Can I Bake an Organic Cake?

There are plenty of desserts that are at least nominally good for you, like carrot cake, oatmeal cookies, or gingerbread. But if the occasion calls for towering swirls of buttercream or rich waves of chocolate (like, for instance, Valentine’s Day), you can’t think about it as a source of positive nutrition. Think of it instead as edible art.

My daughter and I are graduates of the entire three-phase Wilton cake decorating classes, meaning for fourteen weeks I was baking and frosting at least two cakes every week. This had me buying tubs of Crisco and sacks of white flour and sugar. But as I wandered the aisles of our natural food co-op, I wondered: could I make a cake purely from organic, or at least ‘real’, ingredients instead of commercial grade products stripped of flavor and full of chemical additives? The challenge began....

Flavorings and Fillings

I began the organic cake challenge cautiously, one ingredient at a time. I already used organic vanilla, so I simply replaced my other flavorings with purchased organic flavorings as they ran out – almond, peppermint, lemon, even butterscotch. The taste is vastly superior to commercial brands from the supermarket, and because the flavors are more intense, less is needed, and the price evens out. The only two flavors I can’t find organic alternatives for are rum flavoring (for a favorite holiday eggnog cake) and imitation butter, which I do away with by using a combination of butter and shortening in frosting.

Liquid and Shortenings

Organic milk, cream, and butter, including unsalted butter, are easily available on natural food co-op or natural food supermarket shelves, again better-tasting and better-baking than commercial alternatives.

Vegetable shortening is unfortunately necessary in most cakes. In many recipes you can substitute room-temperature butter for shortening, but since shortening melts at a higher temperature, the substitution can cause problems with the structure of the cake. The water content of butter also spurs gluten development – a problem when using organic flours which are just aching to launch gluten strings, blissfully unaware that we’re trying for fluffy cake, not chewy bread.

Spectrum Naturals manufactures an organic white, no-trans-fats, non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening. I had my doubts about it. There’s no point in mincing words: it’s expensive – over $8 for a tub the size of a $2.50 tub of Crisco. I was even more skeptical when I opened it and scooped out my first cup. The mealy-slippery texture seemed pretty gross. But how would it bake? It turns out quite terrific; there’s no noticeable difference in cake texture with it.

Then came the real test – using it in frosting recipes. So-called "buttercream frosting" rarely contains real butter and cream – made with all butter, it tends to have too strong a flavor and is too soft for artful cake decorating. I used to opt for a happy medium of half and half.

How would this wierd-textured, slightly off-white palm oil shortening work for frosting? Absolutely amazing! Blended with powdered sugar, milk, and flavorings, this stuff turns to pure silk. I like the texture so much that I now use 3/4 shortening and 1/4 butter in my frosting. Everyone who has eaten it remarked that even with oodles of frosting on the cake, they don’t wind up with that heavy, sickening, I-ate-too-much-frosting feeling. Now that I think of it, maybe that’s not a good thing....

Eggs and Leavenings

Some local organic eggs are smaller than commercial extra-large or jumbo eggs but since most recipes call for the old standard ‘large’ eggs, this usually does not present a problem. Fresh eggs have superior leavening power, so a smaller egg substitutes fine for a ‘large’ egg in terms of leavening. However, it may not quite add enough liquid to the batter for the proper pouring texture. You can add an extra teaspoon or two of milk, cream, or water to the batter if necessary, or water mixed with some meringue powder (dried egg whites).

Other leavening agents include baking soda and baking powder. Natural food co-ops and natural food supermarkets carry high quality varieties of each of these, as well as cream of tartar. While as far as I know, there isn’t an ‘organic’ version of these chemical components, Rumford baking powder is as close as it gets. Rumford doesn’t contain aluminum sulfate, found in most commercial brands. While this improves flavor and eliminates one ingredient that some people are sensitive to, it does require special handling.

Baking powder is ‘double acting’ because it works at two points: first, in the bowl as soon as liquid hits it, and second, in the oven, activated by heat. Aluminum sulfate delays reaction to the second stage, so with Rumford powder, about 2/3 of the response happens in the bowl, and about 1/3 in the oven. This means you need to be doubly sure that the oven is preheated, the pans greased and ready, and all other ducks in line before liquid hits the dry ingredients. If you thoroughly blend your dry ingredients first, you’ll be ahead of the game. It’s even better if you have a heavy-duty mixer instead of a handheld variety, since you can get away with shorter mixing time.

Salt is another tiny, yet critical component of cake baking. I love sea salt, but for cake, salt has to be very fine. Stick with fine table salt, or grind your sea salt several times to ensure it’s dissolvable.

