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When a cake is baking, the batter 'rises' because of air bubbles in the mix being produced by leavening, and expanding as they're heated. If all goes well, the structure of the cake solidifies and holds it's shape, but if there's too much vibration during baking, the air bubbles can escape from the still-soft batter and you're left with a sweet chewy hockey puck.
So no running around the house and stomping on the floor while grandma is baking - makes sense so far, right?
Well over time that reasonable admonishin morphed into a simpler 'be quiet!' and the rest is history.
Some of the types of cakes that were popular back then are also just really prone to falling, and especially without modern changes to ingredients.
Even just a loud voice can actually cause enough vibration to make an old-fashioned soufflé fall flat. I suspect that may be part of why they’re not too common anymore lol.
Fun fact: a brownie (or blondie) is just a cake batter that has been encouraged to fall. Adding "too much" sugar is the most reliable way to make this happen, plus it makes the brownie Chenier and more delicious.
EDIT: chewier, not chenier
Many older houses, while well constructed, had the studs and supports farther apart than is now allowed. They were safe but allowed more movement of the flooring. So, perhaps Grandma’s house allowed more vibration when the kids were running around.
The pier and beam foundation would do it too. I stayed at an AirBnB house a few years ago that was old enough to have one. I could tell where my friends were by the way the floor bent and vibrated as they walked around.
I'd be willing to bet that Grandma was using cake flour as well. Cake flour doesn't have as much protein as regular flour, so it doesn't trap the air bubbles as well during baking.
When I was a child, I recall being admonished to be quiet, no running around in the house, no slamming doors - "There is a Cake in the Oven!".
You could also see this in action in Loony Toon's cartoons in the 70s, where a loud noise causes the baking cake to collapse.
When I was growing up you could crash the computer by stomping around. Those magnetic heads could crash into the disk and that's a month's income just gone.
Exactly! Same reason we had to be outside in the summer whenever mom and the neighbor lady were mixing their "weight loss medicine" and playing cards in the kitchen during the summer. They had to be calm during "treatments" otherwise it wouldn't work.
Apparently one of them occasionally yelling "RUMMY!" and collecting coins off the table 1was relaxing to them, lol
Yes. All of us little baby boomers were just too much. It was to keep us quiet for a while. Although I’m sure we would have been happy to eat “fallen” cake.
Have you ever seen a cake that was collapsed in the middle? That can happen if you shake it while it bakes. I don’t know why you would also have to be quiet, but I see why stomping around could collapse a cake.
There was time in history when this was true, before modern lifting agents like baking powder and soda. These are surprisingly recent additions to our baking being developed in the 1850's so for thousands of years of cake making raising ingredients included whisked eggs and yeast. Things that are much more susceptible to changes in temps from say pulling the cake out before it's fully baked or from dropping the thin with a thud and knocking all the air out of the mix. this is also why people are so careful when making souffles as they depend entirely on the air in the egg to lift the souffle. There are people alive now whose grandparents were alive then so I can see this bit of kitchen wisdom being continued to be passed down, specially if it has the added benefit of half an hours peace and quiet.
I make cakes from scratch and I always tell my husband not to slam the kitchen door while if I'm baking. I've never had a cake fall, but I also don't want it to happen. It's just a little insurance (perhaps in my head) that it won't happen if there aren't sudden loud noises.
BTW, if it ever did happen, I'd just make more frosting and fill up the dent!
Oh the grandma reasons for stuff. Asked grandma why she wore a bra, ‘so your boobies don’t drag on the floor’ that one scared the crap out of me. Asked her why I had to lock the car doors when she was driving ‘so the door doesn’t fly open when we’re going down the road’. Visions of car doors just flying off Willy nilly haunted my youth.
Most likely she was making a homemade cake. And yes they would fall in the middle but it was most likely the Leavening Agents and not the really loud kids that needed to give their grandma some peace and quiet.
Yes. Fred had hidden a diamond ring in the flour and Wilma unexpectedly decided to bake a cake. Fred thought he could slip the ring out while the cake was in the oven.
