Finally! After almost four days of being sick I finally felt better today. And that means it was time to cook my 100th recipe with Martha’s Yellow Layer Cake from her All-American section on page 65.
Martha’s blurb for this cake talks a bit about chemical leaveners like baking soda and powder and how they changed the way people bake. I found this interesting from the perspective of having studied at a school that taught the French culinary tradition. The French don’t like chemical leaveners, preferring instead to use the old-fashioned method of using whipped eggs to give cakes volume. If you’ve read Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (and I’m sure you have, right?), you’ll notice that all her cake recipes use whipped eggs instead of chemical leaveners.
With all due respect to the French tradition and the late, great Ms. Child, I’ve never understood the reasoning behind this. Things like baking powder and soda give us more freedom to use plenty of butter in our cakes to give them moisture. They also make life much easier! Having tried both ways, I’m a big fan of the modern use of chemical leaveners — it’s one of those rare times where doing it the simpler way actually yields better results.
This yellow cake was moist, dense and delicious! I made a simple milk chocolate frosting for it. That’s the thing with frosting, whether you go for a complex buttercream or quick whipped one using powdered sugar and creamy butter, it always makes whatever cake you’re making more yummy!
As you can see from the picture, my cake is not as tall or as beautiful as Martha’s. This is why I love making bundt cakes, because I can always make them look gorgeous! I still haven’t figured out how to get my layer cakes looking as good as they taste. But this yellow cake was still a fun way to celebrate 100 recipes from Martha’s American Food!
