture.

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--You can always purchase a carton of egg whites for making an angel food cake and avoid using whole eggs (especially at the price of whole shell eggs these days :-). (My cousin and I regularly made angel food cakes when we were kids 10-11 years old. That's what we used the cracked eggs for after we gathered the eggs. ;-)

--The common proportions for an angel food cake are: the weight of the sugar equals the weight of the egg whites, and the weight of the flour is 1/3 the weight of the sugar. Since the size of the egg whites will vary, it's best if you can find a recipe that has the weight of the whites, not just the number of them.

--You will also want to choose a recipe for angel food cake that includes cream of tartar, which increases the volume, whitens the crumb, produces a finer texture, and makes the cake shrink less.

-Grainlady

Thanks guys, plllog: no, not an angel food mix; it was an 18oz yellow cake mix. Grainlady: I knew about the clear differences between cake, ap and bread flour, but I certainly didn't know that gluten absorbed extra liquid. Good to know.

One reason I asked about pan size was to determine how much batter is expected to rise; or how many layers could reasonably be made from a mix or a classic recipe based on volume or weight of whatever.

I have been attempting to work more with low gluten flours. Now that I am in The South, I have made multiple attempts to make biscuits with little success. I use White Lily or Martha White flour, with minimal mixing but my loft is still poor. If I try a scratch cake, I guess I could use White Lily instead of the Swansdown. And yes annie, I have taken strong note of your use of all purpose flour for your fabulous cakes. Technique and experience over specialized ingredients! We'll see if I get any.

There are a few techniques in cake baking that might be helpful (I learned them from my old Betty Crocker cookbook), such as after filling, gently tap & shake the pan flat against the counter or table to help release any bubbles & settle the batter evenly. Sometimes I even use a spatula to create a sort of depression in the center of the batter, if I don't want it to hump up.

I don't use cake flour, but my recipes offer a substitute, which is to use a slightly smaller amount of regular flour.

I use Betty Crocker's 1 bowl cake recipes from my 1960s cookbook - almost as fast as a mix, IMO. You put everything in 1 bowl & use a mixer for a specified amount of time, i.e. 1/2 minute on low speed, 3 minutes on high. They are practically foolproof.

As a Betty Crocker recipe should be! Foolproof that is. Those are some of the best tested recipes on the planet. :)

Chas, a mix box or published recipe should say what size pans it is meant to fill. Expected rise, however, is about the batter, baking powder and weight. The more cakes you bake, the more you'll be able to judge for yourself and your equipment. If you want to learn your ingredients and equipment, you can't beat baking a scratch cake twice a week, or even once a week.

Found it! www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38760/flour-preferences Scroll down a few messages and you'll find Antilope's protein content of different flours chart. I got flummoxed reading it at first because a lot of the differences disappear in the posted information by the different companies because of rounding error.

I checked because, while I've never encountered White Lily, I was thinking that Martha White was a soft flour, as it is, and it should be fine for biscuits. It sounds like you're doing it right, but I'm not a biscuit expert. I'm wondering if humidity has been an issue? If you're using baking powder, is it fresh? Moisture in the air can partially activate it. Or is your dough too dry? Have you tried Trailrunner's recipe for cultured buttermilk biscuits?

BTW, the reason I use Gold Medal for cakes is that I like a firmer crumb. I don't want a flyaway light cake, but one which has a little spring and resistance.

I also want a sturdier cake, especially when I'm doing those 6 or 8 layer cakes that need to be stacked (even though I do use dowels for support on each layer). So AP flour works for me.

If it helps, I also have biscuit "fails" when I use Martha White/White Lily flour, although Elery says that's all his mother would use. Grandma was extremely frugal and we didn't have much extra money, so we used whatever we had, no special ingredients. I think, BTW, that Martha White is the company that bought out White Lily, so they're all one anyway if my memory serves me at all. I just plug along with my all purpose, which I use for everything from muffins and scones to quick breads to cakes to yeast breads. I can hear Grandma reminding me, though, that biscuits need a "light" hand (stop handling that dough, and BE CAREFUL, LOL) and that there was no possible way my 7 year old self could knead bread too hard or too much. I still rely a lot on how things feel and look and less on exact measurements.

