All-Natural Baking: What a Difference!

All-natural, Custom Baking vs. Traditional Commercial Volume Baking: What's the Difference? (Part 1 in a 3-part series) by Marney White

When it comes to baking, I was raised on from-scratch baking with real butter, heavy cream, fine chocolate, pure vanilla, and everything fresh straight from the pages of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (literally). So, from the start, my palate was trained to detect the difference between all-natural baking, and traditional commercial mixes and icings full of artificial ingredients. Because it was all I knew, nothing but the best would do. However, since it's the unusual bakery that uses all-natural, top-quality ingredients and custom bakes each cake as it's needed, the average person might not know the difference. Most people buy from traditional volume-based bakeries. They've never tasted anything else, and they don't even realize there's an alternative that's so much more delicious!

There's a huge distinction in flavor, texture and moisture content between a butter cake made from scratch, and a cake made from a commercial bakery mix, using vegetable oil or Crisco as the fat. Butter imparts flavor, rich velvety texture, body, and lasting moisture to a cake. I've been surprised to receive notes from clients saying that they're eating leftover cake a week later, and it's still moist and delicious! (Of course, part of me is horrified that clients are eating week-old cake, but it sure is intriguing that it's still moist that long after their events!) When you're eating commercial bakery mix cake, it's kind of dry, often flavorless, and doesn't have substantial texture. Another contributing factor to this inferior flavor and texture is that commercial bakery mixes are chock-full of chemical preservatives that create a ridiculously long shelf life – that's why food banks include them with canned foods on the preferred donations list. 

Image: LadyKat Photography

But the biggest difference, in my mind, between a cake made from natural ingredients and artificial ingredients is in its crowning glory: the icing. One of my pet peeves is that bakeries can call frosting made without a scintilla of butter "buttercream," and because of that, people think that this flavorless, greasy impostor is the real deal. Know how you tell the difference? It's easy.  Ask yourself, what color is butter? That's right, it's pale yellow. What color is Crisco?  Pure white. If someone tells you you're eating buttercream, and it's snow white vanilla icing, you know you're really eating commercial "decorator's icing" – fake buttercream, with fake clear vanilla extract. Pure vanilla is a deep, rich brown with a heady vanilla aroma, rendering real vanilla buttercream an elegant deep ivory color.

Why do most bakeries use decorator's icing? Well, it's a hospitable host to artificial color, since there's no buttery pale yellow hue to interfere with the desired end color result. Moreover, it's very inexpensive, and withstands heat and humidity better than real butter (with none of the food safety issues attendant in using real butter in heat and humidity – more on that later). But the biggest reason is probably that so few people have ever tasted real buttercream, with its incomparable flavor and silky texture, that decorator's icing is all most people know. They aren't even aware that there's a sumptuous alternative.

Image: Chloe Volz Photography

So, what is real buttercream, anyway? It's very basic: butter, confectioner's sugar, heavy cream, and a touch of some variety of flavoring. Crisco has nothing to do with it! People who taste authentic buttercream for the first time are incredulous at what it's really like. When people tell me "I hate buttercream," my usual response is, "That's probably because you've never really had it." After the real deal envelops your taste buds for the first time, and you experience its heavenly smoothness and rich flavor, there's no going back. It's like falling in love! Swiss meringue buttercream is lighter and even silkier than traditional buttercream, with its cooked egg whites and sugar whipped into a meringue, before the sweet butter is added. That's the gastronomic cake experience of a lifetime, and the pinnacle of buttercream perfection!

In Part 2: All-natural Made-to-order vs. Artificial Made in Volume: Is There Really a Difference? 

Written by Marney White, Owner of Marneycakes, Inc.

Marney White is a foodie committed to wedding cake perfection.  She has been baking for 25 years, and launched Marneycakes, Inc. in March 2008.  Marney privately studied the art of gum paste flowers with the legendary Betty Van Norstrand (who trained Sylvia Weinstock, and has taught Ron ben Israel, Buddy Valastro, and other wedding cake luminaries). She lives with her family on Long Island, NY, and loves sea kayaking, and hiking, and vegetarian cuisine.