Compared to this lumpy, curdled mixture, which was made without adding any flour. In fact, the cake has “a nicer, finer grain because you’re not completely breaking the emulsion, then having to bring it back together.” Beaten butter, sugar, and eggs, with a little flour added. “The flour doesn’t make the cake any denser,” she says. And then I’ll put the fourth egg in after that.”Īs Susan explains, this trick works because the flour acts like a keystone, sitting between the water molecules and fat molecules throughout the mixture and holding them in place to yield an evenly blended batter. And usually, the third egg is the one that does it.” As soon as the batter starts to look slightly curdled, “I’ll give it a couple of tablespoons of the dry ingredients and then it comes right back. The second egg is still OK, but it starts to look a little slimy. “Usually the first egg, it’s no problem, because you’re not pushing the ratios that much.
“A lot of cake recipes have around four eggs,” she explains. As you beat the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar, add a few tablespoons of the recipe's flour.
To prevent her cake batters from curdling, Susan uses one simple trick: She adds a couple tablespoons of the recipe’s flour when she mixes in the eggs. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are.” “The biggest lie is that if you have everything at room temperature, you’re fine,” Susan says. Susan’s simple trick to prevent curdled cake batterĪvoiding curdled cake batter starts with using room temperature ingredients, but that’s not necessarily a guarantee of success. This affects the baked cake - and not in a good way.” The result is a coarser, less even crumb. With a broken batter, she explains that you could “get little chunks of butter that stay whole when they go into the oven. You want the final texture of your cake to have a “fine grain and not too many bubbles,” says King Arthur recipe tester Melanie Wanders. When this happens, your cake batter will look lumpy and curdled, rather than smooth and even. And sometimes, there’s simply too much water in the mixture and not enough fat to hold it, no matter how careful you are. Or if you rush while beating in the eggs, the emulsion won’t be stable enough to hold in place. This can happen for several reasons: If your eggs are just slightly too cold, they may cause the soft butter to seize up, breaking the emulsion. The emulsion breaks when the fat can no longer hold the water. But that suspension is delicate - remember, fat and water don’t want to be together, and they’re always looking for an excuse to bolt away from each other.
When cake batter is made properly, it forms a stabilized matrix of suspended fat, water, and air to create a smooth, velvety batter. Many (but not all) butter-based cakes call for you to cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then follow with dry ingredients and milk. Since water and fat don’t naturally get along, this process is done slowly, adding eggs one at a time and waiting until they’re completely mixed - and the water and fat have blended - before trying to force in more water by adding another egg.
In some butter-based cakes, eggs (which contain water) are added to creamed butter and sugar (which is mostly fat) to create what Susan refers to as a “reverse emulsion” - water suspended in fat, rather than the opposite. This is basically the whole point of emulsions: taking these two incompatible substances and making them come together happily, like a culinary Pride and Prejudice. But think about what happens if you mix oil and water - they stay separate, because they don’t want to blend. Most emulsions we encounter are a suspension of fat in water. And that starts with understanding the base of your batter: emulsions.
#Batter and crumb professional#
So how do you prevent it from happening? Longtime King Arthur baker and former professional pastry chef Susan Reid has a handy trick up her sleeve.īut first, it’s important to know why this unsightly disaster strikes. Have you ever blissfully started baking a cake … until suddenly you look down and your beautiful batter has turned into a lumpy, curdled mess?Ī broken batter isn’t what you want while baking.
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