Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible uses a slightly different method to mix cake batter. Instead of the more common 'creaming' method where butter and sugar are creamed together first and then eggs are added, followed by flour and milk, Rose suggests this: combine all the dry ingredients first and to the dry stuff add soft butter along with a little milk. Then add the rest of the milk, vanilla, eggs, and what have you.
Why? AHA HA! (maniacal laughter continues)
Gluten. Gluten, which outside of bread making, is a deplorable word.
Rightly so-- gluten in a cake has a toughening affect. However. If butter coats all of the flour before the milk is added, it protects the flour and everything is mixed faster and blah blah blah--gluten production is diminished. To quote Rose, "the thing about this method is that it makes a cake that literally seems to melt-in-your-mouth and it has a very moist, dense, and velvety texture." Huzzah! Rose continues to say "the only downside to this is that the cake doesn't rise as much as usual." Boo hoo? I mean, come on, which do we prefer? A) Dry cake that's impressively tall, or B) what was that quote--ah yes--"moist, dense, velvety texture." Hmmmm. Tough question.
So now it's up to me to try this new methodology and stop gluten from bullying cake batter.
