Flour, sugar, eggs, butter: simple cakes to make at home
Flour, sugar, eggs, butter = the ideal quartet to prepare a simple cake
Thanks to flour (of any kind), sugar of any kind, eggs, and butter, we have the ideal base for preparing any cake. Indeed, pastry is based on these four ingredients, which are often supplemented with milk, yeast, vanilla or cocoa.
The winning mix and match
You can succeed in baking a more than adequate cake with simple ingredients. Just keep in mind the many possibilities that are within our reach.
Flour + sugar + eggs + butter = pound cake / Breton biscuits / cake base / madeleines / muffin base / cookie base (to which chocolate is added if you want to prepare the best chocolate cookies in the world) / brioche base
Flour + sugar + eggs = pancakes / crepes (with milk) / puff pastry (for palm trees) / kouign-amann
Flour + sugar + butter = crumble (with fruit) / chouquettes
For some recipes, other ingredients are needed such as yeast but can sometimes be transposed.
If I'm lacking in milk : we replace it with a little water if it's to soften our dough. Obviously, if it's to make a flan, we change the recipe! Ditto, if you don't have liquid cream or yogurt, you do with what you have in the cupboards, and if it's not an essential ingredient, you shamelessly skip it from the preparation.
If I'm short on butter : we use vegetable milk or not; olive, coconut or other oil; oilseed puree; applesauce; yogurt ; or grated zucchini, it works very well.
If I'm short on flour : it all depends on the recipe, but you can also use cornstarch; rolled oats, mixed or not; or oilseed powder (almond or hazelnut).
If I'm lacking in sugar : we replace it with honey; agave syrup; mashed banana or fruit compote.
How to upgrade these basic cakes?
Once we have chosen our cake base, we can wake it up with spices (cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, tonka bean), cocoa powder (marble cake), dark chocolate (brownies, cookies, brookies, and other delicacies in -ies), citrus zest (lemon, orange, clementine), crushed oilseeds (pecan, hazelnuts, almonds, and co), seeds (flax, poppy, sesame, squash), large pieces of fruits, in fact everything that makes us want. And if we miss an ingredient, don't panic, we see if we can replace it, otherwise we forget it.
Come on, everyone in the kitchen.
