Here's Why Your Cloud Bread Isn't Fluffy

2020 was the year of TikTok food trends. There was the Dalgona whipped coffee craze, which morphed into whipped everything (including whipped matcha). Then there was the breakfast sandwich hack that made everyone's morning meals a thousand times easier. There was even pancake cereal, which is essentially a bowl of mini pancakes doused in butter and syrup. And yet another viral cooking fad that took off on the popular social media platform? Cloud bread.

According to the blogger behind I Am A Food Blog, it's made with just egg whites, sugar and cornstarch. TikTokers rave that it's healthy, delicious and it's aesthetically pleasing (it can be any rainbow of colors). Cloud bread is also incredibly light and fluffy. Or rather, it's supposed to be. If you've tried the recipe for yourself and ended up with a piece of bread that's, well, not exactly cloud-like, it could be due to a couple of easy-to-fix mistakes.

It's all in the technique (and the sugar)

Apparently, there are two main reasons why your cloud bread would turn out denser than you'd like, per I Am A Food Blog. First, you might be over beating your egg whites, which prevents your cloud bread from having that fluffy texture. You'll know if you've overdone it if your egg whites look wet or grainy, she says. Spend With Pennies recommends beating the egg whites on high speed with a mixer just until they form stiff peaks.

The other common mistake people make when (literally) whipping up cloud bread? Adding all of the sugar at once. I Am A Food Blog explains that adding it gradually (like one tablespoon at a time, she suggests) will make your bread fluffier. Dumping it in at one time makes it harder to blend and can also lead to over-mixing which, as mentioned above, is a big no-no.