SUGAR'S IMPACT ON CAKE

Sugar plays an important role in any cake recipe. Without the inclusion of sugar, a cake would be blend and uninspired in relation to flavour, but did you know that your cake would also be pale in color, squatty and dense?

Sugar's effects on cake are quite diverse. Sugar is first and foremost a flavour maker, but it has other critical roles in cake baking as well. Here is a list of its known jobs;

1.FLAVOURING ; While we think of sugar providing sweetness, it also provides a platform for caramelization and browning. Without sugar, cake has a raw-like flavour, devoid of nuances that come out as sugar decomposes in caramelization and as it contributes to browning in Millard reactions. The results of sugar's presence is a "baked" flavour in cake.

2. TENDERIZING ; Sugar essentially wakens structural agents in a batter, it slows and reduces protein-protein interactions such as gluten formation and eggs protein solidification. Sugar can also slow starch gelation and increase bake time.

3. MOISTURE ; Water molecules are attracted to sugar so the presence of significant sugar in a cake will help capture and hold on to liquid.. This results in a moisture cake.

4. LEAVENING : When sugar is creamed with batter, the sugar crystals help drive air into the mixture. as the cake bakes, these air pockets expand causing leavening.

In the above photo, you can see the effects of tenderization, especially between the cake with a normal amount of sugar (100%) and the high-sugar (150%). The high sugar cake is fluffy but also crumbly and loose. This cake is so tender and barely holding itself together. The high-sugar cake, with 150% the weight of sugar in a standard recipe, was quite sweet but it was still amazing unoffending. The cake with half the sugar was mild but maintained a nice, sweet taste. This goes to show, there is a lot of wiggle room when playing with the sweetness factor in a cake recipe. With the higher-sugar cakes having much greater depth of flavour than their low-sugar counterparts.

Sugar has a wide variety of properties in a cake but leavening and flavour seem to be the most noticeable factors. While sugar in a standard volume of 2;3 sugar to flour results in moderate sweetness and leavening, you can easily modify your cake by either increasing or reducing the amount of sugar you use.