Annie

annie: on yeast breads, I don't measure and know the feel, but for biscuits I don't have the feel yet. Not that my book learnin' is doing any good, but the White Lily buy out is a little worse and caused lots of consternation down here. They were bought by Smuckers!!

Oh dear! Chas...looks like you will have to do a lot of biscuit practice in the future to get the feel!...have fun eating the "failures".

Here's Trailrunner's biscuit recipe. These are two versions, plus some notes, that I've complied from different threads. The formatting and titles are mine. The rest is verbatim.

Trailrunner's Bulgarian Biscuit Bonanza

I love love love cooking with buttermilk. Not just any buttermilk but
the Bulgarian kind that is so thick on the top that you have to shake
and shake to get it blended. It is the most wonderful product. I get it
at WalMart and it keeps for weeks and weeks, much like yogurt.

OK here are 3 ways to use it. Starting with the Buttermilk biscuits. I
will say here and now that I use only "real" stuff to cook. I don't
like to put one single calorie in my mouth unless it is really yummy. I
find that you eat way less when what you eat tastes wonderful and has
great " mouth feel". There was a French woman who wrote a book about
this a few years back. She was right on , at least I think so.

Buttermilk biscuits ( adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

Place 2 c AP flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

pulse till it is blended...few seconds.

Using a large hole grater , grate 5 Tbsp of frozen salted butter on
top of the flour. Alternatively cut the butter into 1/4 inch dice and
freeze on a plate. Pulse only till it is mixed...few seconds. Better to
have tiny pieces of butter . Now pour this into a chilled bowl and add
about 1 c very cold buttermilk. Toss lightly till every bit of flour is
good and wet. Don't over mix just toss lightly. It may take even more.
More is better than not enough. Gently turn the dough out on a well
floured countertop. I use my soapstone . Turn your convection bake to
500. Have a flat shiny cookie sheet ready, and spray with Pam. Lightly
pat the dough with floured hands till it is 1/2 to 3/4 " thick. Using a
well-floured biscuit cutter press firmly straight down to cut the
biscuits. DONOT twist the cutter and they won't rise. Reflour before
each cut. Take the scraps and push them lightly up next to the other
scraps and cut more. Donot overlap them. Smoosh them together from the
sides...this is a scientific term:) Place the biscuits on the cookie
sheet so they are just touching. Bake at 500 for 12-15 min in the top
1/3 of the oven till nicely golden brown.

Trailrunner's Buttermilk biscuit recipe

First tips :::: You need to cut the cold
butter into diced tiny pieces and freeze while you are getting
everything else ready or else grate the frozen butter into the flour
just before adding the milk. I then put everything into the freezer
while i am getting out the buttermilk and preheating the oven. it can't
be too cold !!

• 2c all purpose unbleached flour ( I don't sift before)
• 1Tbsp baking powder
  
• 1/4 tsp baking soda

I sift these three things together after I measure. Add 1 tsp salt.
Chill in freezer while getting the butter ready. Or grate in the butter
and then chill.

• 5 Tbsp real butter . I cut the whole piece length wise in 1/4's and
  then slice so i get tiny cubes. Easy peasy. Freeze on plate.( see above
  if grating)

Measure out approx 2/3 c very cold whole buttermilk. Put all the dry
ingred. into your food processor. Add the diced butter on top and pulse
just till barely mixed. It is better to have pieces than to have dust :)
Pour this back into your cold bowl from before and add all the milk.
Toss with a fork. Add more if needed...I always do until it is all wet
but not soggy. Better to be too wet than too dry :)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees..I use convection.

