Hi Ratio Cakes and Ingredients

WHAT GREAT CAKES!!

There good enough to eat!!!
We have now used several different methods to produce cake batters and today we focused on high ratio cakes.

What is a High Ratio Cake?
This type of cake has an increased amount of liquid and sugar in the basic formula (recipe). In other words the levels of sugar and liquids, which include milk, water and eggs, is in excess of the flour weight.

If we increase the sugar or liquids in a conventional cake batter we end up with a fault. This is because the formula will not be in balance, for example too much liquid results in a cake with a closed texture & poor volume.
So how do we make a cake with greater amounts of liquid and sugar without a fault??
We use specially formualted fat and flour.

HIGH RATIO FAT has an emulsifier in it so it will absorb or lock in a greater amount of liquid.

HIGH RATIO FLOUR is milled finer and because of this has a greater surface area. This greater surface area will allow the flour particles to absorb liquid more readily. The flour is also chlorinated, treating the flour with chlorine gas changes (modifys) the starch in the flour. It will now gelatinise or set at a lower temperatue, this is important because the cake batter is less stable then a traditional batter.

Who makes these types of cakes?
Commercial bakers make these types of cakes because:

1. They are easy to produce.
2. They are cheaper because water can replace egg and milk.
3. They have excellant keeping qualities due to the emulsifier and high % of sugar and water.