Oil
The golden secret to moist baked goods that remain tender for days? Humble, helpful cooking oil. Cakes made with oils have a lightness and fluffiness that butter can’t match, and when it comes to cacao-based treats, like your favorite decadent brownies or a chocolaty cake, baking with oil boosts the perception of richness and turns up the moistness factor.
Why is it that cakes made with oil are loftier and more tender? Refined oils are reduced to their most basic components—unsaturated triglycerides that are liquid at room temperature—and are less dense than butter. As you can imagine, this leads to cakes that are light as air, with an even crumb structure, like the cross-sectional piece of our Honey-Lavender Bundt Cake presented on page 24. When recipes that contain heavier flours or wet ingredients are involved—for example, the cornmeal in
