Mixing Methods used in Baking

While there are scores of methods used in baking, many recipes for cakes, muffins, cookies, and more utilize one of these methods. Once you understand these methods, you will quickly recognize the method in any recipe and instantly know what you must do to mix the batter or dough properly.  Understanding these methods and how they work will make you a better baker.

Biscuit Method

The biscuit method is used for mixing in most biscuit and scone recipes. It is sometimes called the pastry method because it incorporates the same technique as for mixing pie dough. (There are some biscuit recipes that call for using the creaming method but those biscuits turn out to be more cake-like.)

In the biscuit method, butter or other fat is cut into the flour mixture. Then the liquids are added. In the heat of the oven, the butter melts, the water in the butter creates steam, and the product rises into flaky layers. What are the advantages to that? First, the “cutting in” of fat serves the function of coating and lubricating flour granules, which greatly reduces the ability of the gluten molecules they contain to bond to one another. Thus, the Biscuit Method makes baked goods tender. The other big thing the Biscuit Method does is make things flaky.

If there are keys to success with the biscuit method, they are: cut the butter in thoroughly—the mixture should look granular with no large particles—and use very cold butter. The butter should not melt before the dough reaches the oven.

Like the Muffin Method, the Biscuit Method is characterized by minimal mixing. Once the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients finally come together, the less you work the dough the better. This is especially important with pie crust, where any gluten formation at all can lead to significant shrinkage and toughness.

Steps in the Biscuit Method

1. Measure the dry ingredients into a medium-sized bowl. Whisk them thoroughly to evenly disperse the ingredients.
2. Cut in the shortening, margarine, or butter with a pastry blender until the mixture is granular with particles no larger than kernels of grain.
3. Combine the liquid ingredients in another bowl.
4. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients. Stir the mixture together with a fork until the dough begins to agglomerate.
5. Remove the dough to a counter lightly dusted with flour. Knead it by patting the dough flat and folding it in half. Turn it ninety degrees and repeat the process. Continue doing this for a couple dozen times until the mixture is kneaded together. Do not over knead.
6. Cut the scones or biscuits to shape and bake.

Muffin Method/Blended Method

The muffin method is not just for muffins and is common to many recipes including quick sweet breads and cakes, such as Banana Bread and Quick Chocolate Cake.

The muffin method is quick and easy. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients together including the eggs then add the wet mixture to the dry mixture with a spatula and you’re ready to bake. (Don’t use the electric mixer.) Stir the two mixtures together with a spatula only until combined—not lump free—so that the gluten in the flour will not be developed.

So what are the advantages of the Muffin Method for making things like muffins? Chiefly tenderness, since so little blending leads very little activated gluten, as well as larger pockets of fat which tend to make a crumb. Basically stir together and go, the blended method is the easiest of all cake-prep types. Blended cakes are typically made with oil rather than butter, since oil is much more easily incorporated with the rest of the ingredients. Blended cake batter tends to be more liquid than most; oftentimes the recipe will call to "pour" the batter into the pans, rather than scoop.

One advantage of the muffin method is that both the dry and the wet ingredients can be mixed the night before. Store the wet ingredients in the refrigerator and then add the wet to the dry ingredients in the morning and you’re ready to bake. You’ll save time on that busy morning.

Steps in the Muffin Method

1. Whisk all the wet ingredients together including the eggs and oil or melted butter.
2. Whisk the dry ingredients together.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir with a spatula until just moistened.
4. Place in tins and bake immediately as set forth in the recipe.

Creaming Method

In the creaming method, we cream the fat (butter or shortening) with the sugar until light, then the eggs, and finally add the other ingredients. In the muffin method, we mix the liquids and the dry ingredients separately and then stir them together until just combined.

In the creaming method, place the butter or shortening in the mixing bowl of your electric mixture. Add the sugar, spices, and salt and cream the mixture together with the paddle attachment for the mixer. (Of course, recipes that call for oil instead of butter or shortening cannot be creamed unless you substitute butter or shortening.) The objective is to drive the sharp sugar crystals through the butter or shortening creating tiny voids of air in the mixture. This entrained air will help muffins and cakes rise.

The creaming method has two advantages: The sugar and fat are well-dispersed in the batter and the entrained air tends to make for a light, fine crumb in the muffins. This cake mixing method is a classic, and the most common. Cakes are turdy, yet soft textured. Easy to slice and stack in layers; also ideal for Bundt pans. This method facilitates the formation of gluten, which binds the batter together.

