IIRC, you can freeze batter, or refrigerate it.
I have a slight twist on the plan:
I want to make my batter on one day, and make 2 or 3 cupcakes a day from the same mix. Will it work properly, say, if I just stick it in a container, and re-stir it daily?
Thanks,
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I don’t think so. Most cake batters have baking powder in them that is activated when wet. Most powders are double activating, i.e. create CO2 upon reacting with a liquid and again when heat is applied but I don’t know how much that second lift will help.
I don’t think you can keep any rising batter for very long and get satisfactory results. I know that any time my wife makes biscuits and they have to sit for any length of time before going in the oven, they come out very thin and dry. As turner pointed out, most baking powders etc. are double acting and have to get through the second act within a short time, or they will be ineffective.
Yes, there are premixed batters for some things (haven’t I seen liquid pancake batter in cartons?) but you don’t want to know the food chemistry involved… and if you did, you wouldn’t want to eat it.
I wonder if it would be possible to mix the batter, but not add the baking powder until you’re ready to bake.
It would get kind of funky.
Better to bake all your cupcakes at once and freeze them.
Yes, it does work, but I’ve only seen it done with boxed mix, not homemade from scratch. I would have said that it won’t work, as I know it’s not supposed to, except that my daughter has done it a bunch of times in the last few months. She mixes up a bunch of boxed cake or brownie batter and refrigerates it, and bakes out of it for several days. It works just fine for her. Try it and see how long it’ll work for. I think the key is using boxed mix, as that stuff is seemingly supercharged.
When I worked in restaurants, we would make up a bucket of muffin batter and make muffins out of it for a week with no loss of leavening power.
It doesn’t work well for things like pancakes, but I have no experience in trying it with cake mix.
Thanks for the help, all.
I was always taught that cake batter needs to be not stirred too much and baked right away or it would build up too much gluten and not have the proper texture. I have no idea if this is true or not. In my experience, freezing cake before it’s frosted doesn’t cause any problems.
Hmmm…maybe a nice, happy medium…