YELLOW LAYER CAKES

THERE ARE TWO BASIC METHODS for making a yellow cake. The 1-2-3-4 cake dates back to the nineteenth century. The name refers to the ingredients (1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs). The recipe was easy to remember and helpful for cooks who did not have standardized measures because they could use the same cup to measure all the ingredients.

This cake is made by creaming the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. The eggs are beaten in, and then the dry ingredients are added alternately with milk or another liquid (orange juice for an orange layer cake, for instance). A second kind of yellow cake is made by creaming the flour with the butter and sugar. The eggs and liquid ingredients are then added. Beating the flour with the butter coats it with fat and slows down the absorption of liquid. This method inhibits the formation of gluten, the elastic proteins that give bread and other baked goods their structure.

We made cakes with both methods and prefer the traditional creaming of butter and sugar without the flour, as in the 1-2-3-4 cake. A good butter cake should have enough chew and heft to stand up to almost any frosting. We found that yellow cakes made by creaming the flour with the butter and sugar have an overly fine grain and fragile crumb.

Bleached all-purpose flour delivers the best balance of softness and structure in our version of the 1-2-3-4 cake, which contains less flour than the original. Cake flour does not have enough protein and makes an overly soft cake. Unbleached all-purpose has too much protein and makes a tougher cake.

Traditional recipes for the 1-2-3-4 cake often call for separated eggs. The yolks are beaten into the batter after the butter and sugar are creamed while the whites are whipped to stiff peaks and folded in after the flour and milk are incorporated. Although the separated-egg method makes an especially light cake, our tests revealed it can lead to tunneling and air pockets. We had more reliable results (and no tunneling) when we added whole eggs to the batter.