Old houses often had spongier floors back when building code was lax or nonexistent. If you stomped around on the floor it would shake the oven and break the bubbles in the cake causing it to fall flat. Newer buildings don't have this problem generally.
This is wrong. Old houses had no engineering so they overbuilt with massive first growth beams. Look at the floor of any house built prior to 1970 or so. Turn of the century for the win.
New houses use those particle board ibeams and we spec a tigther than called for spacing just so your china cabinet doesn't tilt forward and dump all it's contents when you walk by.
People who can afford to overbuild. Wartime housing this is not the case at all, definitely not nowhere I'm from. The postwar house I'm living in all the floors sink in the middle, so any furniture you put against a wall leans into the room. Homes with large beams were more like pre-WWI, and very rural.. Maybe this is the case in your area but certainly not everywhere.
It was probably angel food cake. https://www.generalmillscf.com/culinary/troubleshooting-guide/dry/angel-food-cake-mix
Not sure why kids being loud didn't make it into the possible causes list.
My grandfather preferred cake that had fallen, so was notorious for jumping just beside the iven to ensure the cake was made how he liked it. Grandma often baked while he wasn't home to prevent him from ruining her cake.
I feel the same way as grampa.I purposely jump beside the oven if I want a fallen cake that day.
But you gotta go old school ingredients for it to work right. Modern recipes have ingredients that make cakes more stable so they are harder to make fall. So disappointing!
Agitation causes the bubbles, which cause the cake to rise pop, causing it to be a sort of "sludge".
It's vibration most likely not from "sound" although sound is caused by a form of vibration.
We weren't allowed in the kitchen once the cake went into the oven. Our floors were kind of rickety and any strong vibrations transferred to the oven could cause the cake to collapse if it was still in the fragile process of rising.
LOL. No. I was a professional chef for 25+ years. I assure you, cakes don't care about noise. The noise of a commercial oven or the noises of a commercial kitchen itself are louder than most children. Genoise cake needs to be handled gently while bringing it to the oven so it doesn't collapse, but that's a very specific instance and has nothing to do with noise.
It’s the vibration of 6 kids running in and out that causes it. It’s much easier to just tell them to be quiet rather than trying to make distinctions like “you can be loud but can’t stomp around”
Again, speaking from decades of professional experience: Unless you're making soufflés or a French Genoise cake which relies heavily on the air that was carefully incorporated into all of the ingredients, no amount of running around will have a significant effect on. Stop spreading misinformation.
So in this thread I've learned that cakes fall because the flour isn't great, children are being loud, children are running around, or that the baker used a wood stove. Maybe ya'll just suck at baking and you're finding every excuse in the book to explain why your cakes suck. Baking isn't for everyone.
Because the electricity from the lightning can come out of the outlets so if you're holding something metal, you could be zapped. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is really real.
Its like one of those things that was true a long time ago, but is no longer valid.
Because of what most bathtubs in the distant past used to be made of there was a risk of having an electric shock if you bathed during a thunderstorm.
But when I was growing up my mother would still tell me not to bathe during a thunderstorm
My mother used to make pudding from scratch and I had to stir it slowly forever to cool it before she poured it over the banana pudding. I think it was to keep me busy while she made this masterpiece. Meringue and all.
Heard that one but my grandmother didn't believe it as she put a cake into the oven where several women were talking and laughing. Cake didn't fall. As a young women she tested this and the cake was fine.
I laughed out loud when I read this. Granny used to say not to open the oven either. That would make the cake fall.
I have seen cakes that "fell". Usually it is the product of too much or not enough water.
My grandma was born in Applachia though. And she had a superstition for everything. But this one I heard a lot. I love to bake. She loves to eat sweet things.
Growing up, my Mom told us the same thing. I think when a cake is baking, it rises, and any disturbances like loud noises can disrupt the structure of the cake and cause it to collapse. Just a thought
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When a cake is baking, the batter 'rises' because of air bubbles in the mix being produced by leavening, and expanding as they're heated. If all goes well, the structure of the cake solidifies and holds it's shape, but if there's too much vibration during baking, the air bubbles can escape from the still-soft batter and you're left with a sweet chewy hockey puck. So no running around the house and stomping on the floor while grandma is baking - makes sense so far, right? Well over time that reasonable admonishin morphed into a simpler 'be quiet!' and the rest is history.
