I know there is a 163 page thread on gourmet flavors but after about 25 pages I was dissapointed to see that all the ideas revolved around WASC. I know that alot of people love that recipe and I bet if I made it I would too but the people that I know and make cakes for ALL pretty much insist on scratch cakes with natural "real" ingredients. No boxed mixes.

Are there any other scratch bakers out there that can lend a hand on gourmet flavor and how you achieve them in your scratch recipes? Also if you have a yellow cake you love let me know. I have been using the cake bible yellow butter cake recipe and I have had some dry results and dont love it. Tried a couple of others that are good but looking for great if you know what I mean.

I mean no disrespect at all to those of you who use doctored mixes. I am sure they are delicious and your clients love them. I simply prefer scratch baking with natural ingredients and so do those I make cakes for.

bump

I'm with you. I make cakes from scratch and still haven't found a yellow cake I love. I also would like to try more creative cakes.


Any suggestions please!

I'm with you two - I love Mac'sMoms list of cakes, but I really wish I knew how to create gourmet flavors in scratch cakes. The best i'm doing is to create flavor combo's with the filling and frosting.

My go to cake recipes are:
Wilton Butter Yellow Cake
Collette Peter's Chocolate Cake (with bourbon and coffee)

I love my chocolate cake recipe, I will have to try the wilton yellow cake. Is it just good sugarnspice or do you bite in and go WOW that is rich and delicious? That is how I feel about my chocolate cake recipe and would love the same to be said of my yellow cake. THose i make it for love it by I am kinda neutral about it.

I also try to let my creativity come through in the fillings and buttercreams but want to really expand my flavors.

While I have not done it. I think if you have a good stand by scratch recipe and you use the same priniples as alot of the WASC gourmet recipes you should get the same effect. (ei- use your basic recipe but get creative with the wet ingredients) So if you wanted to try say a pina colada you might sub the milk/water in your recipe with some coconut milk & pineapple juice, and use rum/cocunut/pina colada extracts, if your recipe calls for sour cream you can also use flavored yogurt in place of sour cream (so a pina colada yogurt).

Once you get started you start to think of lots of ways to change up a recipe. I think like all baking it is a little bit of trail & error, you play with the recipes a bit until you get the perfect mix. Someone on the other thread did mention a good stand by scartch recipe the use to "doctor", not sure what it is though.

I love "my" scratch chocolate cake (Epicurious.com Double Chocolate Layer Cake), but have yet to find a yellow or white scratch cake that consistently turns out ... therefore, I start with a mix. I will try the Wilton Butter Cake, but would love to have your basic white and yellow recipes to try some of the gourmet ideas with.

Thanks!
Martha

I have tried both the Wilton butter cake and the white cake and i have to say that they are ok but nothing that special. There's not that much flavor to them..... I'm still looking for a good white and butter recipe that also consistantly turns out and tastes amazing.

I use the 1-2-3-4 cake recipe on the box of cake flour with a few added things like 2 heaping Tbs sour cream, 1 Tbs oil then delete 1/4 cup of the milk.

Where would I find the Wilton butter cake recipe? I went to the site and found yellow cake is that it?

WOW It looks like I am not alone in my search for an amazing yellow or white recipe! I hope someone takes pity on us and posts there "blow you away" yellow cake recipe (if one exsists) why is yellow cake so much more difficult to get good results with than chocolate?

Well I can help you whittle one recipe out -- Sylvia Weinstock's yellow cake from scratch recipe has an awesome flavor, but it doesn't bake consistently. Sometimes it bakes up dry and other times it bakes just fine. I've heard this complaint (not only from personal experience) but from other experienced bakers who have had the same problem.

Bob....I woner why that happens. That is the problem that I had with the cake bible yellow butter cake recipe. I used it for a friends wedding and it was awesome....fast forward...same ingredients..same technique and now it is hit or miss. Its not my oven. It is calibrated well. I have tried underbaking it by a minute or two to retain moisture and it falls in the center if I do that and is noticably underbaked in the center. I have yet to hear of a yellow cake recipe that has flavor and is CONSISTANTLY great in texture. I need to study chemistry LOL

I use magnolia's white cake recipe, it's more dense than what a box cake will be, but everyone always seems to like it. Do you want a yellow butter cake recipe? Butter cake are a little more difficult, but they really good! Honestly the only difference between yellow and chocolate cake is the cocoa powder, white cake is made with cake flour and egg white only for it to be really white. Yellow cake you can use all purpose and whole eggs for chocolate add about 1/2-3/4 cup cocoa powder. Hope this helps. I have some really good carrot and banana cake recipe if you email me

Have you guys ever tried recipes from "Baking at home with The Culinary Institute of America" book? it is a very complete book but I haven't tried anything. It has a lot of recipes eveything from scratch, I found it at Borders...