Dust countertop ..beautiful soapstone...with a heavy coating of
flour. Scrape out the dough onto flour and very lightly pat into a
rectangle. Cut with biscuit cutter. This is important...DONOT twist the
cutter as you press down...it twists and seals the edges of the biscuits
and they won't rise . Place on greased flat baking sheet w/o
edges...very important. Have biscuits just touching. Now some folks use a
layer cake pan with sides and make the biscuits very wet and use a lot
of flour on counter and cut them and place in greased pan. I like this
kind too...come out really tall in the close pan but no brown sides. You
have to decide which you like.

Bake 12-15 min. watch as your oven may be hotter/colder. EAT !!

Trailrunner's Notes

Now for biscuits I gotta tell you that I make the best buttermilk buscuits you have ever put in your mouth. The trick with them is have the butter frozen...yep and you grate it over the flour in the food processor and then buzz it just a few seconds. Freeze in processor bowl for one hour. Then use way more buttermilk than you think you are going to need and stir it lightly in with a fork till you have a very very soft dough. Too soft to deal with. Dump it on a very well floured counter and pat very lightly with floured hands to 1/2" thick...even 3/4 " is great. Then cut straight down with a well floured cutter...never ever twist the cutter. Pick them up and place them just touching on the greased cookie sheet. And bake at 500...yep 500 for about 12 min, Make sure you use 1/4 tsp of baking soda if you use buttermilk also. And work quickly.

chas045-

Protein content and water absorption capacity of white flours from CookWise by Shirley O. Corriher - page 10.

Approximate volume of flour needed to absorb 1 cup of water to form a sticky dough ball in a food processor. These amounts may vary some with individual measuring techniques.

14g/cup protein content - Bread Flour - 2 cups (packed) + 1 T.

13g/cup protein content - Unbleached - 2 c. (packed) + 2 T.

12g/cup protein content - All-purpose - 2-1/4 c.

11g/cup protein content - All-purpose - 2-1/3 c. + 1 T.

10g/cup protein content - All-purpose - 2-1/2 c.

9g/cup protein content - Southern All-purpose - 2-1/2 c. + 2 T.

8g/cup protein content - Cake - 2-3/4 c.

chas, I'm sure you'll get that "feel" where it's right, with a couple of good batches. Too bad about having to eat all those biscuits while getting it right. Ahem.

Smuckers? Aw, heck. The last I knew Pillsbury owned Martha White, so now Smuckers bought them, apparently, and have both Martha White AND White Lily, at least according to Wikipedia. (sigh)

No matter for me, I still just use all purpose for just about everything, LOL.

Annie

Well, Annie, isn't that why they call it all purpose?

LOL, plllog, that's what I thought, but suddenly we have all this information about how we have to have 15 different kinds/brands/grinds of flours and 29 different grains and nuts and various acids and a PhD in chemistry to bake and seven hundred dollars worth of equipment. Grandma never told me that, I wonder how she could have left it out? So I just keep plugging along....(grin)

I'm still appalled that Smuckers has both Martha White AND White Lily, though. Oh, and I actually used White Lily flour once to bake biscuits, at Elery's urging. I didn't like them, I thought they were not the right texture, so part of the equation is what you are used to, I think.

Annie

So true about the what you're used to.

I find all the science of baking interesting, and I do use different flours, including home milled, for different things, but if I only could have one, I'd choose Gold Medal white AP. :)

I also learned when I was young that if you only care that the outcome is "cake", it doesn't matter much what you put in it, so long as you don't forget the baking powder. A little more or less sugar, no problem. An egg more or less, sure. Measure flour, etc., with a drinking glass, fine. Add the squishy strawberries, some granola, and a bit of coffee left from breakfast, delicious. Just don't forget the baking powder, and if the batter looks like cake batter, pours like cake batter, and tastes like cake batter, it's cake batter, and you'll get cake if you bake it. :)

See, that's how I feel about cake mix. If you just want a cake, make a mix. Grab a can of frosting while you're at it and you're done.

