What Sweetex High Ratio Shortening Can Do for Bakers
- Dec 29, 2021
When it comes to baking, there is way more than meets the eye. Meaning, that while you enjoy picking out your favorite pastries, cakes, and cookies from your local bakery, behind those baked goods is tireless amounts of work. Baking, although normally chalked up to some easy task that grandmas do for their families, is much more nuanced than one might think. There is history and also a science behind each favorite of your favorite sweet treats.
Baking is a form of cooking that has been done since ancient times. Nowadays, baking is considered a past-time or a hobby. People enjoy spending their Sunday mornings heading down to their favorite bakery to pick out a treat to accompany their cup of coffee. Nothing beats waking up on a weekend morning and dipping a beautifully made pastry into your hot cup of joe. That’s the beauty of baking. It brings warmth, happiness, and comfort.
To truly appreciate the art that is baking, you should understand what actually goes into those treats you are enjoying. Each ingredient that makes up a baked good was meticulously formulated to create the perfect recipe. Like mentioned before, there’s a science behind baking. Each recipe is made up of certain measurements and combinations of ingredients that must be strictly adhered to or the final product will fail.
This is especially true in the world of cake making. Professional cake bakers and decorators are pros at the science behind baking. Without those specific recipes and ingredients, those beautifully decorated cakes wouldn’t be possible. For example, a highly utilized ingredient in the world of baking is shortening. This form of fat used in cakes and icings is specific to cake bakeries around the world for its versatility and usefulness. But, what is this ingredient that so many bakers use in their cakes? Let’s take a deeper look at this underdog of an ingredient.
What is Shortening
Shortening, by definition, is a type of fat that remains solid at room temperature. Types of fat like hydrogenated oils, margarine, lard, or even butter can be considered a shortening. Historically, shortening coined its term when people would use fat to cut dough or “shorten” a dough. But now in modern-day kitchens, shortening is usually used for baking. If you take a peek through your pantry, you will probably find a small blue can of shortening called Crisco.
Crisco used and could still be considered the most popular and well-known shortening brand sold commercially. Now that type of shortening, made with hydrogenated soybean oil, is multi-purposeful and can be used in many different ways.
In professional kitchens, there are certain forms of shortening used for cake making. That type of shortening is called high ratio shortening. This ingredient was designed specifically for baking. It is made up of 100% fat with added emulsifiers. High ratio shortening can be perfectly and seamlessly blended into other ingredients like sugar and flour. Due to its added emulsifiers, it can hold moisture and air, making batters creamier and lighter and frostings smoother.
Being that it’s made of 100% fat, it can withstand high heat. Because of its ability to hold up in higher temperatures, this ingredient is perfect for icings and frostings used to decorate cakes. A reason this food product is so well-loved by cake makers alike is that it can withstand many different elements, so you won’t find your icing melting or falling when a cake is in a different climate.
Popular brands of high ratio shortening include Sweetex, which is a very well known brand in the baking industry. At Stover & Company, we supply a great variety of Sweetex High Ratio Shortening for all your cake making needs.
Sweetex brand of high ratio shortening has a specific formula to perfectly work with any and all cake and icing recipes. This shortening has zero grams of trans fat and allows your cakes and icings to receive the most outstanding flavor and texture.
For icing purposes, you will achieve brilliant white icings by using this type of shortening and ones that will hold up nicely no matter the venue or temperature. Although this shortening is made with 100% fat, you won’t have that unpleasant waxy or greasy mouth feel that comes with other lower quality shortenings. Another perk of using this ingredient is the higher yield of icing it produces. You can make more products with fewer amounts of ingredients with Sweetex high ratio shortening.
On our website, you are able to easily purchase this shortening at a decent price. We hope that all of our customers who bake cakes can try this ingredient out for themselves. They will surely notice the difference in their next batch of icing and make this brand of shortening the go-to!