Cake Fail, Help Needed

Hello ChefSteps Community, please help.

I’ve been playing around with the ChefSteps cake recipes. I made the chocolate cake (and it was amazing). I then tried to formulate a lemon cake and while it came out pretty good, it fell apart during frosting and assembly. It also didn't hold its shape and caved a bit in the oven and then a bit more upon cooling.

I tried looking through what was written about the cakes but couldn’t find anything to help me figure out how to make the cake stronger. Some percentages on the recipes and how they contribute to the final product would be helpful. Below is my formula. Would love some advice to make it stronger. It tastes great (although the salt in the cake is a bit high, I'll reduce by 25% on the next version), I've also included a picture of the cake sliced.

hazart Lemon Cake - v1

DRY:

378g cake flour

72g whole wheat flour (Spelt from Grist & Toll)

635g sugar

25g salt

15g baking powder

15g baking soda

12g GMS

WET:

200g Eggs

340g Canola Oil

325g Butter Milk

170g Lemon Juice

35g Vanilla Paste

Zest of 4 lemons

SYRUP:

200g sugar

100g water

splash Lemon Extract

40g Vodka

FROSTING:

436g Cream Cheese

217g Butter

200g Lemon Curd (from the Buchon Bakery Book)

6g vanilla paste

500g powdered sugar

600g per 9” cake pan

Baked at 300º (convection) for about 40mins (internal temp 205º)

All of the ‘instructions’ are followed from the ChefSteps cakes. The only thing I didn’t do is a boiling water or hot milk added to the batter, because I wasn’t sure it could hold that much liquid with the addition of the Lemon Juice. I would apprecaite some advice on what to adjust to make the cakes a bit sturdier.

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Amos_Schorr_168815

The first thing that springs to mind is that cocoa powder has a healthy % of fat, and so simply omitting it from the recipe wouldn't work without compensating for that. There's also the protein and carbs, but in terms of binding a cake together, the fat part seems to me the most important. After all, chocolate is a fantastic binder, and while cocoa powder is less effective, it still has some of that power left.

fisher23

How does the acidity in the lemon play into it? Wonder if lemon powder would work better then still add the boiling water? Just some thoughts I had. I am working on a coconut cake..... Replacing some of the buttermilk with coconut cream.

Amos_Schorr_168815

Not sure, but I've modified cake recipes and added lemon juice without too many problems or adjustments. Lemon zest might be a better way of doing things though. Apart from that, coconut cream has more fat than buttermilk. As a rule, when it comes to baking, having extra fat is much better than not having enough. That being said, coconut cream has WAAAAY more fat than buttermilk, which means that you're liable to have a much more dense, rich, moist cake. Which can be great, by the way. But it won't have that light, fluffy crumb, so if that's what you're going for, you'll have to better compensate for that. Like by cutting out an egg yolk or something.

fisher23

I am going for a denser cake, I even thought of using whole wheat cake flour to get even a denser cake. We used to go to a restaurant that had an awesome dense coconut cake that I am trying to replicate. The pastry chef left and took her recipe with her. It was a moist rich dense cake that melted in your mouth. It has a roux type frosting with toasted sweetened coconut.

hasdayweb

So maybe upping the fat? More Egg? More Oil?

hasdayweb

The lemon juice gives a soft hint of lemon, and I like it better than the taste of the extract and in combination with the zest gives what I was looking for in flavor. An interesting idea regarding the powder though.

Amos_Schorr_168815

Definitely up the fat. Just an egg definitely won't be enough on its own, but I don't know if I'd want to add more than one egg so figure out how much more oil you'd need. Cocoa powder is typically around 10% fat (I think by weight, not volume), so figure you need to replace 1/10th of the cocoa powder with fat. You also should probably add a little cornstarch or something else too.

David_Baxter_263661

This won't work, the crumb of a good chocolate cake and a good lemon cake are very different, a chocolate cake is expected to a have a bit larger a crumb than a lemon cake. The photo looks really oily and wet. I wouldn't suggest a lemon cake with a wet/dry mix like this. The wet/dry mix method tends to work better with cakes like chocolate/carrot/banana, for a lemon cake expect to cream the butter with the sugars to get some air in it and make some lightness. Also, look for something with egg white instead of whole eggs, that should help with the lightness.

Also, the recipe for the icing looks as if it would be really soft, I'd cut down the cream cheese quite a bit, by at least half

hasdayweb

Thanks David. This is helpful. It was a bit wet (but I also used a soak, which didn't help with that look). Do you have any recipes you could recommend? My instinct is to go through the Milk Bar book and adapt from there if there is a cake with a creamed butter batter instead of the w/d mix. And yeah, you're right, the frosting was soft (but so good), but a bit more structure would be nice. Thanks for chiming in, I appreciate it!

Adarsh_Nadda_1010408

I think this cake will be great in taste but you need to take care of some important points.

1. Use less oil.

2. Use egg white instead if whole eggs.

3. Use some cocoa powder.