care to share your best moist vanilla cake recipe - Page 4

Sure, I got it here http://www.cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-4313-4-Vanilla-Butter-Cake-from-The-Mermaid-Bakery.html
The only changes I made are from AP flour to cake flour (10 1/2 oz), and whole buttermilk instead of soured milk.. I tried several recipes and this one was always the winner.....

I wonder in the long run if scratch cakes or doctored mixes are cheaper. Anybody done a price comparison?

*raising hand* I have... I cost my cakes carefully.. My scratch cakes are more expensive.. but not much more than most doctored mixes.. a lot more than plain mixes...... I cost my fillings and icings too.. (dh is an accountant )

I totally agree!!

It really depends on the recipe.. if you use premium ingredients scratch will be more costly every time. Real vanilla as opposed to immitation.. real vanilla pods rather than extracts.. imported chocolate rather than Hershey's..

It costs me about $1/serving to make my recipes (including fillings). Some are more and some are a tiny bit less, but $1/serving is about average for a cake without a premium finish like ganache or fondant.

Which recipe SW did you try? The only one of her's that I have tried is the Classic Yellow Cake and I find it to be quite good provided you make it right. Improper mixing and overbaking can ruin the texture and flavor. My customers enjoy it very much.

I have tried the WASC recipe and I don't care for it.. it's not horrid by any means, but it's a mix cake and has all of the qualities of a mix which I don't care for.. mostly the texture. I have a great love for baking though so I enjoy the process of scratch baking. I figure if I'm going to measure and add a bunch of stuff I might as well measure the flour and sugar and leaveners too.. LOL.

It was several years ago, but I think it was called a "Lady Baltimore" cake which is basically a white cake. It was very dense and not very sweet. The only person that liked it was used to eating cakes from England. I guess it just depends on what you are used to. Honestly I think a lot of it has to do with age also. The younger crowd has grown up on cake mixes and I think are more used to the higer levels of sugar in everything. I know my nieces and nephews prefer a cake mix to scratch. Maybe an older more refined palate prefers scratch?

Chef Toba Garrett offers her recipe for Moist Yellow Cake through epicurious.com. I have tasted this cake when she baked it for class, I have made this cake at home, and I must say it is the best yellow cake I have ever tasted. I will not say others are not good, as I have not tried them. I stick with this cake - it is literally fool-proof.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/MOIST-YELLOW-CAKE-109358

Theresa

I haven't tried that one yet. I read somewhere when searching for the recipe that there is a typo in the book (I don't have the book.. I looked at it in the library so I can't check) regarding the baking powder.. it should be 1 TBSP and it said 3 TBSP. I'll have to look when I go back to the library.

Anyway.. the yellow cake is quite good and definitely sweet. I leave out some of the sugar and it's still plenty sweet. I don't tend to care for white cakes as I like the flavor and texture that the fat from the yolks impart on a cake.

You are definitely right about it's what you are used to. My kiddos love scratch cakes and meringue based buttercreams.. but it is what they have grown up with. The won't eat grocery store cakes.. my son will eat a little of the cake, but won't touch the frosting and my daughter just has ice cream at parties. Maybe I am raising cake snobs.. . My daughter prefers dark chocolate to milk chocolate and she's only 7.

I think most people don't know enough to care about where the cake came from and if pressed they probably wouldn't be able to tell if it was a doctored mix or a scratch cake. I can tell a mix when I taste one and I don't care for them. I give my customers what I love and so far.. they have all loved it too. If you make a great mix cake (doctored or not) and your customers/family loves it.. that's what matters.

Sorry to babble.. I am severely sleep deprived.. I got back from vacation on Friday (the 15th) and had a wedding cake complete with gumpaste flowers due today.. never again.

I don't care for Toba's yellow cake.. it's been a long time since I tried it, but I found it to be bland. I may have to try it again.

I've tried Sylvia's Classic Yellow cake several times -- to no avail! Sometimes it bakes up great and is delicious and other times it bakes too dry and crumbly. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it so I quit using it. By the way, she's coming out with another book in October!

