Vegan Cooking Tips with Ann Gentry

Ann Gentry is a chef, restaurateur, food educator and visionary. She opened Real Food Daily in Los Angeles 1993, a totally vegan and organic restaurant that has since spawned another in West Hollywood. Please visit Real Food Daily to find out more about this truly unique restaurant and to learn more about Ann Gentry.

Question:

I use whole wheat pastry flour to make my cakes, but they always come out tasting more like bread than cake. What can I do?

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Answer:

Sounds like you have a crummy recipe to begin with (no pun intended) as using whole wheat pastry flour in a well written and executed recipe will not produce a bread like cake. Be sure you are using ww pastry flour not whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour has more bran and gluten than ww pastry and is meant to be used in breads and muffins not cakes and lighter pastries. You might analyze the type of sweetener you are using as well. Heavy liquid sweeteners like honey, molasses, barley malt or rice syrup with any flour will produce a gooey wet cake, instead try using powder sweetener (maple crystals or sucanat) or a liquid sweetener like maple syrup. Also check out the consistency of other liquids in a flour batter, such as fruit juices or soy/rice milks as well as the amount of oil , these too can make the batter too sticky wet which in turn can produce a wet dense bready like cake. If your cake comes out of the oven with a hard top crust then you are over baking your cake or have the temperature to high. And one last pointer, do not over mix the cake batter. This too produces a heavy cake.

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