beating.”
Modern American Cakes: Help from
Modified Fats and Flours Beginning around
1910, several innovations in oil and flour
processing led to major changes in American
cakes. The first innovation made it possible to
leaven cakes with much less work. The
hydrogenation of liquid vegetable oils to
make solid fats allowed manufacturers to
produce specialized shortenings with the ideal
properties for incorporating air quickly at
room temperature (p. 557). Modern cake
shortenings also contain tiny bubbles of
nitrogen that provide preformed gas cells for
leavening, and emulsifiers that help stabilize
the gas cells during mixing and baking, and
disperse the fat in droplets that won’t deflate
the gas cells.
The second major innovation was the
development of specialized cake flour, a soft,
low-protein flour that is very finely milled