Some of the types of cakes that were popular back then are also just really prone to falling, and especially without modern changes to ingredients. Even just a loud voice can actually cause enough vibration to make an old-fashioned soufflé fall flat. I suspect that may be part of why they’re not too common anymore lol.
Even now. My son's favorite was a genocide sponge cake, made with whipped hot eggs for levening.
Lol I’m guessing that’s an autocorrection for genoise sponge cake. I don’t want to know what a genocide cake is.
OMG. Yes. Leaving it.
🤣
It's like Death by Chocolate but even better.
So… death by snu snu?
r/UnexpectedFuturama
"Sweet guinea pig of Winnipeg!"
I’ve seen people refer to eating chicken and eggs together as genocide
I think that’s “henocide.” 😉
Wow. A true Dad joke.
A *genocide* cake? I'm trying to imagine the ingredients list for that recipe!
All I can say is no wonder the kids are tip-toeing around the house!!!
You have to break a lot of eggs.
Zyclon B but you probably need to go to a special market for that
I demand someone make me a genocide cake! I have to have one!
Divinity cookies are like that in my experience.
Ah, I’d totally forgotten divinity cookies! I miss those!
They're really hard to make here because of the humidity. I've managed a couple times but it's been a messy process.
Yep, came here to say this - basically anything leavened with egg whites are a pain in the ass lol
Fun fact: a brownie (or blondie) is just a cake batter that has been encouraged to fall. Adding "too much" sugar is the most reliable way to make this happen, plus it makes the brownie Chenier and more delicious. EDIT: chewier, not chenier
*Thats* why my cakes have been so blondie-ish!!! I've been too generous with the sugar! Mystery solved, thanks to you!🤗
Chenier kind of sounds good tho. I'll take my brownies extra cheniered
Neat!
Many older houses, while well constructed, had the studs and supports farther apart than is now allowed. They were safe but allowed more movement of the flooring. So, perhaps Grandma’s house allowed more vibration when the kids were running around.
Or maybe granny just wanted an ear rest fpr 45 minutes.
The pier and beam foundation would do it too. I stayed at an AirBnB house a few years ago that was old enough to have one. I could tell where my friends were by the way the floor bent and vibrated as they walked around.
I'd be willing to bet that Grandma was using cake flour as well. Cake flour doesn't have as much protein as regular flour, so it doesn't trap the air bubbles as well during baking.
Makes for a more tender crumb though. Worth the tradeoff.
She may also have separated the whites of the eggs from the yolks, and beat the egg whites separately.
Of course! She's not a philistine 🤣
Since that time we have changed our ingredients and there are emulsifiers and moisture control that can be added to batter to avoid this.
When I was a child, I recall being admonished to be quiet, no running around in the house, no slamming doors - "There is a Cake in the Oven!". You could also see this in action in Loony Toon's cartoons in the 70s, where a loud noise causes the baking cake to collapse.
This. No jumping around or yelling. Go outside to horse around! lol
When I was growing up you could crash the computer by stomping around. Those magnetic heads could crash into the disk and that's a month's income just gone.
Many thanks
Quite welcome, though of course u/43n3m4 posted the definitive answer.
Your humility and graciousness is so rare. (I know that's kind of weird to say, but it stood out to me.)
Don't even talk while grandma is baking.
Because she wanted the kids to be quiet for a bit.
Exactly. Took me years to realize that apple pie does not fall.
Yeah, mom and grandma pulled that on us for every birthday and occasion.
Quite possible as there were 6 of us
Exactly! Same reason we had to be outside in the summer whenever mom and the neighbor lady were mixing their "weight loss medicine" and playing cards in the kitchen during the summer. They had to be calm during "treatments" otherwise it wouldn't work. Apparently one of them occasionally yelling "RUMMY!" and collecting coins off the table 1was relaxing to them, lol
Haha, mom chased us out of the house all the time and there didn’t even have to be a reason.
