Baking a cake is a lot of fun once you've nailed the basics. While there are lots
of ways for cakes to fail, the steps for making a fabulous cake are easy to follow.
Steer clear of common cake baking mistakes and you'll be on your way to sugary bliss.
Despite what cake recipes would have you believe, baking a cake actually begins
long before you preheat the oven. While many cake ingredients, from eggs to butter to milk,
live in the fridge, it's essential to begin your cake recipes with room temperature ingredients.
As Sally of Sally's Baking Addiction explains, it's easier to emulsify room temperature fat
than cold fat. Room temperature butter creams better into sugar,
and room temperature eggs hold air bubbles better, lending a lighter, airier texture to baked goods.
Cold eggs also risk shocking your other ingredients,
curdling the fat and giving you a far from appetizing texture in your batter.
So before you begin your recipe — about an hour ahead of time — pull all your ingredients
together. Not only will this encourage you to have all your ingredients ready to go,
but you'll ensure that all of your ingredients are at the perfect temperature: room temperature.
"You're the ogre."
"Yes, but I bake great cakes."
While you're assembling your ingredients and bringing all of your cold cake ingredients
to room temperature, be sure to check the expiration date of your leavener.
Leavening agents like baking powder, baking soda, and yeast do go bad,
and while using them after they expire isn't as dire as, say, expired eggs,
which could be hazardous to your health, it can keep your cakes from rising properly.
Baking powder usually lasts about 18 months in the cupboard, but if you're ever not sure,
there's a simple test you can do to make sure it's still potent enough to help your cake gain
that ideal fluffy texture. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach suggests mixing a teaspoon
of baking powder into ⅓ cup of warm water. If the mixture bubbles, it's still good to use!
There is something to be said for a detail-oriented mentality in baking,
specifically when it comes to measuring. Unlike in cooking, where a touch less salt or a bit more
butter won't usually change the integrity of a dish, in baking, every gram counts. Literally.
While most American baking recipes use volume-based measures like
cups and tablespoons, there's a reason why many European
recipes — and most American pastry pros — use weight-based measures like grams.
Investing in a small kitchen scale is a great way to make your cakes more consistent,
but if you'd rather continue to use volume measures, it's essential to at least
learn how to measure properly and avoid common measuring mistakes.
According to Sally's Baking Addiction, the best way to measure flour is using the spoon
and level method. To do this, use a spoon to scoop flour out of a bag, jar or bowl
and into your measuring cup, without packing it down. When you've reached the top of the cup,
level any surplus back into the bag or jar. You'll end up with a far more accurate measurement.
We've all fallen victim to laziness in the kitchen when it comes to sifting:
after all, sifting the dry ingredients means one more thing to wash,
and it certainly couldn't make that much of a difference on the final cake, right? Wrong.
Neglecting to sift your dry ingredients is a huge cake-baking mistake. If you fail to sift
the flour, this can lead to lumps in the batter and prevent your cake from rising
properly in the oven. It also might result in pockets in your batter and in your final cake.
Sifting also allows you to get an accurate measurement. If a recipe
calls for 1 cup of sifted flour, this is a far different amount than if you'd used
1 cup of packed flour. It's also a great way to ensure that all of your dry ingredients
are well incorporated with one another, which can help you avoid over-mixing your batter.
So do yourself — and your cake — a favor: don't skip this essential step!
Undermixing cake batter can occur at multiple steps in the baking process. To undermix
at the last stage of mixing means you may have streaks or even clumps of flour,
which is usually the last ingredient added to cake batter, in your final mix.
This can lead to a lumpy or floury finished cake.
Depending on the kind of cake you're making, you may also run the risk of undermixing at an
earlier stage, especially if you need to cream butter and sugar together, or beat egg whites
until they're fluffy and provide support for the final structure of a genoise or angel food cake.
As a rule of thumb, you only really need to worry about overmixing once a gluten-containing
flour — like rye or wheat — is added. In earlier stages, make sure you mix until
the desired texture is reached before moving on to the next step. If you've been patient
and mixed well at each of these stages — and taken the care to sift your flour to remove
any lumps — it should be pretty difficult to undermix the batter at the last stage.
Whether a recipe calls for a 12-inch loaf pan, an 8-inch round cake pan,
or a bundt pan, be sure you don't go off-script! Cake recipes render a certain volume of batter,
and the recipe developer will have tested it using the pan they recommend.
Using too big or too small a pan can lead to overflow or uneven baking, and using a different
shaped pan than the one called for might mean the baking time isn't what the recipe promises.
Also, different materials, from aluminum to glass to cast iron, conduct heat in different ways.
Choosing the right material for your baking pan is essential for a successful cake.
There's a reason that recipes call for preheating the oven before you do anything else.
Unlike bread, which needs to rest before baking, cakes are designed to be baked immediately.
This comes down to the way that chemical leaveners work. Baking powder and baking soda react with the
other ingredients in the cake batter, causing a chemical reaction that helps the cake to rise.
