Over the past few months, my family and I have done spontaneous taste tests, mostly with conventional vs. organic or produce from the grocery store vs. produce from the farmers market or local farm stands. I love asking my mom or dad to close their eyes and taste kale or grapes, milk or carrots, and listen to their evaluations. Unsurprisingly, there is often a remarkable difference between local and/or organic vs. conventional.
Baking was my first love. From a young age, I loved how flour, sugar, and butter combined with other ingredients to create a whole host of different desserts. As I continue to learn about higher quality ingredients, their nutritional value, and minimal or less intense processing methods, an idea took root. What would happen if I did a taste test with a baked good? What if I used high quality ingredients in one and low quality ingredients in another? Would there be a notable difference in both look and taste from a cake made with higher quality ingredients and one made with lower quality ingredients?
To bring this experiment to life, I decided to use Erin French’s Glazed Butter Cake as the base recipe because it didn’t have bright, complex flavors or ingredients, such as chocolate, nuts, or fruits that might make the difference less noticeable. For the ingredient variables, I used flour, sugar, and butter, as these are the backbone of many baked goods. While I could have used different milk and eggs, I predicted that these three elements would have the greatest effect on the final product.
For the first cake, I used high quality flour, sugar, and butter. You might be wondering, what does high quality mean? How do you define it? How can you tell the difference between those ingredients and regular ones found on supermarket shelves?
1. The flour: Meadowlark Organics All-Purpose Flour. Sourced from Meadowlark Organics, this freshly milled, stone ground flour uses all parts of the wheat grain (the germ, endosperm and bran). If you look at the photo below, you can see the different parts that make up a grain of wheat. Most industrial flour sifts out the germ and bran, leaving only the endosperm, to create a final product void of much nutrition. In fact, people who struggle with gluten intolerances can more easily digest freshly milled flour produced from whole grains because the bran and germ aid in digestion. A gluten intolerant friend who lives in Texas can eat local sourdough and baked goods made from a bakery that sources this kind of high quality flour. Similarly, during thesis research at the farm in Italy, I interviewed a gluten intolerant mother and son who took a pizza cooking class. The instructor, who happened to be one of the farm owners, convinced the mother and son to use their dough, a sourdough made with high quality, ancient grain flour. They were rightly worried about how their bodies would react to the final pizza crust, and guess what? They were totally fine!
2. The sugar: Wild Harvest’s Organic Raw Cane Sugar. This unrefined sugar comes from the sugarcane plant. To create this sugar, the sugar cane is washed, then chopped and crushed to extract the juice. Next, the juice is boiled, spun, and dried to form the coarse crystals. Regular, white sugar can be made from either sugar cane or sugar beets, and undergoes additional processing methods: washing, filtering, processing and drying, which removes minerals and molasses to produce the perfect white sugar we’re accustomed to. I only recently started to use raw cane sugar, but when I ran out and used old processed sugar we had on hand, I was shocked at how processed and chemical-filled it smelled compared to raw cane sugar! I haven’t done extensive research on the health benefits or nutritional quality of both sugars [and at the end of the day, sugar is sugar], but in my mind, the less processing and the less refined, the better.
3. The butter: Kerrygold Unsalted. To be completely transparent, if I had put more thought into this ingredient, I would have tried to source local unsalted butter, but I chose the easier route: accessible butter of high quality. So, what goes into high quality butter? Many things! As I learned on the farm in Italy, high quality milk is a direct result of the grass animals have continual access to, the long amount of time the animals spend outside, and the kind of supplemental feed they’re given (Kerrygold cows consume hay, haylage, and silage). In Ireland, the long grass growing season produces rich and sweet grass, which in turn produces great, high quality milk. Milk naturally separates into the milk and cream; this cream is then churned to produce butter (in fact, I tried earlier this year using whipping cream mixed in a KitchenAid and created my own butter!). Kerrygold has a higher fat content (European butter requires at least 82% butterfat, while American butter only requires 80% butterfat), and a beautiful yellow color, due to the higher beta-carotene content in the milk. It also is produced in smaller batches where the butter is creamed for a longer period of time.
While I don’t know specifics of how all other milk is sourced for typical supermarket brand butter, I can safely assume the cows do not have nearly the same access to pasture, grass, and good supplemental feed as these Irish cows. Industrial cows are kept indoors for a much greater amount of time and consume a significantly greater quantity of other feed, such as corn, soy, and wheat. I would also assume that the butter is produced using additives and in larger batches. In fact, the ingredients in the supermarket brand list: “pasteurized cream, natural flavorings,” while Kerrygold lists: “pasteurized cream, skimmed milk, cultures.” Natural flavorings can mean a whole host of substances extracted from spices, fruit, vegetables, edible yeast, dairy products, meat, poultry, seafood, or eggs, so really we don’t know what exactly those additives are. Cultures, on the other hand, are typically bacterial cultures used to thicken yogurt and milk. For this kind of butter (from what I gather - I couldn’t find any specific information on their website), the cream is treated with these cultures, then fermented, and finally churned, which produces a fuller flavor.
For the second cake, I used typical supermarket, mass-produced flour (Gold’s All-Purpose), sugar (Diamond Cane Sugar), and supermarket brand (Festival Foods) unsalted butter. I’m sure you could tell in the photos how difference the ingredients look; the color and the texture are worlds apart!
For experimental purposes, all other ingredients were the same: organic eggs, local milk, baking powder & soda, vanilla extract.
One technical note before diving into the comparison: I baked both cakes in the same oven, but started one 15 minutes earlier than the other, which led to more moving around and opening and closing of the oven. That could have affected some of the rise and overall appearance, particularly of the cake with higher quality ingredients, but I am not certain!
Now, onto the final products! How different they are! The left (HQ) is the one made with higher quality flour, sugar, and butter, while the right (LQ) is conventional.
HQ was denser, darker in color, and flatter. LQ was much lighter in color, had a tighter crumb and a higher rise. HQ was moister, had a better consistency and mouthfeel, and the flavor, while simple, was much more complex (hints of molasses and greater depth). LQ was dryer, had a springier texture, a mouthfeel working towards chalky, blander flavor, and was just not as complex or satisfying. I made both cakes for a dinner party, eager to have a larger audience for a taste test. Unfortunately, I didn’t record any reactions, but the results unanimously favored the higher quality ingredient cake over the lower quality one. I wish I could send each of you a piece of both cakes through the screen to try for yourself! Below is a video of my dad tasting and comparing (#1 has the higher quality ingredients, while #2 has the lower quality ingredients). [Note: my dad mentioned tasting lemon: there was no lemon in the recipe 😂]
When setting out to do this experiment, I wasn’t sure how drastically the end product would differ, but I am happily surprised with the outcome! If I was to do this again, I would make the lower quality cake and only use one high quality element (flour, butter or sugar) to judge which ingredient had the most significant effect on the final product. Stay tuned!
At the end of the day, even in baked goods, the quality of ingredients shines through to the end. While a large consumption of dessert and sugar isn’t beneficial to health, the less processing and the more environmentally and animal welfare sound each product is, the better, for both our health and that of the planet.
If you have any further questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you! Have a fabulous rest of the week!
Sources:
Flour: Barton Springs Mill, Abby Jane Bakes,
Sugar: The Honest Consumer, Livestrong, Masterclass, Draxe
Butter: Kerrygold, Proper Healthy Living, Vox, New Roots Institute, UMN, Healthline
This was super insightful! I think about this a lot in my day-to-day cooking-the concept of how the end product of the meals we make can only really be as good as the quality of the ingredients they consist of.