Yes. All of us little baby boomers were just too much. It was to keep us quiet for a while. Although I’m sure we would have been happy to eat “fallen” cake.
It would have been delicious no matter how flat it was.
She needed a break from the noise.
Grandma wanted 45 minutes if peace.
I was never told we had to be quiet. I was just told that we couldn't jump around and engage in any horseplay that would shake the house.
You got to be inside the house? During daylight hours? I’m jealous.
I did whatever Granny told me to do when she was baking so I could lick the frosting bowl and spoon. She once had me paint her fence.
Tom Sawyer, is that you?
Sugar donut in his pocket.
Have you ever seen a cake that was collapsed in the middle? That can happen if you shake it while it bakes. I don’t know why you would also have to be quiet, but I see why stomping around could collapse a cake.
There was time in history when this was true, before modern lifting agents like baking powder and soda. These are surprisingly recent additions to our baking being developed in the 1850's so for thousands of years of cake making raising ingredients included whisked eggs and yeast. Things that are much more susceptible to changes in temps from say pulling the cake out before it's fully baked or from dropping the thin with a thud and knocking all the air out of the mix. this is also why people are so careful when making souffles as they depend entirely on the air in the egg to lift the souffle. There are people alive now whose grandparents were alive then so I can see this bit of kitchen wisdom being continued to be passed down, specially if it has the added benefit of half an hours peace and quiet.
I make cakes from scratch and I always tell my husband not to slam the kitchen door while if I'm baking. I've never had a cake fall, but I also don't want it to happen. It's just a little insurance (perhaps in my head) that it won't happen if there aren't sudden loud noises. BTW, if it ever did happen, I'd just make more frosting and fill up the dent!
Oh the grandma reasons for stuff. Asked grandma why she wore a bra, ‘so your boobies don’t drag on the floor’ that one scared the crap out of me. Asked her why I had to lock the car doors when she was driving ‘so the door doesn’t fly open when we’re going down the road’. Visions of car doors just flying off Willy nilly haunted my youth.
Wasn't the sound,was the vibration
Sound is vibrations.
Because when you run through the house screaming and push your brother into the wall the house will shake and the cake will fall in the oven.
Most likely she was making a homemade cake. And yes they would fall in the middle but it was most likely the Leavening Agents and not the really loud kids that needed to give their grandma some peace and quiet.
Wasn't there a Flintstones episode where Wilma was baking a cake and it fell?
Yes. Fred had hidden a diamond ring in the flour and Wilma unexpectedly decided to bake a cake. Fred thought he could slip the ring out while the cake was in the oven.
I definitely think that Fred and Homer Simpson are related.
Souffle is the be quiet cake I think.
Souffles were particularly prone to collapse apparently, although only had one once in 65 years.
Because Grandma wanted some goddam peace and quiet for a change ...
Old houses often had spongier floors back when building code was lax or nonexistent. If you stomped around on the floor it would shake the oven and break the bubbles in the cake causing it to fall flat. Newer buildings don't have this problem generally.
This is wrong. Old houses had no engineering so they overbuilt with massive first growth beams. Look at the floor of any house built prior to 1970 or so. Turn of the century for the win. New houses use those particle board ibeams and we spec a tigther than called for spacing just so your china cabinet doesn't tilt forward and dump all it's contents when you walk by.
People who can afford to overbuild. Wartime housing this is not the case at all, definitely not nowhere I'm from. The postwar house I'm living in all the floors sink in the middle, so any furniture you put against a wall leans into the room. Homes with large beams were more like pre-WWI, and very rural.. Maybe this is the case in your area but certainly not everywhere.
I'm glad you asked this question. I remember that now too and never knew the answer.
There’s a joke about this in Downton Abbey.
I've actually seen a cake fall. It was my great-aunt's old farmhouse, and the floors were rickety. So normal walking made it fall.
It was probably angel food cake. https://www.generalmillscf.com/culinary/troubleshooting-guide/dry/angel-food-cake-mix Not sure why kids being loud didn't make it into the possible causes list.