You know that volcanic eruption experiment you did with baking soda and vinegar in school?
Wait, this is a little too dramatic! Yeah, this is the one. And like that volcanic eruption,
you can't make the chemical reaction wait for you.
As the experts at Nigella explain, once a cake batter is made, it must be put
in the oven immediately, so that it sets during the reaction, not after. Otherwise,
the cake may begin to set only after the reaction has taken place. The result will
be a dense fallen cake with none of the airy texture you're looking for!
While similar, baking powder works slightly differently than baking soda,
in that it causes two chemical reactions: one,
like baking soda, when it's mixed with the liquid ingredients, and another when heated.
A baking powder batter may thus be slightly more forgiving of delayed baking than one made with
baking soda alone. Either way, the sooner you get it in the oven, the sooner you can eat cake!
As your cake bakes, it will begin to release the most incredible aroma.
But resist the urge to peek until your cake is done!
Opening the oven door to check out your baking cake releases some of the heat,
which can cause the oven temperature to drop. This may mean that you inadvertently
extend the cooking time of your cake, and if you follow the recipe instructions,
you risk underbaking it. This can lead to the cake being too damp in the middle or even falling.
Even if you compensate for your curiosity by baking your cakes a little bit longer,
they may still fall if you peek due to the vibrations of the oven door closing. If you
do peek at your cake while it bakes, it's essential to close the oven door slowly and
carefully to prevent this. Then again, it's probably better to resist the urge entirely!
Look, we get it. No one wants their cake to turn out burned or dry. And since the
tops of cakes often brown early on during their time in the oven,
it can be really tempting to assume that a cake is cooked through before it really is.
Your best bet in ensuring that you're taking a cake out at the right time
is to use a cake tester, but if you still manage to underbake your cake,
luckily there are a few solutions. Returning it to the oven — covering it with foil if it's
too browned on the outside but underdone within — is perhaps the best solution.
You may also want to reduce the oven temperature to help it cook through
more evenly. But Leaf notes that if your cake has already collapsed, you can actually scoop
the uncooked batter out of the middle of the cake and transfer it to a new pan to bake separately.
Your cake may not look the way you expected it to, but it'll still taste great!
A lovely, golden-brown color is usually the ideal sign that your
cake is cooked through. But what if the cake was brown from the get-go?
Whether you're making a delightful chocolate sponge or a rich tunnel of fudge cake,
chocolate cake to its perfect doneness is an art form, and many are the home bakers who have
accidentally overcooked a chocolate cake because they didn't realize it was done until too late.
Luckily, King Arthur's Flour offers a few tips to cooking chocolate cake to perfection:
The edges of the cake will have pulled away from the pan, the top of the cake will transition
from shiny to matte, and the surface of the cake will spring back when touched lightly.
"Here's the deal. Just little pieces and you don't tell Mommy about the movie,
and I don't tell her about the cake. OK."
You've been patiently waiting for your cake to emerge from the oven, so of course the
second it comes clean from the pan, you're ready to frost it and dig in! Unfortunately,
if you really want a beautiful final result, you're going to have to wait a little longer:
Frosting a hot or even warm cake is a recipe for disaster. Don't make this frosting mistake.
Most frostings, from buttercream to cream cheese, rely on a fat that is solid at room temperature
but liquid when warmed. This means that if you apply such a frosting to a still-warm cake,
the fat in the frosting will melt, causing it to slide right off the cake.
Give your cake ample time to cool all the way through before attempting to level,
stack, and frost: ideally it should be cool to the touch. It requires a bit of patience,
but you'll have a much prettier result.
Frosting should be applied in two coats. The first coat is called the crumb coat, and it serves an
essential role that should be evident from its name: This frosting catches and contains
any crumbs that come loose from the cake, ensuring that the final coat is smooth and pristine.
But that's not all!
Cake expert Lindsay of Sprinkles for Breakfast explained: a crumb coat can also help you fill in
spots where your cake might not be totally even, like gaps between layers or even jagged edges.
It's sort of the last tool you have in your toolbox to help you overcome
any missteps and ensure the final cake looks as beautiful as possible.
After crumb coating your cake, you'll want to chill it for 15 to 30 minutes to
allow this layer to set before adding the final layer of icing and any decorations.
From bringing all of your ingredients to room temperature,
to baking your cake for just long enough, to letting it cool, to chilling the crumb coat,
cake-baking is a time-consuming venture. And it can be a really fun one,
provided you give yourself the time to proceed through these steps stress-free.
As anyone who's tried to bake a cake the morning of a big dinner party can attest,
baking with a deadline can be super stressful. This is
why you might want to do at least some of the work the day before!
Both cake layers and frostings can be made a day or two in advance and stored, tightly wrapped
or sealed, until ready to use. You can even make and crumb coat your cake a day in advance
and wrap it in plastic until you're ready to apply the final layer of icing and any decorations!
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