Hough Bakery White Cake

Home reconstruction

Hough Bakery closed in 1992, and that is why people are looking for this. The Cleveland chain shut after decades, and what is left is a lot of very specific memories of a white cake with a particular frosting and no way to check any reconstruction against the original.

Worth saying plainly rather than implying otherwise. What follows is how an old-fashioned American white bakery cake is built, not a recovered formula.

Egg whites only

That is what makes a white cake white. Yolks give a yellow crumb and a richer, more custardy flavour — good, and a different cake.

Whites alone give a pale, tight, slightly springy crumb and a cleaner taste that lets the vanilla and almond come forward.

Save the yolks. Six of them, and they make a good custard.

Cake flour, not plain

Cake flour is milled finer and has a lower protein content, around 8% against plain flour's 10–11%. Less protein means less gluten, and less gluten means a finer, more tender crumb.

For a delicate white cake this is a visible difference, not a subtle one.

If you cannot get it: take 130 g of plain flour, remove 2 tablespoons, and replace them with 2 tablespoons of cornflour. Sift three times. It is a genuine substitute.

The reverse creaming method

Butter rubbed into the dry ingredients first, then the liquids added. Not the usual cream-butter-and-sugar approach.

Coating the flour in fat before any water arrives limits how much gluten can form at all. The crumb comes out finer, more even, and less likely to dome — which is exactly what a layer cake wants.

It is the method used for most commercial white cakes and it is why they have that uniform, tight texture.

The almond extract

Quarter teaspoon. It is the flavour people remember from old bakery cakes and cannot name, and leaving it out makes a noticeably plainer cake.

Do not use more. Almond extract is powerful and past half a teaspoon it stops being a background note.

What you need

Cake

• 340 g cake flour
• 300 g granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 170 g unsalted butter, softened and cubed
• 240 ml whole milk, at room temperature
• 6 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract

Frosting

• 340 g unsalted butter, softened
• 700 g icing sugar
• 4 tbsp whole milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt

Method

1. Oven to 175°C. Grease and line two 23 cm tins.
2. Whisk the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixer bowl.
3. Add the softened butter a cube at a time on a low speed, until the mixture looks like damp sand — 2–3 minutes.
4. Whisk the milk, egg whites and both extracts together in a jug.
5. Add half the liquid and beat 1 minute on medium.
6. Add the rest in two goes, beating just until smooth after each.
7. Divide between the tins.
8. Bake 23–27 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
9. Cool 10 minutes in the tins, then completely on a rack.
10. Beat the frosting ingredients 4 minutes until very light. Fill and cover.

Room temperature milk and whites

Cold liquid hitting butter-coated flour makes the butter seize into lumps that never fully disperse, and you get pale dense patches in the baked cake.

Take both out an hour before. Egg whites in particular whip and incorporate far better warm.

Completely cool before frosting

Buttercream on a warm cake melts and slides, and the layers slip apart. An hour on a rack, minimum.

Storing

Three days at room temperature under a cover. Do not refrigerate — cold dries the crumb and hardens the buttercream.

Unfrosted layers freeze for three months, wrapped.