Best Cake Recipes 3+ | Easy Baking Homemade Cake Recipes with Video

Cake is a form of sweet food made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, that is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.

The most commonly used cake ingredients include flour, sugar, eggs, butter or oil or margarine, a liquid, and a leavening agent, such as baking soda or baking powder. Common additional ingredients and flavorings include dried, candied, or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa, and extracts such as vanilla, with numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients.

Cakes can also be filled with fruit preserves, nuts or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit.^[1]

Cake is often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions, such as weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. There are countless cake recipes; some are bread-like, some are rich and elaborate, and many are centuries old.

Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure; while at one time considerable labor went into cake making (particularly the whisking of egg foams), baking equipment and directions have been simplified so that even the most amateur of cooks may bake a cake.

Varieties

Cakes are broadly divided into several categories, based primarily on ingredients and mixing techniques.

Butter cake

Butter cakes are made from creamed butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. They rely on the combination of butter and sugar beaten for an extended time to incorporate air into the batter.^[11] A classic pound cake is made with a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Another type of butter cake that takes its names from the proportion of ingredients used is 1-2-3-4 cake: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs.^[12] According to Beth Tartan, this cake was one of the most common among the American pioneers who settled North Carolina.^[13]

Sponge cake

Sponge cakes (or foam cakes) are made from whipped eggs, sugar, and flour. Traditional sponge cakes are leavened only with eggs. They rely primarily on trapped air in a protein matrix (generally of beaten eggs) to provide leavening, sometimes with a bit of baking powder or other chemical leaven added. Egg-leavened sponge cakes are thought to be the oldest cakes made without yeast.

Layer cakes

Layer cakes are cakes made with layers of sponge or butter cake, filled with cream, jam or other filling to hold the layers together.

Cake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake)