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I recently had the opportunity to cook a series of yoghurt cakes. The first batch were tasty yet somewhat dense. For the second batch, I (successfully) attempted to lighten the cake by first beating the egg whites until foamy before folding in the rest of the mixture.

Both times I used fruit (raspberries) in my mixtures. For the dense batch, they 'floated' throughout the mixture. In my second, lighter batch, they all sank to the bottom.

As I found the second, lighter mixture to be better in general, is there some trick to keeping fruit from sinking like that?

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    Can you post your recipe. That sounds tasty. Is it hypocritical to encourage recipe requests in comments yet forbid them in questions?
    – Sobachatina
    Commented Oct 2, 2012 at 14:27
  • @Sobachatina I used the recipe at azeliaskitchen.net/blog/… but modified it so that I rubbed the butter into the flour instead, and also first separated the egg whites and used an electric whisk to beat them until fluffy. Also, the flavour of yoghurt matched the fruit.
    – Kaz Dragon
    Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 7:01

3 Answers 3

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Dust the fruit with a little flour before adding to the cake. It will act like a glue and prevent the fruit from sinking.

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    Can anyone else confirm this actually works? It's known as an old wives tale. Fruit sinks because the fruit pieces are too large, the fruit is too sugary or lubricated (glace cherries), or the cake is too soft. Make a firmer cake!
    – TFD
    Commented Oct 2, 2012 at 21:38
  • I can confirm it works for raisins.
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 7:57
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    It does work, or I wouldn't have suggested it. It works well for chocolate chips too.
    – ElendilTheTall
    Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 8:16
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Sometimes covering fruit with flour is not enough, but for raspberries it should work.

You can also bake the cake in layers - pour a thin layer of the batter without fruit, bake it for 5-10 minutes, just so the top sets, but doesn't brown, pour half of batter with fruit, bake another 10 minutes, pour the rest and bake until done.

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    Can you cite a source that recommends this? This would result in uneven baking of the layer in whole, it seems.
    – Kristina Lopez
    Commented Oct 2, 2012 at 16:36
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    I don't have a source, just practice. I do this often with heavier fruit - rhubarb, cherries etc. and it works fine. I think that just allowing the top to set doesn't interfere with leavening, because most of the batter is not yet hot. If you hesitate whether to follow this avdive, you could do just two layers - thin bottom without fruit and then all the batter with fruit - they might sink a bit, but they will not reach the bottom.
    – jkadlubowska
    Commented Oct 2, 2012 at 18:34
  • thanks, that is good to know that it works. I'll have to try it myself now!
    – Kristina Lopez
    Commented Oct 2, 2012 at 18:52
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My trick to prevent sinking in a light mixture:

  1. Bake for a few minutes
  2. Open the oven, drop the raspberries on top, from a certain altitude
  3. Continue baking

Each raspberry will sink to a certain depth, depending on the altitude from which you dropped.

You will need to fine-tune:

  • The initial baking time.
  • The dropping altitude. Low if you want raspberries to stay at the surface, high if you want them in the bottom, or a tactical hand waving, high and low, to distribute them evenly. Have fun!

It is close to jkadlubowska's solution, but the layers problem is avoided.

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