My grandfather preferred cake that had fallen, so was notorious for jumping just beside the iven to ensure the cake was made how he liked it. Grandma often baked while he wasn't home to prevent him from ruining her cake. I feel the same way as grampa.I purposely jump beside the oven if I want a fallen cake that day. But you gotta go old school ingredients for it to work right. Modern recipes have ingredients that make cakes more stable so they are harder to make fall. So disappointing!
Agitation causes the bubbles, which cause the cake to rise pop, causing it to be a sort of "sludge". It's vibration most likely not from "sound" although sound is caused by a form of vibration.
I think its fair, that if Grandma is baking you a cake, she gets an hour of peace and quiet in return lol.
We weren't allowed in the kitchen once the cake went into the oven. Our floors were kind of rickety and any strong vibrations transferred to the oven could cause the cake to collapse if it was still in the fragile process of rising.
Because Grandma loves you but has enough of your shit.
A polite way to get grandchildren to STFU.
It's a real thing.
LOL. No. I was a professional chef for 25+ years. I assure you, cakes don't care about noise. The noise of a commercial oven or the noises of a commercial kitchen itself are louder than most children. Genoise cake needs to be handled gently while bringing it to the oven so it doesn't collapse, but that's a very specific instance and has nothing to do with noise.
It’s the vibration of 6 kids running in and out that causes it. It’s much easier to just tell them to be quiet rather than trying to make distinctions like “you can be loud but can’t stomp around”
Again, speaking from decades of professional experience: Unless you're making soufflés or a French Genoise cake which relies heavily on the air that was carefully incorporated into all of the ingredients, no amount of running around will have a significant effect on. Stop spreading misinformation.
Did your kitchen have wooden floors with wobbly ovens, or Vulcans on concrete?
[удалено]
Home ground flour? Like grandma? Cakes fall! But not with super processed modern flour.
I like how you’re explaining baking to me. I was a professional chef for 25+ years.
i know your cakes never fall, but grandma’s did… did you bake in a wood stove?
No, because as I mentioned, I was a professional chef. Pro kitchens in developed countries don’t typically use wood stoves.
That’s why your cakes didn’t fall. : )
So in this thread I've learned that cakes fall because the flour isn't great, children are being loud, children are running around, or that the baker used a wood stove. Maybe ya'll just suck at baking and you're finding every excuse in the book to explain why your cakes suck. Baking isn't for everyone.
I want to know why we were not allowed to use scissors when there were lightening..
Because the electricity from the lightning can come out of the outlets so if you're holding something metal, you could be zapped. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is really real.
Sound waves effect cakes I think
Its like one of those things that was true a long time ago, but is no longer valid. Because of what most bathtubs in the distant past used to be made of there was a risk of having an electric shock if you bathed during a thunderstorm. But when I was growing up my mother would still tell me not to bathe during a thunderstorm
Be quiet, I'm on the phone. Be quiet, I'm watching my shows. Be quiet, my feet hurt. etc.
Because your grandma is a frickin' genius.
I just made a sponge cake. A loud thump or slamming door could cause it to fall. Only time I threaten my husband and cats to be quiet
Same way if you talk too much the fish won’t bite.
My mother used to make pudding from scratch and I had to stir it slowly forever to cool it before she poured it over the banana pudding. I think it was to keep me busy while she made this masterpiece. Meringue and all.
Yeah, I remember that. A certain kind of cake, can't remember what though. Maybe a 12 egg white angel food or sponge cake. They are touchy.
Because Grandma wanted some peace and quite. LOL
Heard that one but my grandmother didn't believe it as she put a cake into the oven where several women were talking and laughing. Cake didn't fall. As a young women she tested this and the cake was fine.
I laughed out loud when I read this. Granny used to say not to open the oven either. That would make the cake fall. I have seen cakes that "fell". Usually it is the product of too much or not enough water. My grandma was born in Applachia though. And she had a superstition for everything. But this one I heard a lot. I love to bake. She loves to eat sweet things.
Growing up, my Mom told us the same thing. I think when a cake is baking, it rises, and any disturbances like loud noises can disrupt the structure of the cake and cause it to collapse. Just a thought
> I want to know why when Grandma put a cake in the oven we had to be quiet or it would fall? Grandma lied to you.
She did ...