I'm trying to get a carrot cake with baking soda as an ingredient to rise..?

Question

I have no experience with baking soda.
But I do have experience using yeast; I put the yeast in water for several minutes then heat my bread slightly to get it to rise after kneading it.
Do you just put baking soda into the cake, then bake it in the oven; doing nothing special for the baking soda in the cake unlike you do the yeast in bread?

Answer 1

Baking soda needs a catalyst which is generally soured milk or buttermilk or lemon juice in a recipe. That is what helps to activate the baking soda.

I don't remember off the top of my head which is which but I know, between baking soda and baking powder, one activates the minute you add moisture (I think that is the soda - if it's acidic) and the other activates with heat.

So, you don't leave a cake out to rise like you do bread. I also make bread. The oven will do it for you - re baking cakes and cookies.

If you have a recipe like oatmeal cookies and it calls for baking soda, you generally will find that it also calls for raisins - which add the acidic. If you want more lift in the cookies, then instead of adding the baking soda with the dry ingredients, dissolve the baking soda in either the buttermilk or sour milk or water off the raisins. You will get more of a lift doing it that way than just adding it with the dry. That trick was handed down from my great-grandmother.

Most recipes don't tell you to do that. They generally just tell you to add the soda with the dry ingredients, alternating with the wet.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

With sugar it doesn't really matter, I prefer using light brown all the way to muscavado sugar, it has more of a caramel flavour and adds a deeper flavour to what your cooking. To make your cake rise I'd try adding some baking powder, 1 tsp, and sift the flour. You can add or leave anything you want for cake (the coconut and walnuts) it doesn't really matter. I'm not quite sure what difference eggs make to cake, but sometimes I separate them, so I add the yolk to the cake mixture, and whisk the egg white and add them into the cake mixture as the last stage. It doesn't really matter about the carrots being wet because if you think the mixture is too sloppy then you can add more flour to it.

Answer 3

If you have a cake recipe that calls for baking soda, just add the baking soda to your dry ingredients (flour, spices...). Generally a recipe will have you mix your wet ingredients (oil, milk, eggs, sugar...) seperately and then mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Don't worry about the baking soda. It will do its job. Just make sure that your baking soda is no expired. Look on the container and look for a date. Baking soda can lose its raising ability if it is really old. If you are not sure, just go for it.

And yes, sugar is considered a wet ingredient in baking becasue it desolves when it hits other moisture and acts as a liquid in the recipe.