How do I keep fruit from sinking to the bottom of my cake?

Question

I recently had the opportunity to cook a series of yoghurt cakes. The first batch were tasty yet somewhat dense. For the second batch, I (successfully) attempted to lighten the cake by first beating the egg whites until foamy before folding in the rest of the mixture.

Both times I used fruit (raspberries) in my mixtures. For the dense batch, they 'floated' throughout the mixture. In my second, lighter batch, they all sank to the bottom.

As I found the second, lighter mixture to be better in general, is there some trick to keeping fruit from sinking like that?

Answer 1

Dust the fruit with a little flour before adding to the cake. It will act like a glue and prevent the fruit from sinking.

Answer 2

Sometimes covering fruit with flour is not enough, but for raspberries it should work.

You can also bake the cake in layers - pour a thin layer of the batter without fruit, bake it for 5-10 minutes, just so the top sets, but doesn't brown, pour half of batter with fruit, bake another 10 minutes, pour the rest and bake until done.

Answer 3

My trick to prevent sinking in a light mixture:

1. Bake for a few minutes
2. Open the oven, drop the raspberries on top, from a certain altitude
3. Continue baking

Each raspberry will sink to a certain depth, depending on the altitude from which you dropped.

You will need to fine-tune:

• The initial baking time.
• The dropping altitude. Low if you want raspberries to stay at the surface, high if you want them in the bottom, or a tactical hand waving, high and low, to distribute them evenly. Have fun!

It is close to jkadlubowska's solution, but the layers problem is avoided.