Cakes sans Kitchen Aid?

[Margot Harrison]

I'm wondering if anyone has good cake recipes that don't require you to use a $300 mixer, or actually anything but your hand and a wooden spoon. (Or metal whisk or manual egg beater. Those are my options.)

I'd like to make layer cakes or cupcakes, mainly because I have an unholy love of frosting. Tried a sponge cake recipe I found online, but even with 30 minutes of hand mixing, it stayed woefully flat. How on earth did people make fluffy sponge cakes before mixers? Is there a secret?

Sure, I'd love a Kitchen Aid, but it's too much of an investment right now... it amazes me that every baking book simply assumes you have one.

And if you think I'm on a doomed quest... anyone got any good recipes for honey cakes? I love our local honey and want more uses for it.

[Morganna]

They whipped the batters for a very very long time and they'd spent the day doing other hard work that made them strong and able to do this whipping.  Also, copper bowls help whip up egg whites much faster.

Also, try getting a hand egg beater, one with gears that rotate the beaters.  They're fairly cheap.  You'll have much better luck with them.

[Undead Molly]

I don't know if you will find a sponge cake recipe that doesn't require a lot of beating because all or most of the leavening is the millions of teeny bubbles trapped in the albumin. I don't know of any way of getting it in there other than copious whipping. Morgana is right about the hand beaters, though. I use one of those and it works fine.

I've never made a honey cake but I found this recipe on epicurious that looks yummy and is very positively reviewed. It's a straight batter cake, not a sponge, so it just needs mixing.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Majestic-and-Moist-New-Years-Honey-Cake-350153

[Margot Harrison]

I do have a nice hand beater from Williams Sonoma that whips up egg whites pretty quickly — should I use that? I don't know about gears, though.

Thanks for the recipe, Molly! I'm gonna try it.

[Morganna]

This is what I meant by one with gears:

[Alice Levitt]

Here's a recipe that Richard Blais of Top Chef fame tweeted yesterday: Super quick microwave sponge cake recipe. 3 eggs 5 tblsp sugar 1/2 cup cake flour Whisk, iSi, 2 charges 30 sec in micro in slit coffee cup.

That's about as complex as I'd be willing to go with baking.

[Undead Molly]

Here's a video of a dude making a sponge cake with a hand mixer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMbhOyyP9iY

[Margot Harrison]

Thanks for that vid, Molly! Until today I had no idea what it meant to "sift" flour. Not kidding.

I have a new tactic when it comes to cakes. For X-mas, my sister gave me a copy of Julia Child's The Way to Cook, inspired by the movie Julie and Julia. While I'm not crazy about following in Julie Powell's footsteps, I love Julia's step-by-step instructions (with photos).

She starts with two basic sponge cake recipes, neither of which requires an electric mixer (though I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to use one!). There are separate sections that explain in detail how to beat egg whites to stiff peaks (which I do with one of those geared hand beaters) and how to beat egg yolks with sugar (with big whisk). There's even a paragraph or two about folding in the egg whites. Perfect for cooking dunces like me. (I was taught to separate eggs as a child, but that's about it.)

Anyway, I've made both variations on the first sponge cake recipe, and I really enjoy it. It's sort of like a science experiment, and I've been getting much better rising than before... my second cake looked souffle-like before it deflated after baking. It had ground almonds replacing some flour, so it's moist, yum. I like how easy, cheap and quick these recipes are. (Though not as much as a microwave cake!)

Now I just need to buy some "cake flour" (or at least pastry flour) and do the sifting thing. Julia says to use bleached flour, but do they even sell that anymore?

Of course, all this baking is just an excuse for me to make confectioner's-sugar frosting in crazy colors (blue-green, pumpkin orange), which I love to an unhealthy degree.

[Morganna]

Most standard brands of all purpose flour are bleached.  Look at the Gold Medal packages.