Have you ever wondered what the secret is to soft, tender cake and melt-in-your-mouth baked goods? Swans Down Bleached Cake Flour is the ultimate soft wheat variety with a low protein percentage, meaning it creates the most delicate crumb for cakes, pies, and biscuits. Sifted numerous times before packaging, their cake flour is 27 times finer than regular all-purpose flour, making it one of the most essential products a baker can have on hand. Here are five reasons you should be baking with cake flour.
1. Cake flour is the secret to the perfect angel food cake.
Reason: The classic American sponge cake requires the low-protein cake flour to keep it tasting like cake and not like white bread. There’s plenty of protein in the whipped egg whites you use as the fluffy base, and the tender cake flour keeps the batter from becoming too thick and tough.
Recipe: Angel Food Cake
2. Cake flour is the perfect foundation for fruit-based desserts, like coffee cakes and buckles.
Reason: Bleached cake flour, like Swans Down, is particularly absorbent and works well with fruit-laden baked goods. It takes on the fresh fruit’s excess moisture, and the final product will be much lighter and flavorful.
Recipe: Blueberry Browned Butter Buckle
3. You can bake like a real Great British Bake Off contestant!
Reason: Plain flour is the British version of cake flour, with a 7% to 10% protein content. American all-purpose flour is made with harder wheat, creating a 10% to 11% protein level. This can change the texture of tender-crumbed baked goods such as scones and sponge cakes. For more delicate desserts, the best American substitution is cake flour, which has 8% protein and is a closer match to plain flour.
Recipe: Traditional English Scones
4. It makes better biscuits.
Reason: Really good biscuits require soft wheat flour. Soft wheat has a lower protein level than other wheat types, creating less gluten and a more tender baked good. Cake flour offers that low protein your biscuits need.
Recipe: Cheddar-Onion Biscuits
5. It makes the softest piecrust base.
Reason: If you’re making a single-crust pie that needs to absorb the weight of a creamy filling or if you want your piecrust to be extra-tender, the superfine quality of cake flour is your secret ingredient.
