A Perfectly Imperfect Cake – Vol. 2

Exploring the function of ingredients in vegan baking, plus my take on Gâteau à l’Orange.

It was 9:30 on a snowy Vermont morning. Breakfast service had just concluded, and our group of six student chefs had started preparing for lunch and the second half of our 10-hour day in the kitchen.

Before breaking out into each of our respective stations, our Chef Instructor went over a task for our group – make three hotel pans of lasagna. He wanted us to work in pairs, each preparing a béchamel sauce according to his recipe. We had to heat the tomato sauce, slice and sauté mushrooms, grate cheese, and chop the herbs. These were not complicated tasks for second-year culinary students.

Each of the groups finished the preparation around the same time. We were now ready to build the lasagna – again, according to precise instructions given to us. First, a little tomato sauce and béchamel went on the bottom of the pan. Next, layer lasagna sheets and top with mushrooms, herbs, and more tomato sauce. Then, another layer – this time with a bit of grated parmesan cheese. Finally, a third layer of lasagna sheets, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and chopped herbs. The lasagna was topped with plenty of béchamel and more grated cheese. It was now ready to bake.

About 30 minutes later, we pulled the three pans out of the oven and rested them on the trolley while we went about the business of finishing lunch prep at each station. The lunch service passed without incident or any sort of drama – it was normal...and we were suddenly hungry and exhausted.

Our group typically headed into an hour-long lecture after our service and clean-up. Today was different. We portioned each lasagna prepared earlier, taking a few portions from each hotel pan and placing them on a platter. Instantly, we all recognized something incredible – despite using identical ingredients and the same recipe, each of the three lasagna turned out differently. One had a more caramelized top, one seemed dry, and one was clearly more runny than the others. The taste was similar with all three variations, but the texture and eating experience felt different.

No lecture about ingredients...or technique...could have taught us that lesson any better. Achieving consistency in the kitchen...even a professional kitchen...is not as simple as putting ingredients together according to a recipe.

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That lasagna image and lesson stayed in my head. I thought about it while working in kitchens as a cook, sous chef, and chef. As an instructor working with amateur cooks and cooking enthusiasts, I thought about it. And these days, I think about it as a food writer.

I can write a detailed recipe, including tips on equipment, ingredients, and temperatures. I can make a video or include a beautiful set of photographs that capture each step. But I can never control the outcome...except one given – it will differ from what I make.

And I’m okay with that...but I still want the reader to arrive close to the result...close to the experience...close to saying, “Damn, that was bloody delicious!”

Most of us who toil over a recipe and invest considerable time crafting the right words to describe a particular recipe share this sentiment. We are teachers...and journalists...and overly fussy chefs that must have everything in a specific place. That’s why chefs who become recipe writers always instruct the reader to measure everything, avoid making random substitutions, and read the recipe thoroughly.

We (and by we, I mean me) have an insatiable appetite for control but very few ways to control how a reader makes the recipe.

And control is furthest away when it comes to baking. Exact measurements matter. Ingredients are different (flour in Europe is different than flour in America or Australia), ovens differ in every household...and temperatures make a difference. Types of sugar matter, fats matter, and acids matter – especially when these ingredients get introduced in the recipe process. Baking is complicated – and even more challenging when attempting to transition a recipe to the vegan world.

Pecan Coffee Cake ¦ Photo by Jack McNulty

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Understanding the Function of Ingredients

When I first began to ‘veganize’ recipes, I did what came naturally to most: I substituted ingredients and gave little thought to process and technique.

