more sugar and fat than they do flour! And they serve as a base for even sweeter and richer custards, creams, icings, jams, syrups, chocolate, and liqueurs As suits their luxurious nature, they’re often elaborately shaped and decorated A cake’s structure is created mainly by flour starch and by egg proteins The tender, melt-in-the-mouth texture comes from gas bubbles, which subdivide the batter into fragile sheets, and from the sugar and fat, which interfere with gluten formation and egg protein coagulation, and interrupt the network of gelated starch The sugar and fat can compromise lightness if they weaken the cake structure so much that it can’t support its own weight Of course dense, heavy cakes can be delicious in their own way Flourless chocolate cakes, nut cakes, and fruit cakes are examples Traditional Cakes: Limited Sweetness and Hard Work Well into the 20th century, risen cakes were typified by the English pound cake or French quatre quarts, “four quarters,” which contain equal weights of the four major ingredients: structure-building flour and eggs, and structure-weakening butter and sugar These proportions push the flour’s starch and the eggs’ proteins to their limit for holding the fat and sugar in a tender, light scaffolding; more butter or sugar collapses the scaffolding and makes dense, heavy cakes And because cake batter must be filled with many small bubbles without the help of yeasts, which generate gas too slowly for the batter to hold them, traditional cake making was hard work In 1857, Miss Leslie described a technique by which the cook could beat eggs “for an hour without fatigue” and then added: “But to stir butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making Have this done by a manservant.” Fannie Farmer warned in 1896 that “A cake can be made fine grained only with long ... ingredients: structure-building flour and eggs, and structure-weakening butter and sugar These proportions push the flour’s starch and the eggs’ proteins to their limit for holding the fat and sugar in a tender, light scaffolding;... more butter or sugar collapses the scaffolding and makes dense, heavy cakes And because cake batter must be filled with many small bubbles without the help of yeasts, which generate gas too slowly for the batter to hold them, traditional cake making was hard work... them, traditional cake making was hard work In 1857, Miss Leslie described a technique by which the cook could beat eggs “for an hour without fatigue” and then added: “But to stir butter and sugar is the