Steps in the Creaming Method

1. With the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, cream together the butter or shortening and sugars, spices, and salt until light in color and fluffy.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, creaming after each.
3. Add the liquid ingredients and stir them in. Do not over-stir or you may reduce the entrained air in the creamed mixture.
4. Mix the flour and leavenings together and then add them to the creamed mixture. Mix until just combined.
5. Place in tins or a pan and bake immediately as set forth in the recipe.

Egg Foam Method

Of all the various mixing methods out there, the Egg Foam Method has the virtue of being the most direct, the simplest. For indeed, instead of spending time and effort to create the conditions most likely to produce gas bubbles (as with every other method), with the Egg Foam Method you simply whip them up yourself. The challenge then of course: to keep those bubbles from bursting.

The leanest cake in the bunch, foam cakes contain little to no fat: i.e. no butter or shortening, and no egg yolks (see Angel Food Cake). Like some sponge cakes, foam cakes contain no leavening, depending on air whipped into the egg whites for structure. The whites are whipped into stiff peaks, usually with cream of tartar added to help with stability and volume.

The Egg Foam Method begins, unsurprisingly, with eggs. Usually just the whites, though it is possible to make egg foams using the yolks too (but they don’t fluff up as well). The eggs are introduced to some sort of whipping device — a stand mixer, hand mixer, or whisk. Air begins to be incorporated and before long, voilà, ze foam. The next step is usually to introduce some form of acid stabilizer (cream of tartar, say) before the foam is folded into the other ingredients in the recipe. Flour is carefully folded in, leaving as much air in the batter as possible. Most choose to fold in the flour with a spatula.

What do those air bubbles do in the, er…whatever-it-is? Just as with all other mixing methods, they leaven (or “push up”) the batter. Once again it’s not expanding air that accomplishes the task. Air only expands by 20% or so in the heat of an oven. Rather it’s the water in the batter that does it. Water expands to some 1400 times its original volume when it’s converted to steam. The steam blows up the air bubbles and bingo, you’ve got leavening.

Interestingly it’s the hand mixer, as opposed to one of the stand variety, that’s the best tool for making egg foam, since it allows you to chase down every last little pocket of unwhipped white. Of course you can do it by hand, but there are very few people out there with the forearm strength to whip up a mass of egg whites into peaks before some of the foam starts to collapse.

The Whipping Method/Sponge Cakes

If you think of the whipping method as “European,” that’s not an inaccurate assessment, since you only tend to come across it when making spongecakes like génoise, joconde, ladyfingers or specialty cakes like rehrücken. Essentially, the whipping method is how European bakers create very light cake layers in the absence of chemical leaveners. This method dates back to before the widespread use of baking soda or powder, when trapped air was a cake's only leavening.

You need a lot of eggs — plus plenty of sugar, which helps create a thick syrup that keeps the egg foam from collapsing. Cakes made with this method are light and airy, with soft texture and the perfect degree of moistness. They tend to compress slightly when stacked over two layers high.

Sponge cakes can be made different ways. One way is beating egg yolks and sugar (or whole eggs and sugar) until a very thick foam-like batter is created. The batter is pale yellow in color, and falls off the beater in ribbons. Flour is then gently folded in.

Another way is to whip the egg whites separately from the yolks until soft peaks form. The yolk/sugar mixture is beaten until light, flour is mixed in, and then egg whites are gently folded into that mixture.

Either way the eggs are prepared, they provide leavening and loft for the sponge cake.

The batter for sponge cake is very light, airy, and almost soup-like in consistency. Though it may be alarming, this is totally normal. It will bake up into the moist, delicious cake that we know as sponge.

Paste (also called reverse creamed)

Cakes made with this method: Tighter textured, though still moist. A great candidate for tiers. The most sturdy of the cakes; slices with minimal crumbs. This moist and tender (yet sturdy) cake is an American favorite. Its slightly denser crumb makes it perfect for frosting as a layer cake.

Making a cake using the paste method (also sometimes called "reverse creaming") sounds complicated, but it's actually one of the most simple techniques of the bunch.

Soft butter and room-temperature liquids are beaten into the dry ingredients until the texture is "sandy." The butter-coated flour slows the formation of gluten (which starts once flour comes in contact with liquid), and results in a slightly more sturdy cake that still offers soft texture.

Once the batter reaches that crumbly, sand-like consistency, milk and any flavors are added. Then eggs are mixed in one by one. The batter, though pourable, is often thicker than other cake batters.