Some answers and comments to your ?s & comments

......WASC has an AWFUL texture. It is rubbery and dense and terribly bland with a hint of cake box chemically taste......

I don't understand what you could be doing wrong This recipe has *NEVER* had a rubbery texture. Dense.....yes! It's ment to be a cross between a 'regular' cake and a pound cake. Chemical taste.........everyone taste buds are different. Taste is what you 'grew up with' Maybe you are from a different generation.

......is that 1 cup sifted, or 1 cup flour then sift?......
I never sift. In today's techknowledge flour dosen't need to be sifted.

What's wrong w/water? YaH, from time to time I have used milk and other times heavy cream. Just a very slight difference in taste (richer).

.....Is this cake really white? Seems like with the egg yolks it would technically be a yellow cake.......
Yes, it is white. The yolks make a stronger cake that will stand up to stacking. I have made 100s of wedding cakes w/this recipe when I had my shop.

???? You do need to sift.. especially if you are baking from scratch. I have found too many odd things in flour and powdered sugar to not sift. If you measure heavily packed flour you will have more than a cup by weight and change the texture of, or ruin, your cake. Recipes will assume that you have aerated your flour before you scoop and level in your measuring cup. You don't need to sift and then measure, but you should run a whisk through it. You can pack a lot more than what is considered 1 cup of flour into a 1 cup measuring cup.

Cindy.. I have never had an issue with the yellow cake from Sylvia Weinstock's book.. well once, but it was because I was rushing and didn't cream the butter and sugar enough.. lesson learned.. It's interesting how we all have different experiences with the same recipes.

edited for a typo

Oh come on you chicken, give it a whirl. LOL! The pink cake w/the baby booties in my gallery is this recipe (both tiers; that's the one w/a cracked layer in the middle of the bottom tier) as is the pink cake w/the diaper caddy on top (bottom tier only) - and in both instances each cake was 3 layers. Both of those cakes traveled well fully stacked.

I will vouch for jkalman's recommendation of the SW yellow cake, though; she recommended it to me a while back and I'd say it runs a close second to the RR cake for me. I only prefer the RR because it's lighter and just a little bit more..."something". But both have a great flavor, and I was excited to have a YUMMY denser vanilla cake option.

The RR cake BTW is not a "light" cake in the sense of "lowfat". Who knows though, maybe if you do the nutritional info it is healthier than other white cakes. Sure doesn't taste like it, that's for sure. I feel like a real oinker when I am eating every last trimming and the smallest bits that might be stuck to the pan. I won't let anyone near me when I bake this cake...MINE MINE MINE!
ETA: I think the confusion is, it's on Cooking Light's website. But notice that it's actually in their forums. Even people who like to cook light like their cakes fully fatty ROTFL!!!

I know there have been threads debating the merits of scratch vs mix probably since CC was born, and the bottom line is IMHO, as others have said: it's what you and your customers/family like, there is no right answer unless the question is specifically about the use of certain ingredients. For my part, I made the WASC, everyone at the party loved it. But I could taste that chemical something-or-other, and have opted to not make it again. Maybe I'm nuts, since they all liked it! But I do have a hard time baking something I don't stand behind, and I get a certain thrill from figuring out a good scratch recipe. Lots of heartache too though lol.

Yeah, the whole sifting thing throws me for a loop. I sift everything..even cake mixes. When I was in college and took a Nutrition class, we were taught to sift flour before measuring, but I have noticed if I do this with my sugar cookie recipe they are too soft. I'm not sure there is a general consensus on this subject.

So not much of a difference in taste between water and milk? I'm going to try this recipe tonight and I will post my opinion!

Boy Howdy, you got that right... Baaauck Baaauck
heeheehee....... I agree wholeheartedly... I love to bake... anything.. cakes, cookies, pastries, candy..... you name it..... I love to bake it.. I have "educated" my family's palate, but my distant family is another matter.. But hey.. to each his own I say...
Now pass me a piece of that RR cake...