Baking with frozen fruits

[Magdalena]

Can someone tell me, is baking a cake with frozen fruits a good ideal? Should I defrost them, use frozen or don't try at all?

 

[jnn]

Can someone tell me, is baking a cake with frozen fruits a good ideal? Should I defrost them, use frozen or don't try at all?

Actually, I do this all the time with frozen berries - you don't have to defrost them, unless they are frozen like a big block of ice, not separately (that happens when they are not dry while freezing or you don't have fast-freezing freezer) and they are perfect for dense chocolate cakes. But be careful, if you put too much or the cake is too runny they will fall down and you'll have to turn your cake upside down

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Can someone tell me, is baking a cake with frozen fruits a good ideal? Should I defrost them, use frozen or don't try at all?

Frozen fruit should be used frozen.

The issue with adding frozen fruit to a cake or muffin batter is the fruit sinks to the bottom. So the type of fruit and the viscosity of the batter is key to a successful product. The smaller the fruit, and the thicker the batter the better.

Frozen fruit will also bleed color into the batter. I personally don’t have an issue with color bleed. But some bakers do not like to see streaks of color.

Try not to stir the batter much after adding the fruit.

Over the holiday I purchased a bag of organic blueberries. I didn’t pay attention to the type. Normally I purchase organic wild blueberries which are very tiny. I just grabbed a bag labeled “organic”. I was horrified when I open the bag. The blueberries were massive. Fortunately the berries were for a pie and not muffins.

There’s definitely some things in baking that we should not do. But adding fruit to a batter is not one of them. I would definitely encourage you to experiment.