Cake salty on the bottom

[Regina3000]

Tonight I made a one-bowl yellow cake (200 g sugar, 2 eggs, vanilla; creamed. Add 70 g oil, 200 g milk, 160 g flour (I used cake flour), 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 3 g salt in this order. Bake in greased and floured 8-9" round cake pan at 350 for 60 minutes. Adapted from a recipe at Jenny Can Cook.) I've made this before, when craving cake, and while it's not the best recipe, it's decent enough and pretty fast to put together.

 

I forgot the milk until the end, and mixed the cake using a whisk because I couldn't find my hand mixer. I used kosher salt. The recipe didn't specify.

 

I iced it and just now had a piece because I woke up and can't get back to sleep. The bottom of the cake is salty.

 

What could be to blame, here?

[shain]

My guess would have been salted butter being used for greasing the pan. Is it possible?

[Regina3000]

No, I used coconut oil, and tasted it after I ate my piece of cake to make sure it wasn't salty. And the bottom was way saltier than salted butter would've made it, too.

 

I'm stumped.

[Anna N]

Here’s my guess. 3 g of kosher salt did not get incorporated properly using a whisk. It was concentrated in one particular part of the cake batter - the bottom. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Anna beat me to it.  I bake with Kosher salt but before adding the salt I grind it to powder in a mortar.

 

[Regina3000]

9 hours ago, Anna N said:

Here’s my guess. 3 g of kosher salt did not get incorporated properly using a whisk. It was concentrated in one particular part of the cake batter - the bottom. 

 

6 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Anna beat me to it.  I bake with Kosher salt but before adding the salt I grind it to powder in a mortar.

 

 

That makes sense. The rest of the cake is rather bland. I'll make sure to grind it, next time.

 

Thanks!

[Spork]

Salt is basically insoluble in fat. 
 

Your initial mix was fat heavy, leaving distribution of granules to the mechanics of the mixing.   
 

Milk, as the last ingredient, did not allow the salt to dissolve completely.  It was bound in fat.  Crushing it could have made the situation worse. 

I suspect the milk was not completely integrated into the mix. The salt that did dissolve would have been concentrated in the higher density liquid. 
 

Was the texture any different top to bottom?

 

[Regina3000]

No, the texture was the same throughout.