What happens if your cake mixture curdles

Instead of a beautiful, glassy caramel, the sugar turns into a crystalline nightmare that would be more at home in a GCSE chemistry experiment.

If you see the white bloom of crystallisation forming at the side of the pan, take a wet pastry brush, and brush the crystals gently to dissolve them, or add a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice to the mix.

Heat the mixture gently without boiling to dissolve all the sugar crystals, stirring frequently. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. The most stylish autumn boots on the high street. New beauty buys to treat yourself to this month. Our favourite fake Christmas trees for The bestselling toys for Christmas Getty Images.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano. Their mission is to provide the inspiration and information people need to make healthy eating a way of life. Kary Osmond karyosmond.

Her love of plant-based cooking offers healthy alternatives to some of your favorite dishes. The Kitchn: Has your cake batter curdled? How to fix curdled cake batter One way to fix broken cake batter is to add a bit of flour, one tablespoon at a time, until it smooths out again. Cake you bake curdled cake batter? Give this recipe a try.

You Might Also Like Add some flour and other dry ingredients and the mixture comes back together and forms a batter that, when baked, creates a deliciously soft crumbed cake or a heavy fruit cake. In our Ask Peter series, executive chef Peter Gordon answers your curly culinary questions. You can read more on Peter on his website , have a read of his Ask Peter articles or check out his recipes on our site. Fresh globe artichokes are a treat, and jars of marinated artichokes are so versatile.

A collection of delicious and healthy vegan dishes. And that starts with understanding the base of your batter: emulsions. Most emulsions we encounter are a suspension of fat in water.

This is basically the whole point of emulsions: taking these two incompatible substances and making them come together happily, like a culinary Pride and Prejudice. When cake batter is made properly, it forms a stabilized matrix of suspended fat, water, and air to create a smooth, velvety batter. The emulsion breaks when the fat can no longer hold the water. This can happen for several reasons: If your eggs are just slightly too cold, they may cause the soft butter to seize up, breaking the emulsion.

When this happens, your cake batter will look lumpy and curdled, rather than smooth and even. This affects the baked cake, too. This affects the baked cake — and not in a good way. The second egg is still OK, but it starts to look a little slimy. And usually, the third egg is the one that does it. As Susan explains, this trick works because the flour acts like a keystone, sitting between the water molecules and fat molecules throughout the mixture and holding them in place to yield an evenly blended batter.

As a former Baking School instructor, Melanie emphasizes this point. But if you want to take your baking to the next level, use an emulsifier designed specifically for cake baking: Bread and Cake Enhancer. It contains vegetable fats that act as emulsifiers, allowing the fat and water in cake batter to combine more easily and preventing it from breaking. Simply add 2 to 4 tablespoons of Cake Enhancer to your cake batter along with the eggs to prevent curdling; your cakes will also be softer, moister, and stay fresher longer.

A sweet win! For more of Susan's baking tips, tune into our Instagram Stories on Wednesdays to see her baking from her kitchen and sharing her expert advice. Rossi Anastopoulo grew up in Charleston, SC, which is how she fell in love with biscuits. She geeks out over pie history and loves to bake anything that requires whipping egg whites.