A sample text widget

Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.

Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan. Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem, suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.

What Makes a Cake Moist & Substituting Yogurt in a Cake Recipe

“Sassy Suzanne” asks: How do you insure a moist cake or cupcake?  Is it the oil or butter?  When can you switch to yogurt?  is it interchangeable? Also, when adding fresh fruit – How do you determine the amount?  I was concerned about the rise and moisture of the end product.

Baking S.O.S. says: Thank you for the challenging questions!

There are a number of factors that contribute to the moistness of a cake or cupcake, including the fat (oil or butter, as you mentioned), the amount of sugar, the amount and type of liquid called for in the recipe, and even the eggs!  Although eggs help provide structure to hold all of the other ingredients together when the proteins set during baking, eggs also contain water, so they contribute to the overall moisture content of baked goods.

So when making substitutions in a cake recipe, the moisture content will be affected, as well.

In the case of yogurt specifically, I have found recipes that substitute yogurt for the eggs, the liquid, sour cream, and the oil or butter.  So depending on which ingredient you want to substitute the yogurt for, it will affect the outcome of the finished cake, but it is difficult to predict exactly HOW the finished cake will be affected.  You simply have to find out through experimentation.

To determine how much yogurt to substitute for various ingredients, check out this article from Taste of Home. According to the article, it is not a 1-for-1 exact substitution when using yogurt for lower-fat baking, so you will need to do some calculations depending on where you want to substitute the yogurt.  Good luck!

2 comments to What Makes a Cake Moist & Substituting Yogurt in a Cake Recipe

  • the cake is a scratch cake with crunched pineapple, lemon and others i don,t have with me where i am at, but it calls for one half cup of yogurt in the recipe and i don,t like yogurt at all and want a substute for it, i also do not like sour cream ,so if you can give me one i would be happy thank you.

  • Hi there, I am willing to bet that once you bake the cake, you would not be able to detect the flavor of the yogurt in it. (not like you would if you simply eat the yogurt on its own) I assume the yogurt is used to add moisture to the cake, but with less fat than butter. So I suppose if you don’t care about making a low-fat cake, you could probably use butter for flavor and moisture, but I cannot tell you how much butter to substitute for the yogurt. Making substitutions in dessert recipes can be very tricky because any alterations you make from the original recipe will likely produce a different result. So all you can do is keep testing the changes until you get a result you are happy with.

    When I teach baking classes, I always tell my students that when you make a recipe for the first time, you should always follow the recipe exactly as it is written so you know how the recipe is supposed to turn out. That way, you have it as a point of comparison. Then when you want to make changes to teh recipe, you will know how those changes impact the final product. So I would encourage you to make the original recipe with the yogurt to see how the cake is supposed to turn out. And then if you really don’t like the flavor, try making a substitution for the yogurt. But I doubt you will notice it in the finished product.

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>