Using the new ambient temperature oven thermometer and feeding in ideas from the CupcakeJemma video, this is a comparison of my favourite recipe vs hers. It’s following on from the initial investigation:
Initial note is that my version of her recipe looks like her under mixed batch with a slightly pointed dome rather than a more even, gradual one, so perhaps I didn’t quite mix enough, however i’d say they are actually extremely difficult to separate and either method works perfectly well.
Right is Peyton & Byrne creaming method, left is CupcakeJemma all in one.
The thing that interested me here is that the crumb is soft, fine, smooth… and a little dense. Dense is relative here… These are delightfully squishy and quite delicious. However I don’t know that they are actually as airy as I want a cupcake to be… My hypothesis here is that this is down to me using cake flour (self-raising). So I wanted another go using plain flour with baking powder…
The creaming method again:
Look at that! fluffy, airy cupcakes!… But no dome!
These are lovely and much closer to the texture I want… But the lack of dome is possibly unacceptable…. Is it? Possibly… Maybe it doesn’t matter, but it feels like I’m leaving rise on the table.
A quick search on flat/sunken (though sunken is a bit strong) cupcakes is that it can be for the following reasons:
- Underbaking – Not convinced this is it… They look well baked to me.
- Overmixing – Maybe… But again, but I don’t believe this is why.
- Overfilling the case – Pretty certain I didn’t overfill.
- Expired/not enough/too much leavening agent – Straight from the shop, 1tsp to 100g flour.
- Baking at too high a temperature – Possibly…
Leavening Agent
I was about to set on a journey to experiment with the amount of baking powder to use, however I stumbled across this blog and it appears to have done the job for me:
This post suggest 1 tsp per 100g is the sweet spot, which is what I used… Although I have to say the new batch looks suspiciously like the 1 tsp per 50g cakes.
So in theory there’s no problem here, but I should be extra careful with the quantities perhaps? A quick search tells me that 1 tsp of baking powder = 4.8g. Perhaps I will go with this and be rid of volumetric measurements.
The only additional thing to consider might be how powerful a given brand’s baking powder is. But let’s stick a pin in that for now and assume it’s not a thing.
Temperature
I noticed that when you pop the cakes into the oven the temperature drops precipitously, so I just started bumping the initial pre-heat to 20c higher than required then dropping to the required temperature when the cakes go in. This results is a more consistent temperature, but maybe the initial heat is too much?
Unchanged temperature and weighed raising agent:
Unchanged temperature and weighed raising agent, 20 minutes:
No change here. It’s slightly less good, if anything, so the temperature boosted pre-heat might be slightly beneficial to overcome the drop after opening the oven door to put the cupcakes in.
They’re not raising and then sinking (not much anyway), which I think would happen with too high a temperature.
Over-mixing / raising agent
The gist being that too much air in the batter is bad as the cake can’t sustain it before it “sets”. This is not impossible. The last batch I got 5 cupcakes out of my halved batter as opposed to the 4 in the original batches… But the batter looks good… And I also stole fewer licks of the spoon with this batch than before and was more judicious in scraping the bowl for the cupcakes rather than for my own mouth.
I don’t think there’s too much aeration or raising agent. And I really don’t think the cases are overfilled.
This is leading me to the belief that there isn’t enough raising agent for the plain flour that I’m using (Homepride). I’m inclined to try a batch at 7g of baking powder.
Result
Forgot to take a picture, but this didn’t work. They became sad little sarlacc pits.
The Wet Ingredient
Also having been using buttermilk I reverted to yoghurt which seemed to result in more consistent rises, though still not the dome I had been creating initially I am quite content with this current state of affairs.
Flour
The domed rise is now looking to be increasingly like the result of flour and correct ratio of raising agent (although there is a fair bit of room for error on this) and not much else, as long as the other elements are within boundaries of acceptability. Too hot can make them sink, but otherwise doesn’t seem to affect a dome shape.
The more open structure of the plain flour is desirable, but the finer self-raising cake flour allows for a dome more readily.
Flour clearly had the largest impact on crumb and texture. And having now used a third flour (Shipton Mill), which has delightful flavour and texture, I am convinced it is the most important element.
TODO
Things to look into more in the future:
- Effect of:
- Under-mixing
- Over-mixing
- Crust