Evidence

This past week I have baked two more trials for my cake. The first one I did was following the recipe that I have been using, exactly. I didn't change anything about this cake so that I could have a good reference when taste testing. The second trial I did was using the same recipe but replacing the butter for oil and adjusting small ingredients. What I noticed immediately was the amount of air bubbles in each cake. As you can see in the picture, the oil cake has many more air bubbles and a thicker crumb, with the butter cake the crumb is super fine and the air bubbles are tiny. This factor didn't really affect the taste of the cake, and is only a visual preference. The second thing I noticed was that right when I took the cakes out of the fridge I could feel how soft and springy the oil cake was vs the rock hard butter cake. To truly test the flavors of these cakes I let them both sit on the counter for about 30 minutes to soften. What I found in terms of taste difference was very little, they both had good vanilla flavor, the one thing that was different was just that creamy buttery taste that melts in your mouth. The oil cake just fell a little flat. Not to say that it was a bad cake, it was perfectly acceptable, it was just missing that small flavor booster. I am very happy with the outcome of this test because I would happily serve my oil cake to customers, but I am excited to keep working and trying new things to see if I can improve it even more.