Okay - so now I am on to the oil/butter in cake recipes.
(don’t you love it when I get on my soapbox???)
From my notes:
Some will use LIGHT olive oil (the taste is not affected by using LIGHT) or vegetable oil when baking cakes.
In most recipes for cakes, cupcakes, and quick breads, the process of creaming butter with granulated sugar is extremely important to achieving the even-rising, rich, spongy texture that is so definitive of these products. It is during the 3-5 minutes of beating the sugar into the butter until it is “fluffy” that the sugar granules cut into the butter and aerate the dense fat to give cakes a rich texture and flavor that will also rise.
It is because of this “creaming” step that using oil alone in place of butter for cakes and cupcakes instead of margarine or shortening can become problematic. Oils generally work best in recipes that use liquid sugars such as honey, maple syrup, molasses or other syrups along with baking agents, another solid fat like ground nuts and some sort of emulsifying ingredient such as eggs or egg substitutes, or a recipe that uses a combination of ground nuts, oil, egg whites and purreed fruit to achieve both moisure and lift, without sacrificing texture. Separating eggs, beating the yolks with the sugar or sweetener, and then folding the egg whites into the other ingredients is another great way to give your oil-based cakes and quick breads both richness and lift and allows you to bake without using margarine or shortening.
Cake mixing methods:
-Shortened cakes utilize solid shortening (fat/sugar creaming method).
-Unshortened cakes (sponge or foam cakes) are made with beaten egg whites for air/leavening.
-Chiffon cakes are a hybrid of shortened and unshortened cakes where the fat is usually from vegetable oil and egg yolks and is combined with the foamed egg whites, cake flour, and leavening agents.
In cakes, solid fats contribute to tenderness, volume, moisture, and flavor. These attributes are distinctly associated with solid fats because vegetable oil doesn’t entrap air during creaming. Using vegetable oil where butter is called for will result in decreased volume and a “harsh” crumb. As with all cooking/baking rules, there is ALWAYS some exception, and this exception is olive oil, because it contains natural emulsifiers to make cakes more tender and moist. You may have better luck using a light olive oil.
Vegetable oil coats the flour proteins preventing them from adhearing to water. This reduces the gluten formation and leaves more water in the batter (gluten absorbs hydration). So if you use oil in a recipe that calls for butter, I wouldn’t use it 1:1. I’d use less oil.
The key… not to add too much oil or the cake becomes too heavy and compact.
Air bubbles aren’t easily incorporated into oil as they are butter. You are now stuck with only the leavening agent remaining to create air bubbles by using oil instead of butter - the chemical leaveners (soda/baking powder) - OR - physical leavening from whipping air into the batter (via egg whites). So if you substitute oil for butter, you may want to whip the egg whites and add them to the batter to aid in adding air bubbles to the batter.
When making muffins, the traditional muffin-making method the steps are geared to minimize mixing so that you don’t develop gluten. In traditional muffins, the fat is most often in liquid form - both melted solid fats or liquid fats (cooking oil). This is mixed with the other wet ingredients and then added all at once to the dry ingredients.
In a muffin recipe where the fat is solid and you use traditional cake methods - creaming the fat with the sugar - the resulting muffin will have a more cake-like texture.
HOW fat is incorporated will create different textures, and all the time the fat plays a BIG roll in minimizing gluten development. You can also aid gluten development up front by using low-gluten flours - something lower in gluten than all-purpose flour - a southern all-purpose like White Lily or Martha White will make the crumb more tender than all-purpose flour. To off-set the additional gluten in all-purpose flour (say if you use a higher-gluten all-purpose flour like King Arthur or Hudson Cream - a Kansas brand of flour) is to add a little more fat so you don’t get a tough crumb.
How much you beat the batter will also alter the texture. I rarely use an electric mixer when adding the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Keep the mixer for creaming fat/sugar.
Different mixing methods will get your different kinds of cakes. What you are trying to get done is to incorporate all the ingredients as well as the maximum number of air cells - which you need for vulume and texture. Some pitfalls…the temperature of the butter, eggs, and the mixing bowl; insufficient creaming; insufficient blending of the baking powder and flour; developing too much gluten/using flour that is too high in gluten…
Cake is a ratio of ingredients one to another, mess with the ratio by altering one or two ingredients and you have to adjust it someplace else to compensate. If you are working with “high-ratio” cakes that contain more sugar than flour, then you have a whole different set of “rules” to consider.
A little in reverse here - if the cake recipe calls for OIL and you want to substitute butter - you need to adjust the measurement. If the recipe calls for 1/2 cup oil, then you use 1/4 cup butter.
Once again - you need to experiment to find the results you need.