Flour

Beautiful cake starts with equal weights – weights, not volume – of white flour and white sugar. Everything you have learned about what makes a ‘good’ flour for bread or other healthful cooking goes out the window for cakes. To get that delicate crumb, you want flour with no gluten, no germ, no oil, nothing but stripped-down dried-out odorless tasteless powder to hold all that butter, sugar, and flavoring. Stuff sold as ‘cake’ flour is heavily bleached, and there’s little left in it to indicate it was ever alive.

I have long used King Arthur’s ‘normal’ unbleached white flour in baking. The King Arthur Flour Cookbook points out that this all-purpose flour is not technically a "cake flour". That said, I’ve had great results with it, taking a little extra care in the handling.

Remember flour sifters? Nobody has used one in generations because flour no longer contains weevils and chaff, and is labeled "presifted". But if you want a light cake with good flour, you’ll have to learn to use one again. Sift flour onto a piece of parchment (so you can dump leftovers back in the bag), then using a fork, lightly sprinkle the flour into the measuring cup. Do not tamp it down – you want it fluffy. Level off the top of the cup with a flat edge. Each cup will contain an ounce less flour than if you’d scooped the flour with the cup measure.

More recently, I jumped over one flour bin at the food co-op to try King Arthur Organic White Wheat flour. For this, I follow these same directions for sifting, but on the advice of the folk sa the King Arthur bakers' helpline, before I put the flour in each cup, I put in two tablespoons of cornstarch. Cornstarch helps counteract the gluten and protein in the organic flour.

Another technique for working with organic flour in cake is to change the mixing order. Most of us were taught in home-ec class to start by creaming the shortening and sugar, add the liquid ingredients to this, mix our dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add the liquid to the flour. But as soon as that liquid hits the flour, you’re starting gluten production (as well as triggering baking powder reaction). An alternative is to first blend your dry ingredients, then add shortening into the dry ingredients for about 30 seconds on low mixer speed – this thoroughly blends the dry ingredients, and gets your flour particles coated with a protective raincoat of fat before you throw liquid on them. Then, add the liquid and beat on high speed for 3 minutes; with a heavy duty mixer you can cut this time in half. This has always yielded a great cake for me, with just slightly more body than a store-bought mix cake, just perfect for holding flavor and standing up against mounds of frosting.

White Sugar

My local co-op carries a few varieties of organic white sugar. It is very expensive, and creamier in color than the ordinary industrial varieties (as is the organic white flour). If it is critical to get a pure white cake, this will give you problems; but I’ve never had occasion where a slightly ivory cake color would be unacceptable, so it hasn’t been an issue for me.

Most organic white sugars look more like brown or demerara sugar. I hesitated to use organic sugar at first because chunky texture that would not blend well with silky smooth flour. Then I discovered Florida Crystals. Not only is it made in the U.S., its texture is close to superfine sugar. Still has a slight molasses smell and beige color, but it bakes beautifully.

I’m particularly fond of cake recipes which include brown sugar, which the Co-op also carries in organic varieties. Ironically, the brown sugar in bulk seems softer than the pre-bagged brands; just get it right into an air-tight container when you get home or you’ll wind up with a sugar brick.

Powdered Sugar

Here is an organic-cake sticky wicket. Powdered sugar is the main ingredient of almost every frosting. And yes, there is organic powdered sugar, believe it or not. Packaged, the Co-op carries two brands – Hains and Organic Sweeteners. The Hains is about three times the price of the other, with no difference in product whatsoever as far as I can ascertain in side by side taste tests (it’s a terrible job, but somebody has to do it).

Both brands of packaged powdered sugar come in 1 pound bags that are about half-full of rock-hard lumps. There’s no way around carefully sifting it, but the lumps in these bags are so hard that I can’t even crush them with a hammer; after paying the exorbitant price for them, I throw away a quarter of every bag.

Then I tried the organic powdered sugar sold a the co-op in bulk. At first glance, it looked the same – full of lumps. But the lumps in the bulk stuff were soft enough to bust up with my hands. It still must be carefully sifted, especially for decorating purposes (lumps of powdered sugar jam up decorating tips and lead to colorful expletives). But once it’s sifted, carefully scooped into measuring cups with a fork, gently sprinkled into organic vegetable shortening and butter and organic vanilla and other flavors, you’ll have the silkiest frosting you could ever imagine. Sure, it takes all day. But like, what else were you doing but making this cake, anyway.

The downside is color. Organic powdered sugar leaves a slightly grey, unappetizing color if it’s untinted. If you can’t live with it, you’ll have to add something to it.