BUT, if you want a GOOD cake, you've got to spend a bit more time and effort and thought, but I still think I can bake a darned good cake with all purpose, I don't need cake flour or a scale or a convection oven or even a $500 mixer. Just time, thought, care and a bit of practice, and that wooden spoon that Dad made for me out in his shop...

Annie

Ah, well, Annie, we didn't have cake mixes or a mixer or an oven. Just scratch ingredients, a mixing bowl sized cheap aluminum pot, a table fork, and a way to bake on a gas ring that was similar to the Omnia oven. It's a ring pan with a wide flue up the middle and a vented solid top which reflects the heat down. It worked. It made cake. It made good cake. With AP flour. :) But we didn't usually frost it or anything like that, and usually didn't decorate it at all. It was just cake. In the beginning, I did give it time and thought, but I went in already knowing how to bake a cake. A friend showed me the light on how to improvise successfully. Practice showed me the difference between two and three eggs, depending on how many we had. The only fail was the one time I forgot the baking powder (it came in little packets and was very hard to measure, which is how I learned that the exact amount doesn't mean that much as long as it's there). Even that was salvageable as a kind of dense pastry bottom with fruit.

I have good cake recipes. I have one that is a perfect bundt cake with a perfect crumb. I bake them. People like them. But they like the improvisational ones too. :) People just like cake!

good heavens! Where did you grow up? I have never heard of baking powder in little packets.

It's not where I grew up. It's where I was living abroad. In a small town in the middle of nowhere. The only baking powder and baking soda came in small packets. I can't remember exactly how much was in them, and they were metric. Maybe somewhere between one and two tablespoons in volume.

I've never made a from-scratch cake. Probably because I don't like cake that much. Because of my dislike, I refused to have a cake at my wedding. So the few times I "made" a cake, it was from a mix. It was good enough for me because I didn't want to spend a lot of time & effort on fixing something I didn't like. I'm the same with cookies. Don't like them that much, so I don't make them. Can't deal with fussing over dropping dough balls and using multiple baking pans. If I need some, I'll buy them at the grocery store bakery.

I know this sounds silly, but those are a few of my many personal food quirks. Plus we've got a couple of high quality independent bakeries near by, so if I absolutely have to have a slice of cake, I can buy one there. Same with cookies.

That said, I've been hankering for some Greek paximadia (twice baked cookies, similar in shape to Italian biscotti). I love them, so I don't mind baking them. That's what I'll be making this weekend.

When I was a child, my favorite cake to make was a chiffon cake, similar tothis recipe from MS. I generally made all my own birthday cakes after the age of 7 or 8 so that I could make what I liked best. One other cake I liked was chocolate marble, but I also liked pound cakes and Angel food. I actually preferred chiffon to angel food, however. I have not baked many cakes recently because I no longer celebrate birthdays, and I do not think of cake as everyday food, despite what Marie Antoinette may have said. When I do make a cake, I have to give most of it away. I learned to bake from my Alsatian relatives, and they would never use a boxed mix. My grandmother frequently make German Chocolate Cake, but that's partly because we always had tons of pecans, which she used on the cake.

Lars, angel food cake was always my cake of choice for birthdays too. Since my birthday is the end of May, it always coincided with fresh strawberries, which were very nice with angel food cake!

Shambo, I thought of you as Elery and I were making baklava for Mother's birthday last week! Mother is 80 and doesn't really like cake much either, although she'll eat my homemade hot milk cake with berries. She much prefers pie and cheesecake, but her favorite is baklava, so that's what she gets!

Annie

I'm with your mom. I like fruit pies and plain cheesecake much better than any sort of cake. How funny about the baklava, though. At 80 years old, she deserves to eat something she actually enjoys. I'm sure it was a great celebration.

Doesn't humidity affect how much liquid a given type of flour will absorb?