Elevation is Everything

One of the first things I learned about baking cakes is elevation is everything.

Cakes need to rise; they become light and fluffy. It's what makes them cake and not, oh, let's say, cookies. Cookies range anywhere from the crispy-crunchy to the ooey-gooey. Some are even described as "cake-like" because they are tender and airy. Even pound cake, which isn't called pound cake because it's heavy, is firm but light.

Cakes that don't rise, or that rise then fall, come out of the oven like sad, sorry looking bricks. I’ve seen a lot of these so far.

I began to wonder, would I never be able to bake a decent cake? Am I fated to bake interestingly flavored bricks forever? Would I never be able to pass by the rows of cake mixes without hearing their Siren’s song? “Buy me! You know you want to. You can’t bake without us!”

Cakes: 1,001 Classic Recipe from Around the World (hereafter know as Cakes: 1,001 CRAW) is a disappointment in one major area—it gives no advice or adjustments for baking at high altitudes. In fact, it doesn’t even mention the issue. I live just under the mile mark, and let me tell you—elevation is everything when it comes to baking a cake!

Not to be so easily thrown off my quest, I have embarked on a side journey now—the search for info on the effects of altitude on leavening. This is what I know so far:
1. Leaven creates gas bubble in batter.
2. When the batter firms up around these bubbles, it creates a light airy framework and a tender light cake.
3. When the leaven either doesn’t create gas, or the bubbles pop before the batter firms up, the cake becomes a flat, fallen brick-like mass one could feed unsuspecting children who are only looking for a sugar rush, but not something one would serve, oh, let’s say, one’s in-laws whom one wants to impress.
4. When one lives at the mile high mark where air pressure is lower, bubbles like to pop.

So, now I know what the problem is. I am sidetracked, yet not daunted. My task—find the formula, the bit of magic needed to adjust a recipe for 4900 feet. I hope I don’t discover that moving would be the easier fix.