I am looking for a yellow butter cake recipe and a white recipe. I like a small crumb and a little dense (I do sculpted cakes and chiffon type cakes dont work well for that purpose). Thanks for the offer

I have the newest book by Sylvia Weinstock and that recipe differs somewhat from what I saw online. The recipe I have calls for all the things on line but also calls for 1 cup of milk and 1/2 tsp ginger (which I put in only 1/8 tsp but I'm not a big fan of ginger). HTH

I bought a book from Borders called the Essential Guide to cake Decorating. There is a recipe called Madeira cake which is similar to yellow but has more butter and very little milk and uses Ap flour and SR flour combined. It is more moist and dense than yellow cake which I like and may work well for carving. I plan to use it for carving next month. I have baked several of these but never carved it before.

If it's at all encouraging~ I am a scratch baker too and now can offer over 50 gourmet combinations. Being a scratch baker doesn't have to mean you are limited in any way. I was so intimidated until it finally "clicked". I change ingredients to suit my needs (vegan baking is all I do). So, yes.. it can be done.

For the most part, I work off of 3 - 4 recipes I've developed myself (add extracts/fillings/infusions, etc to change the flavors. I use natural extracts/flavors, and it's surprising how many flavors/combos you can come up with.

After many migraines and a lot of trial and error (making a HUGE mess in the kitchen, the works), LAST WEEK I finally came up with a recipe that works for Yellow/vanilla cake that isn't dense or crumbly but *just* right (says Goldilocks). I had no idea that anyone else struggled with the yellow cake issue... that makes me feel better. It took me over a year to finally make this one to the point I'm satisfied. I'm putting this one in the vault.

I say: GO FOR IT!!!

Hi, I'm a scratch baker too. But I haven't had the courage to try mixing different flavours. I have tried a white cake that's in the Recipe Index here, and I really like it. Here is the link,

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-1171-Heavenly-White-Cake.html

I also try making different flavoured fillings instead of the cakes and I have tried making baileys cake and its really yummy.

Laura, someone told me after looking at my book when I first got it that she wondered the same things since she got the recipe originally from the first book or maybe online. Anyway, I've not had any problems with it and I've made it about 9 or 10 times.
This is what she says in the book: "Everyone loves this buttery cake--and we've perfected this one over time so it's theonly yellow cake recipe you'll ever want to bake."
I think it's a bit strange too that milk was ommitted and wonder why ginger was added.

There was a thread like this just earlier this month.
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-626211.html

There are two other (older) big scratch recipe threads that have A LOT of good recipes in them. Part of this first one was corrupted in the crash, but you can still get through most of it:
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-365233-0.html

This is the post-crash sister thread:
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-579499.html

I am a scratch baker too. Here's a yellow cake recipe, it's adapted from Sylvia Weinstock's yellow cake recipe. http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/yellow-cake-recipe.html . I replaced the sour cream with milk. I really, really like her recipe, it always turns out good for me. I like it because it is not too, too dense and it is moist.

I've tried Elisa Strauss's vanilla, chocolate and red velvet. She does sculpting so these must work for her. I do like the vanilla and red velvet but the chocolate seems to be dry. I like the idea of the sour cream and coffee in the chocolate but expected it to be more moist. But I would still like another good go-to , vanilla, yellow and chocolate recipes.

Thanks tyty, I'll get that book from the library and try that chocolate recipe. Does it have sour cream and coffee in it?

Here's colette's chocolate cake recipe:

Active Time: 25 Minutes
Total Time: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
Yield: Makes 20 servings
This is my most-requested cake recipe. Not only is it delicious, but you don't need a mixer to make it -just whisk all the ingredients together.
RECIPE INGREDIENTS
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch salt
1 3/4 cups hot coffee
1/4 cup bourbon
5 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, cut into small pieces
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8- or 9-inch round pans. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Combine the coffee, bourbon, chocolate, and butter in a large covered metal bowl. Let stand until completely melted, then whisk together. Whisk in the sugar and cool. Whisk in the flour mixture in 2 batches, then the eggs and the vanilla.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 45 minutes (checking after 30 minutes for even baking) or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cakes completely in the pans on wire racks. You can then either refrigerate them in the pans, wrapped in plastic, or use them right away, though it's easier to decorate a cool cake. To remove the cakes from the pans, run a knife around the inside edges of the pan and place it over a low flame to melt the grease, making sure to keep the pan moving to prevent burning. The cake should slide out easily when you invert the pan.

Recipe courtesy of
Colette's Birthday Cakes by Colette Peters
Little, Brown & Company

I double the recipe to make 2 10inch cakes, plus a little extra to eat out of the bowl

I find that the flavor of white or yellow cake is so mild that it really disappears or melds beautifully with the filling & frosting. So to make gourmet flavors I vary the liqueurs I use in my mousseline filling, use a variety of fruit curds & jams, different flavors of pastry cream or fold chopped nuts/cookies/chocolate/coconut/fruit in whipped cream or mousseline.

Having said that I sometimes also play around with the liquids & flavorings used in the recipe such as substituting coffee, juice or liqueur for part or all of the liquid, adding grated citrus rind or folding in chopped nuts/chocolate or melted chocolate. The problem with this approach is that the acid & fat content of the substitutes can throw the recipe off balance so you have to have at least a basic understanding of baking science.

For the most part though, I rely on the fillings and frostings to create gourmet flavors.

Thank you so much for sharing this recipe SugarnSpice