My Birthday is coming up !

April 8, 2008 6:05 AM

After 50 years of success, my Mom's favorite chocolate cake recipe is now failing to meet expectations. Betty Crocker blames Crisco, and Crisco denies blame. Not only do the cakes not rise like before, they tend to sag in the middle. It's a devil's food recipe from the original BC Cookbook, and she has been using the same ingredients forever. I calibrated the oven, and even watched her make one to insure it wasn't due to an error by a sometimes forgetful 84 year old baking Ninja. Any ideas on how Mom can get her Mojo back?
posted by lobstah to Food & Drink (18 answers total)

Perhaps try it in your oven.. just to eliminate the possibility of uneven heat distribution in her oven.
posted by jazzman at 6:20 AM on April 8, 2008

Seeing the recipe may be helpful. Does it use baking soda or baking powder to rise? Googling suggests while baking soda doesn't go bad, baking powder does. Try fresher ingredients?

And in case you need a back up, this Devil's Food recipe is awesome and I will swear by it. I know it is not your mothers so it will not compare, I just couldn't resist offering it up.
posted by piratebowling at 6:24 AM on April 8, 2008

Sagging in the middle indicates too low a heat in the oven, yet you say the thing is calibrated. Could you experiment by raising the heat a few degrees and seeing if that helps?
posted by LN at 6:25 AM on April 8, 2008

It could be the flour. It used to be that flours had specific, graded gluten levels in them. Now they're all willy nilly and you have to specifically look for high gluten flour for crusty breads and low gluten flour for softy things like rolls and cakes. If she's using All Purpose, it may be much higher gluten than it once was. Try Swan or Soft-a-Silk cake flour instead.
posted by headspace at 6:25 AM on April 8, 2008

Couple things here. First, she should reposition the cakes in the oven at least once during baking. All ovens have hot spots. That might help with the sagging.

The Crisco thing is another topic entirely. I assume the recipe calls for Crisco? They recently reformulated it to be trans-fat free (thanks food Nazis!) so it doesn't perform like it used to, despite what Cook's Illustrated says. Thankfully, a few chains (Kroger is one) have store brands that still have the trans fats you want/need for luscious baked goods and flaky crusts. Find some good old-fashioned shortening.
posted by Atom12 at 6:31 AM on April 8, 2008

- Make sure she's using cake flour and fresh baking powder

- Cake rises because the baking powder creates gas in the air pockets that are created when you cream the sugar, fat and eggs together. Make sure the fat and sugar are really well whisked, whilst also making sure the eggs aren't over whisked when they're added, which can curdle the mix slightly and upset the bubble-forming process

- Don't open the over door until the cake looks nearly ready, or the expanding air pockets will contract and collapse

- Don't take the cake out too early, or the air pockets in the middle won't be cooked and again, the cake will collapse

Hope she gets her mojo back. We all need cake.
posted by dowcrag at 6:33 AM on April 8, 2008

I don't trust that new Crisco, I tell you. Have you checked to see if any store-brand shortenings are still made the old, trans-fatty way? They would contain only hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils in the ingredients.

Yes, yes, I know about trans fats.
posted by cabingirl at 6:39 AM on April 8, 2008

Another request for the recipe .. not because I have any useful advice but because I want to try baking it!
posted by Kangaroo at 6:40 AM on April 8, 2008

Thanks for the answers so far. She claims it has been happening for a few years with both kinds of Crisco FWIW

The Recipe:

for 9in pan (double for two layers)

1.5 cups Flour sifted
1 1/3 cups Sugar
1/4 ts Baking Powder
1 1/4 ts Baking Soda
3/4 ts Salt
1/2 cup Cocoa

Sift above ingredients into bowl

ADD:

1/2 cup Crisco
a little more than half of 3/4 cup of water
3/4 ts Vanilla

Beat for 2 minutes

ADD
remainder of water
2 eggs

Beat 2 more minutes

place in 350 oven for 35 - 40 minutes
posted by lobstah at 7:00 AM on April 8, 2008

Did she recently get one of those air-bake pans? Because those require the temp. to be increased about 25 degrees, otherwise stuff doesn't bake right.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 7:19 AM on April 8, 2008

Seconding the Crisco. It was reformulated recently to reduce trans fats.
posted by zsazsa at 8:00 AM on April 8, 2008

I only use Crisco to grease pans sometimes, but that means I get "hands on" experience with it, and it feels really, really different than the old Crisco.

Another possible substitution: look for Canola Harvest margarine. It might not be exactly the same, but I have fairly good luck baking with it as a solid fat in cakes, cornbread, etc. If you don't like how it bakes, you can always use it on toast. (And, it's moderately healthy in comparison.)
posted by gimonca at 8:33 AM on April 8, 2008

Did she change cocoa brands? Regular cocoa vs. Dutch-process cocoa will make a big difference in a recipe like this because the pH is different.
posted by bcwinters at 8:53 AM on April 8, 2008

bcwinters has a good point...especially because I just discovered that Hershey's Special Dark cocoa changed their formulation. It used to be all Dutch-process cocoa and now it's a mixture of regular and Dutch-process. This change happened some time in the last few years because I have an old can and a new one and the ingredients are different.
posted by cabingirl at 9:38 AM on April 8, 2008

My cakes have fallen when I beat them for too long. Maybe she could try a minute and a half. Or, if she's using an electric mixer, on a lower speed.
posted by easy_being_green at 12:29 PM on April 8, 2008

I know she's been making the cake the same way forever, but generally speaking, you want to first cream the fat with the sugar, to create air bubbles that help form the cellular structure of the cake. I've always done fat+sugar, then eggs, then sifted dry ingredients and liquid. Without creaming the fats and sugar first, you rely entirely on the leavening agents for structure because you haven't beaten air into the fat in the same way. A reordering of the steps might help achieve the cake she had before, in spite of possible ingredient changes.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:36 PM on April 8, 2008

I think she should run 4 separate experiments where she changes out ingredients for a different brand. Candidates for this would be the fat, the cocoa, the baking powder and soda, and the flour... in that order. Four cakes later, she probably will have found the culprit. If not, she can then examine her technique and equipment. She can send all four experiment cakes to me and I will dispose of them.
posted by Foam Pants at 3:10 PM on April 8, 2008

Crisco was reformulated to be trans fat free. As a result, it no longer contains partially hydrogenated oils. Instead, it is now a mixture of fully hydrogenated oil and liquid oils. You're right, this would tend to make it behave differently in cakes.

I'd guess the recipe specifies room temperature Crisco, try using it a little warmer or cooler when you cream it. (probably cooler?) And the suggestions to adjust the oven temp are apt as well. Or try coconut oil instead.

Trans-fat rant: there is nothing "yummy" about trans fats. They were marketed to be cheaper, almost-as-good replacements for real fats. Margarine for butter; Crisco for lard/tallow/schmaltz. Even if they are harmless (which I *don't* believe), their removal from the marketplace is a good thing, as cooks (who care) will return to the proper fats for cooking.
posted by gjc at 5:49 PM on April 8, 2008