Cake
Sweet baked goods built on an aerated batter, where tenderness is achieved by limiting gluten development rather than encouraging it.
What unites the family
Structure comes from egg and starch setting around gas cells that were introduced mechanically or chemically, with gluten development deliberately kept low.
Cake is bread’s opposite, mechanically
Where bread builds a gluten network and ferments gas into it, cake introduces gas first — as air beaten into fat and sugar, as air whipped into eggs, or as carbon dioxide released by a chemical leavener — and then sets a structure around it before the gas escapes.
High sugar and high fat both interfere with gluten formation, which is why cake recipes tolerate, and often require, mixing that would ruin bread. The failure mode is the reverse too: overmixing a cake batter develops enough gluten to make it tough and to cause tunnelling.
Why cakes fail near the end
Most cake faults are set in the oven rather than in the bowl, because the structure is a race. Gas expands and the batter rises before egg proteins coagulate and starch gelatinises enough to hold the shape. If the leavening is too aggressive, or the structure sets too late, the risen batter collapses — which is what a sunken cake usually is.
Related
Products in this family
A creamed batter set by egg and starch around mechanically and chemically produced gas.
Chemically leavened and set by egg and starch, though mixed by a method that deliberately avoids the creaming stage.
Placed in the cake family because it is an egg-and-starch batter, though it sits deliberately at the boundary with confectionery and is defined largely by how little it does what cakes do.
The cake family’s reference product.
Named a bread and built like a cake. Filed by method, because the method is what predicts how it behaves.
A pragmatic placement rather than a structural one. It is set by egg protein rather than by a flour network holding gas, which the record states plainly.
An oil-based chemically leavened batter set by egg and starch.
The reference creamed batter for the family.
A creamed batter carrying a fruit load heavier than itself.
The family’s standard creamed batter, baked small.
An acidic creamed batter leavened by bicarbonate reacting with buttermilk and vinegar.
A whisked foam sponge — aerated mechanically and set by egg and starch.
A fat-free egg-white foam, which is the family’s aeration mechanism taken to its extreme.
Covered in
How to store baked things, and why the rules differ
A cake’s storage question is usually about its filling and icing rather than its crumb.
What freezes well, and what freezing actually does
Batters, baked cakes and icing all behave differently, and the guide separates them.
Reheating: what it can undo, and what it cannot
Usually not improved by reheating at all, and the guide says why.
History and culture
The family the record explains the emergence of.