How to Bake a Cake From Scratch...

...The Hungry Jenny Way...

When I started all this baking lark, I quickly found myself heading into this weird jigsaw maze that I now find myself on with each cake I make.

I look for elements from various recipes I like - this might be a particular combination of flavours, the mixing method, or the texture that specific ingredients will create. Then I might try and find substitutes for other ingredients to rework the idea a bit more, before bringing it all together - hopefully in the form of a tasty cake.

As you can probably tell, this is a pretty haphazard approach, and lately it got me wondering whether there is some magic formula out there for Baking a Cake Completely From Scratch, as opposed to just ripping apart and merging random things together.

Turns out, there is.

Whilst hunting around online, I found alot of blogs raving about this book by Michael Ruhlman called Ratio, where he talks about proportions used in cooking and baking, and how you can use these to create your own recipes.

The intricate science and maths behind it all is something that keeps going over my head I'm still trying to learn, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show you how I use such a ratio to muddle out my own recipe.

First, take Ruhlman's ratio for 'quick bread':

Flour - 2 parts
Liquid - 2 parts
Eggs - 1 part
Butter - 1 part

The Egg
The ratios go by weight so in this case, I tend to start with the egg. I usually take a large egg to weigh about 75g (the edible bit of course, not the shell). So there's your 1 part.

The Butter
Then the butter, this is 1 part too. But I like to go butter-free with my baking so in this case, I decided to replace with oil, which I often use as a fat replacer.

The Flour
Now you go into 2 parts for the flour, which means just double the weight of your 1 part, so that's 150g in this case. But I didn't want to do all flour, so I swap a third of this with ground almonds instead.

The Liquid
Finally, the liquid - normally I just use applesauce - well my version is just boiling down some apples to a pulp and adding a bit of honey, seems to work alright. But in this case, I couldn't be bothered, so decided to mash up some banana instead. The one I had weighed slightly under than the ratio requirement of 150g, but I only had one banana, so the 125g was all I had to use.

Erm yes, so you might notice that I essentially measured oil as the fat, and banana as a liquid, when in a more logical world, I probably should have done this the other way around. I only realised this after starting to mix it altogether, so it was too late! Luckily this didn't ruin the recipe.

Ok, let's recap:

Flour - 2 parts - 100g flour + 50g almonds
Liquid - 2 parts - 125g banana
Eggs - 1 part - 1 egg (75g beaten approx)
Butter (fat) - 1 part - 75ml oil

So what's missing? A bit of sweetness and some flavour!

The Sugar
Following intense research into sifting out the ratio of sugar from various recipes (ok, I looked up three), the favourable proportion seems to be 1 part. So easy, that gives me 75g sugar. But I always like to cut back on refined sugar, so chopped a third off to give me 50g.

The Flavour
Once you've got the base of your cake batter sorted, you can pretty much judge by eye the amount of flavoursome things to add. So in this case, I added some cinnamon and nutmeg, then tipped in some raspberries until...well it looked like there was a decent amount in the bowl (and when it made a nice round number, 100g, on my scale).

And so there you have it - baking a cake from scratch, the Hungry Jenny way - there is some logic in there, right?

Raspberry and Almond Cake (butter free)

Print-friendly recipe

For a 7" sandwich tin (8 slices):

1 egg, beaten
50g white sugar
125g banana, mashed
75ml rice bran oil
100g plain flour
100g ground almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
Pinch nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g frozen raspberries

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Beat the egg with the sugar. Mix the banana and oil in well.
2) In another mixing bowl, sift in the flour with half of the almonds. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg and baking powder. Fold in the raspberries, coating well.
3) Pour in the banana mixture, folding in until just mixed.
4) Transfer the mixture to a lined sandwich tin, then spoon the remaining almonds over the top.
5) Bake for 30-35 minutes, until lightly goldena and you can pull a fork out clean.

More Hungry Jenny cakes here.