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Test Kitchen tips: Helping to prevent air pockets in cakes

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Occasionally when mixing cake batters, pockets of air can develop from the leavening agent, whether you’re using a chemical leavener (like baking powder or soda) and/or mechanically leavening with air from beaten egg whites (as with an angel food cake, or the chiffon cake pictured above).

To remove or prevent air pockets before baking, run a skewer, spatula or knife through the cake batter after you’ve poured it into the pan. This will loosen the air pockets, allowing them to rise to the surface.

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Air pockets are different from ‘tunneling’ (where air tunnels appear in a baked cake), which is generally caused by overmixing the batter (over-developing the gluten) and toughening it -- the leavener has nowhere to go and tunnels through the cake as it bakes, erupting in cracks at the top. Overbeaten batters cannot be fixed (though frosting -- like makeup -- can mask a number of flaws in a finished cake).

If you have any kitchen tips or questions you’d like me to explore, leave a comment below or shoot me an email at noelle.carter@latimes.com.

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-- Noelle Carter
twitter/noellecarter

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