Can you make cakes without butter? What can you use instead of butter?

We all know that there are many types of cakes, with rich flavors. They are sweet and delicious, soft and sticky, and are loved by people. Many people will make cakes at home. Cakes are generally made with cream, so can cakes be made without cream? Let's take a closer look!

Can you make a cake without butter?

Of course you can. You may have seen that almost all birthday cakes are covered with cream and decorations, so you think that you can't make a cake without cream. In fact, you can make a bare cake directly, or decorate the cake with other ingredients.

1. If you eat the cake directly, you can make some changes to the cake body, such as adding some cocoa powder, matcha powder, dried fruits, etc. to make it into a variety of flavors, or different styles, such as cupcakes, cake rolls (you can just roll it up without adding anything).

Although sponge cake is more solid than chiffon cake, it has a strong egg flavor and is also sweet and delicious. Chiffon cake is very tolerant and can be made into many flavors. So it is still delicious even without cream or filling.

As you can see, neither of them requires the addition of butter. So if you want to make a naked cake, milk, eggs, granulated sugar, low-gluten flour, and corn oil/butter are enough.

Naked cakes don’t necessarily have to be made using round molds. You can also use paper cups to make cupcakes, or use silicone Savarin molds, which will give them beautiful edges. You can also cut them into pieces and eat them directly.

2. Replace the cream with other decorations, such as buttercream, fruit, etc.

Of course, if you think this is still too monotonous, then we can use some other ways to decorate, not necessarily with whipped cream. Whipping cream is just one of the ways.

How to decorate a cake without buttercream

If you are not making a naked cake and do not want to decorate with cream, you can choose the following methods:

1. Use buttercream

Although the word "cream" is in the name, it is far from cream. Buttercream frosting is generally divided into Italian buttercream frosting, Swiss buttercream frosting, French buttercream frosting, cheese buttercream frosting and light cream buttercream frosting.

Except for whipped cream, which needs to be added with butter, the other types of cream are all made of butter as the main raw material. It has a stronger plasticity than whipped cream and is not so sensitive to temperature. It can be used for glazing or for more complex decoration.

2. Use meringue or icing sugar

This kind of decorative coating is not very common in China. It is often seen in the production of some foreign artistic cakes. In fact, the plasticity of meringue and icing is not weaker than butter. However, it may be because meringue is really sweet and not suitable for Chinese people's taste, so it is rarely seen in China. We generally do not use icing or meringue directly for coating and decorating.

3. Decorate directly with fruits

This is a kind of naked cake. You can spread some jam, condensed milk, or chocolate in the middle to make it taste better. It looks very forest-like and was very popular in the past two years.

Components of a cake

The cream cakes we usually see are generally composed of the following parts: cake base, cream (including fillings and outer coating), fillings (commonly fresh fruits, jams, canned fruits)

1. Cake base

There are two most common types of cake bases: chiffon cake base and sponge cake base. Another type is pound cake base, but pound cake is not very suitable for Chinese people's taste because of its heavy taste. It is not very common in birthday cakes in China. It only appears at weddings or some special occasions. Because pound cake has a strong load-bearing capacity, it can be decorated with heavier decorations on the surface of the cake without crushing the cake.

Chiffon cake and sponge cake bases are more common because of their soft and moist texture, so most birthday cakes use these two types of bases.

2. Cream

The cream is only used as a decoration. Of course, it can also improve the taste for some friends who like to eat cream. But it is not necessary. Of course, if it is sold, most of them still need to be decorated with some cream to make the cake more beautiful.

Some typical cream birthday cakes:

3. Jam or Fruit

In order to increase the taste and layering of the cake, in addition to cream, some fresh fruits or jams need to be added to the filling.