On Food and Cooking

No  aeration:   Ingredients stirred together

with    minimal incorporation   of  air

Dissolved-sugar  cakes: pain     d’épices,

spice   cake

Mixing Cake Batters In cake making, the
mixing step doesn’t just combine the
ingredients into a homogeneous batter: it has
the critical purpose of incorporating air
bubbles into the batter, and thereby strongly
influencing the final texture of the cake. The
various ways of aerating the batter help define
families of cakes (see box, p. 557). They
involve beating the sugar and/or the flour into
the fat, the eggs, or all the liquid ingredients.
The fine solid particles carry tiny air pockets
on their surfaces, and the particles and beating
utensils carry those pockets into the fat or
liquid. Flour is often added only after the
foam is formed, and then by gently folding it
in, not beating, to avoid popping a large