This mindset is mostly successful. But when it comes to vegan baking, success is rarely a function of an ingredient swap. For example, eggs are a common ingredient in baked goods, and they perform many functions: they provide structure, help to emulsify fats and liquids, create leavening, change texture, preserve moistening, add flavor, and improve color. That’s some heavy lifting from a single ingredient...and no single substitution can perform all those tasks. Fats offer another example. Traditional baked goods are often made with butter, contributing flavor, mouth texture, and flaky consistency. Vegan bakers frequently default to margarine (vegan butter) or coconut oil, which work similarly to butter but have questionable health properties. Oils (liquid fats) can also be used, but they tend to separate in a batter, leave a greasy sensation, and create too much shortening. Swapping liquids (plant-based milk for milk), leavening agents (baking powder and baking soda), and sugar seems straightforward, but complications arise when discounting their roles. 

Successful vegan baking requires more thought and consideration of the roles of each ingredient. With this in mind, I began classifying cake ingredients according to four main functions: tougheners, tenderizers, moisteners, and drying/emulsifying. The idea was to create a method I could work from to help me balance a cake formula. Tougheners should balance tenderizers, and driers should balance moisteners. For example, by increasing a toughener in a recipe (flour), a compensation in tenderizer (sugar, fat, chemical leavener) must have a corresponding increase.

I also wanted to understand an ingredient's role more thoroughly because some ingredients, as stated earlier, perform more than one function. Sugars add sweetness, tenderize the crumb, create color, and preserve moisture. More recently, I’ve considered sugar an emulsifier when it is whipped with oil and soy milk—an obvious key in replacing butter and eggs.

Steamed Pear Gugelhupf ¦ Photo by Jack McNulty

The following lists the primary ingredients most often used in vegan baking and their role in making cakes:

Tougheners provide binding structures: flour (including GF flour), starches, commercial starch-based egg replacers, and silken tofu.

Tenderizers provide softness and crumbly interiors: sugar, oils, fats (nut butter, nuts, and cocoa butter), and chemical leaveners (yeast, baking powder, baking soda).

Moisteners provide or preserve moisture and softness: water, plant-based milk, sugar, syrups, and puréed fruit.

Drying/Emulsifying agents absorb moisture and stabilize oils and liquids: flour (including GF flour), starches, sugar, cocoa powder, ground flax seed, and psyllium husk.

In many cases, choosing a drying/emulsifying agent to help compensate for an overly moist cake worked...as long as I didn’t select an ingredient with multiple functions. Adding flour compensates for too much moisture, but flour also creates structure, which means additional tenderizers must be considered. Over-compensating for those elements leads to further problems – a dense product, collapsed tops, a flaky interior that falls apart, etc.

Cake formulas are not rigid, but they are not limitless in flexibility; ingredients and quantities can be changed only within certain limits. A cake formula is in balance when the ingredients fall within the limits allowed by the cake gods. Knowing the limits helps in modifying recipes, judging untested recipes, and correcting faults...and that takes a bit of patience and a lot of practice.

As new ingredients and procedures are developed, cake-balancing rules that have worked well for decades are challenged, and the rules are broken. For example, it was once a rule that the weight of sugar in a cake mix should not exceed the weight of flour. But now we know sugar plays a role in emulsifying oils with liquids in vegan baking, leading to new formulas with higher proportions of sugar.

Nevertheless, this method of balancing a cake formula does quicken the process of correcting flaws or veganizing something from my past. And often, I am perfectly happy with an imperfect result.

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Next week, I will dive deeper and begin discussing other variables that come into play in vegan cake baking. More specifically, I will explore the role of acids, oven temperatures, and baking pans.

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Gâteau à l’Orange et Noisette

Gâteau à l’Orange et Noisette ¦ Photo by Jack McNulty

I first encountered the method of cooking and puréeing an orange from Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food. The technique she described creates structure and moisture in the cake. It has been copied many times and is now widely considered standard.

I’ve chosen to use ground hazelnuts in my vegan adaptation of this wonderful cake as a nod to my environmental concerns with almonds and their impact on water and bees. The hazelnuts are richer in color and flavor, but apart from that, they don’t destroy the soul of this cake...which is heavily influenced by the taste of orange.

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Share Your Thoughts…

If you enjoyed this week’s topic on making vegan cake, I would love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in the comments - as much or as little as you want…

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