Coloring

Food coloring is, obviously, artificial. Or is it? Some food colorings are synthetic; others are from natural sources, like beta carotene for orange and turmeric for yellow. When added to a food product, however, FDA considers them all ‘artificial coloring’. Beet juice added to strawberry ice cream, for instance, would be listed as ‘artificial coloring added’. When you buy food coloring for frostings, it will be a mixtures of synthetic and natural pigments.

If you don’t want to surrender to food coloring, one option is to forgo the color issue in favor of black and white. A chocolate cake with chocolate frosting looks gorgeous decorated in plain white uncolored decorator buttercream. A few drops of maple flavoring turn it a creamy carmel color; a few drops of chocolate turn it a deeper tan. Other flavor extracts provide light tints along with the flavoring, like orange-orange, or lemon-yellow.

There are suggestions for creating your own natural colors at www.allergygrocer.com, but I couldn’t see using pureed spinach to create green icing. On the other hand, some fruit puree for purples or pink would be nice.

I’ve recently acquired a set of samples of all natural (not organic, but at least non-synthetic) food colors from a wholesale manufacturer called ColorMaker. ColorMaker supplies bakery departments of whole-food supermarkets. Their colors are available for individual sale – but only in 2.2 pound bottles. That’s a lot of food coloring! The colors are light and pH sensitive, so I’m still experimenting, but they show a lot of promise.

If you go the commercial food coloring route, try professional cake decorating colors, available at our local Ben Franklin. They come in gel form in little canisters. The color is intense, so you only use a tiny bit to make vibrant colors, and the artificial additive is minimized.

The End Result?

It can be done! A gorgeous, all natural, organic cake. Fewer calories? Less carbs? Lower fat content? Sorry, no. Just real food, with real flavor. And that’s beautiful.

Valentine Cocoa Cake with Buttercream Frosting

Cake:
1 and 2/3 cup King Arthur organic white wheat flour
(sifted and measured by sprinkling lightly into cup)
1 and ½ cup Florida Crystals organic white sugar
2/3 cup dutched cocoa (sifted)
1 and ½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
½ cup organic vegetable shortening
1 and 1/4 cup organic whole milk mixed with 1.4 cup apple cider vinegar to clabber, OR 1 and ½ cup organic buttermilk
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 8 inch round layer pans or a 13X9 inch rectangular pan.

Blend sifted dry ingredients together on low in a large mixing bowl for 30 seconds. Add the shortening and blend another 30 seconds on low. Add remaining liquid ingredients all at once. Beat on high speed 3 minutes with hand mixer, 1 to 2 minutes with countertop mixer, and pour immediately into pans. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until pick inserted into center comes out clean and cake feels slightly springy on top. Cake should not start to pull away from the sides of pan until just as it comes out of the oven. Baking times vary depending on your oven’s vagueries and environmental factors like humidity. Let cool ten minutes in pan, then turn out onto cooling racks and let cool one hour before frosting.

Frosting and filling:

1 and ½ cups organic vegetable shortening
½ cup organic butter (unsalted is preferred)
2 tsp. organic vanilla extract
2 tsp. organic flavoring of your choice
4 tablespoons milk or cream
1/4 tsp. salt
8 cups sifted organic powdered sugar
optional: 2 tablespoons merinque powder (powdered egg whites – ‘sets up’ the icing for decorating texture)

Note: For chocolate buttercream, add 2 tablespoons sifted cocoa and increase milk or cream by one to two tablespoons until the consistency is right. You can also add four ounces melted bakers chocolate or white chocolate, also increasing the liquid until the proper consistency is reached.
Blend the shortenings with the milk or cream and flavorings; add the salt and, if using, the meringue powder and melted chocolate or white chocolate. Add the sifted powdered sugar one cup at a time. If you are adding flavorings, be aware that most of them increase in intensity once they are allowed to sit for an hour or two, so don’t overdo it (I always do, can’t help it). Feel free to adjust the consistency with a little more or less powdered sugar, a little more or less milk, as dictated by your tastes and the wattage of your mixer.

If you are doing layers, remove ½ cup of icing and mix it with a non-liquid food material related to your flavoring to give your filling between layers added interest. For example, with orange flavor, add grated organic orange peel; for peppermint, try crushed peppermint candies; with maple or vanilla frosting try chopped crystallized ginger.

Flip your first layer over from the cooling rack, top with filling, and cover with the other layer (without flipping it over, so you have a smooth top). Ice the top first, then smooth excess icing over the edge and down the sides. Decorate as desired and enjoy fresh within twenty four hours; refrigerate for up to 3 or 4 days (like it’s going to last that long!).

Enjoy!