Loaf cakes and muffins: a tall dome, a moist crumb and no dense streaks

A classic loaf cake is dense and buttery with a fine, even crumb. It's made by the creaming method: soft butter is beaten with sugar for a long time to fill it with air. English pound cake and French quatre-quarts are equal quarters of butter, sugar, flour and eggs.

A muffin is a quick bake: moister, with a coarser, uneven crumb. It's made by the muffin method: dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, then briefly combined. No mixer.

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt. In another, the wet: eggs, melted butter or oil, milk, buttermilk, yoghurt. Pour the wet into the dry and fold with a spatula in 10–15 strokes — just until no dry flour remains. Lumps in the batter are normal and even necessary.

Every extra stroke develops gluten. Overmixed muffins are tough, with long tunnels inside and a pointed rather than rounded top.

The butter should be soft — 18–20 °C: a finger leaves a dent easily, but the butter isn't shiny or oily. Beat butter and sugar with a mixer for 3–5 minutes until pale, fluffy and increased in volume. The sugar crystals punch thousands of microscopic air bubbles into the butter — and those are what expand in the oven.

Eggs at room temperature, one at a time, beating each for 30 seconds. Cold eggs firm up the butter, the mixture splits and the cake is denser. If it does split, add a spoonful of the flour.

Fold in the flour at the end with a spatula or on the mixer's lowest speed, alternating with milk: flour — milk — flour. Mix only until smooth.

Baking soda is an alkali. It only releases carbon dioxide when it meets acid: buttermilk, kefir, yoghurt, sour cream, lemon juice, honey, natural cocoa, banana. Without acid it doesn't raise the batter and leaves a soapy taste. Use ½ tsp per 250 ml of cultured dairy.

Baking powder is soda already mixed with a dry acid and starch. It works on its own, with no acid in the batter. Most are double-acting: some gas is released on mixing, the rest on heating. Use 1 tsp (4–5 g) per 120–150 g flour.

Many recipes use both: baking powder for lift and a pinch of soda to neutralise excess acid and give a darker, golden colour.

Preheat the oven to 220 °C. Put the muffins in and after 5–7 minutes turn it down to 180 °C without opening the door. The strong initial heat makes the batter shoot upwards before the top sets into a crust. Then, at a moderate temperature, the muffins bake through evenly. Total time 18–22 minutes.

Fill the cases almost to the top — three-quarters or even to the rim. Half-filled muffins come out flat.

Another trick is to rest the batter in the fridge for 30–60 minutes or even overnight. The flour absorbs the liquid, the batter thickens and rises higher. With double-acting baking powder this is safe.

Berries and chocolate sink in a runny batter: it can't hold up heavy pieces. The fix is to toss them in 1 tbsp of the flour: the flour creates a rough surface that grips the batter. And make the batter a little thicker.

Another trick: put a spoonful of plain batter in the bottom of each case, then the berry batter, and a few more berries on top. Don't thaw frozen berries — add them straight from the freezer, or they'll stain the batter greyish purple.

A dense streak is a heavy, damp, rubbery layer at the bottom or in the middle of a cake. It forms when gas bubbles escape from the batter and it sinks.

A wooden skewer pushed into the highest point comes out clean or with a few dry crumbs. If it has wet batter on it, bake 5–10 minutes longer. If the top is already brown but the middle is raw, cover it with foil.

A thermometer is most precise: a done cake is 95–98 °C inside. Another sign is the edges starting to pull away from the tin and the top springing back when pressed lightly.

Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a rack. Left longer, steam makes the sides and bottom soggy. Muffins — 5 minutes in the tin, then onto a rack.

Wrap a completely cooled cake in cling film: it keeps 3–4 days at room temperature and is even better on day two as the moisture evens out. Muffins keep 2–3 days in a container with a paper towel inside. Both freeze for up to 3 months.

A syrup soak makes a cake even moister: bring 50 ml water and 50 g sugar to the boil, add lemon juice or a spoon of rum and pour over the hot cake after pricking it with a skewer.