A couple of days ago, I baked a white cake (for the first time, so I’m not an expert with these things) - it had two layers made from the same batter, baked in the same conditions, except one of the layers was light and fluffy throughout, and the other layer was light at the top, but dense, and almost a bit rubbery at the bottom. What could’ve caused that only on one layer?
Another thing, all the chocolate cake recipes I looked at seem to call for coffee. Is that really necessary, and if not, what other liquid could be used to replace it?
No, coffee is not necessary. I’ve seen recipes that ask for it, but it’s a flavor thing, not a baking quality thing.
For chocolate cake I prefer using recipes that have cocoa powder, and not other forms of chocolate. I had a good brownie recipe that called for melted, unsweetened chocolate, and converted it to cocoa powder. Three tablespoons cocoa and one tablespoon fat(butter, margarine, shortening, or oil) substitutes for the melted chocolate.
As for your different cake layers, did you pour them out in sequence? I mean, did you pour half into one pan, and the other half into the second pan? It’s possible, if by chance the batter was mixed unevenly, that this was the cause of the differently textured layers. may I ask, was it a mix, or from scratch?
Did you bake the two layers at the same time, or did you bake them one after the other? Letting batter stand too long might cause the leavening agents to lose their oomph, so to speak, in which case the second cake might come out a little denser because the batter lost its lift while the first one was baking.
Other possibilities:
Your oven heats unevenly (a common problem with older ovens), so you may need to swap the pans halfway thought the baking to even things out.
You used slightly different pans for each cake. The type of pan used can affect the texture of the finished product, believe it or not.
You filled the two pans in sequence, as suggested by Baker.
As for the coffee question, just about any liquid would be a suitable substitute. Water or milk would be your best bet, depending on how rich you want the cake to be.
If you’re skipping it because you don’t like the taste of coffee, though, I’d suggest giving it a go anyways… the coffee is actually there to give extra depth to the chocolate flavour, and as long as you’re using a good quality chocolate or cocoa powder, you shouldn’t taste the coffee at all. I often use that trick with brownies, chocolate cake, even gingerbreads.
Thanks for the replies. It was from scratch - this recipe, and I followed all the tips that were in the first review.
The layers were both baked at the same time, on different sides of the same rack. Yes, I did pour them out in sequence, so that’s a possibility, and we have a bunch of metal pans, that were purchased at different times, so maybe one was slightly thicker or something. The oven is fairly new, but I’ll keep the problem about unevenness in mind, too.
A good way to test for this is to fill cookie sheets with bread slices, covered with slices of cheese, and put them in a preheated oven, covering the whole rack. Bake them for a few minutes. When you take them out, you can visibly see if there are parts of your oven that are hotter or colder than the rest.
(This also works for checking out microwave ovens.)
Since the cake relies partially on egg whites for leavening, I think the sequence is the most likely culprit.
Next time, I’d try alternating batter between the two pans as you fill, and rotating halfway through the bake time. Should probably resolve any discrepancies in texture.
Baking always gives me a whole new level of respect for my grandmother, who somehow managed to do all this crap back in the day without the benefit of a written recipe (which she wouldn’t have been able to read, anyways, had she even had one) or any real formal understanding of chemistry - she’d just eyeball everything and adjust if things “didn’t look right”. Her cakes always turned out wonderfully.