yellow cake... fuckin' right

I have felt as if I've been neglecting the cake family of desserts in my sporadic baking endeavors. I was thinking about it, and I don't really have a good old reliable yellow cake recipe. I looked over a bunch of different ones, and many questions arose:

• Which is better: shortening, or butter?
• Does cake flour really make a better, more refined cake than all-purpose? Is all-purpose + a little corn starch a reasonable substitute?
• We know that a cup of flour is supposed to be 5 oz, but what is a cup of cake flour supposed to weigh?

and so on. therefore, gentlemen, behold: The Great Yellow Cake Bake-off and Regional Pro-Am of 2038!

Our first entry comes from Marion Cunningham's classic tome The Fannie Farmer Baking Book. The cake is the basic master recipe for “Yellow Cake with Chocolate Butter Cream Filling and Frosting” (page 307). Please note that I only utilized the cake portion of this recipe; the filling was a different buttercream (also from Ms. Cunningham, specifically her "Uncooked Butter Cream Filling" on page 412) and the frosting was a simple ganache.

First, the money shot (photography by Laura):

Next, some vital facts:

Fat

Vegetable shortening

Flour

2.25 cups cake flour

Leaveners

2.5 tsps Baking powder

And now, we rate:

Flavor

Very, very good, which surprised me since there is no butter in this cake. Hooray for vanilla!

Texture

A very delicate, fine crumb with just a few larger bubbles. Very good over all.

Moistness

Poor to fair. This cake was just way too dry, so much so that I could tell from the moment I cut into it.

Aesthetics

This cake was very pale, not surprising since it was made with bleached flour and vegetable shortening, the vanilla and egg yolk as the only source of color. Marion prescribed the use of two 8-inch pans for this cake, which proved to be ill-fitting; I would have been better off with 3 layers, or maybe 9 inch pans. As it was, one layer had a very prominent dome, and the sheer height of the layers combined with a paucity of buttercream (it always seems like more when you put it on) just screamed "yikes, that's a big piece of cake!" Overall, acceptable.

Miscellaneous notes:

My oven seems to be running a bit cool. This led to an increased baking time, which I am concerned may have in turn led to a drier cake. It does however, confirm that there is too much batter in this recipe for two layers; a dome usually means that your pan is too hot or that there's too much batter in the pan.

So, in short:

Pros

Very good flavor, texture. Only medium difficulty level in preparation (assuming the cons didn't come from something I screwed up and didn't realize...).

Cons

Too dry, too dry, too dry. Also, I'd prefer a cake made with all-purpose flour because plain (as opposed to self-rising) cake flour can be both hard to track down and expensive.