What Is Reverse Creaming?

Learn how to use the reverse creaming method for the most tender homemade cakes.

Many baking recipes call for creaming ingredients in the directions. Creaming butter and sugar means beating the two ingredients together, which aerates the butter, dissolves the sugar and leads to a light and fluffy texture. This method is used when making chewy cookies like chocolate chip cookies or sugar cookies. It’s also crucial when baking homemade cakes. But there’s more than one way to cream ingredients. The reverse creaming method can also produce wonderful results.

What is the reverse creaming method?

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Typical creaming involves beating together softened butter and sugar on their own until the resulting mixture is light, fluffy and pale in color. Depending on your ingredients, equipment and mixing speed, this process takes about three to seven minutes. The reverse creaming method involves beating the butter into the combined dry ingredients, which most often include sugar, flour, salt and leavening agents like baking powder or baking soda. This creates a sandy mixture, but once the wet ingredients are added, you’ll end up with a smooth batter to pour into baking pans and pop in the oven.

What does reverse creaming do to cake?

When you’re baking a cake from scratch, overbeating is the enemy of texture. Overmixing the batter can lead to too much gluten development, and can easily happen when the wet and dry ingredients are added to creamed butter and sugar. When you use the reverse creaming method, the butter coats the dry ingredients and protects them slightly as they’re mixed, preventing too much gluten development while providing just enough structure. This leads to a more tender crumb in your cake. It can prevent the top of your cake from doming, which is ideal when stacking beautiful layer cakes.

Can you use the reverse creaming method with other baked goods?

While the creaming method is used for a variety of baked goods, reverse creaming is best for those with a crumb texture—like homemade cakes, cupcakes, muffins and some quick bread recipes made with butter. Reverse creaming can also be used when making sugar cookies. Using this technique with cookies results in a flat, sturdy cookie that doesn’t spread as much.