Experimental cookery

Butter varies in creaming ability. Bakers usually report that it gives a poor creaming volume. Jenkins used three winter butters with Crisco as a control. She used Formula I with 8.4 grams of a tartrate baking powder for the full recipe. The butters were prepared in January by the Dairy Department. The same batch of cream was used for the three butters, but portions were churned when the serum acidity was 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 per cent. This gave butters with acid numbers of 1.20, 1.40, and 1.70, re- spectively. The acid number of the Crisco was 0.10. The creaming volume was least from the butter of intermediate acidity, greatest from the most acid butter, and the other two fats gave practically the same volume. It is rather interesting that, regardless of creaming volume, the final volume of all the cakes increased with an increase in temperature of mixing. The final average volumes of the cakes were very similar. But the fat giving the greatest creaming volume does not seem always to yield the greatest cake volume. The temperature of the ingredients when mixed had more effect on the final volume than did the creamed volume of the fat. No indication of the effect of variation in composition of butter on creaming volume was obtained. The composition of butter varies with the season of the year and with the locality in which it is produced. Graham using summer butters obtained results that were very similar to those of Jenkins, but the cakes had smaller volumes. It may seem rather strange that there is no close cor- relation between the volume of the creamed mixture and the volume of the cake. But studies tend to show this. Both Martin and Buel obtained non- significant correlations between these two factors. Martin obtained a nega- tive correlation which, although not significant, tended to show that, for METHODS OF MIXING CAKES 481 4 fats out of 5, smaller cake volumes were obtained with larger creaming volumes. Minard obtained significant, negative correlation for these two factors showing that in her studies cake volume was smaller when the creamed volume was large. The fats studied in these investigations have included several types of lard, butter, hydrogenated lard, and Crisco, though the studies with the last fat were not extensive. From her results, Martin suggested that there may be for each fat a point short of maximum cream- ing volume, at which the creaming process should be stopped in order to produce a cake of maximum volume. But what Martin calls creaming quality is important and is closely re- lated to velvety texture and high scores for cakes. By a good creaming quality is meant that a soft, spongy, not too frothy, not a granular, lumpy, or pasty texture is obtained. In other words, there is a particular body and texture in the creamed mass rather difficult to describe that is related to excellent textures in cake.