by Sarah Afshar

Created on: May 03, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

I remember the first time I attempted to fold batter on my own. I was making a cake. I was a little girl at the time messing with my easy bake oven, my mother had bought me for Christmas. Of course, little did I realize in order to learn how to do anything, sometimes it is expected to mess up a few times and with that said, I definitely did.

I have to tell you though, folding batter is much easier than it is implied to be. Folding is a technique ladies and gentlemen that can be mastered and I will tell you how.

You want to start out by mixing your ingredients in two separate bowls. The batter should always be in a bigger bowl. To mix, you can use either a whisk or a spatula (whatever works best for you) and mix each ingredient separately until it's achieved the content you want it. The key to folding batter is taking a light ingredient and combining it with a heavier ingredient.

You want to then, gently add the other ingredient (non-batter). In most cases, these are ingredients that play a huge role in batter, but they don't make the ingredient. (If that makes sense) Do NOT mix. You want to take a spatula (some people use spoons, although that is not really recommended) and gently "fold" about 3/4th of the "non batter" ingredient into the batter. Do NOT mix nor stir. As you fold, you want to work your arm more than your hand. With your wrist, work in a figure eight motion. Be very slow and don't move fast. As you continue to fold, move the bowl turning it gently while continuing to fold. As you continue, you want to add the remaining "non batter" into the batter.

Continue to slowly rotate the bowl in a circular motion. The key is to combine all of the ingredients, deflating them without mixing them together, so the ingredients appear to have volume. Kind of like possessing the content of mousse. Once the texture looks rich, creamy, and possesses the content of mousse, you can then stop. You are basically done. If you are interested in folding in another ingredient, it is best to repeat the above.

That, my friends, is how you fold batter. How hard was that?

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