By lining the bottom of the pan with parchment, you give yourself some added insurance that the cake will slide out after cooling. Solution: Line the bottoms of your pan with parchment paper.Ĭakes should rest in their pans on a rack for 15 minutes after coming out of the oven. If your recipe calls for a cake or pastry flour then an all-purpose flour or bread flour will be too hard, creating a tough crumb.Ĭoconut Shag Cake Your cake broke when you turned it out of the panĪ cake has gone through a lot over the last 30 minutes, not to mention turning from a liquid to a solid! It needs a minute or two to gain its composure once removed from the oven. Make sure you’re using the correct flour. Gluten is not desirable in cakes, so mix thoroughly, but as little as possible. As soon as you begin mixing flour with a liquid and a fat, gluten is developed. There is a function to the order in which ingredients are added to create the right texture. Solution: Mix your cake according to the recipe. Toughness in cakes is caused by over-mixing, or the wrong type of flour. You need to find the perfect speed, temperature and duration to form perfectly-sized little air cells to make the ideal texture. Mixing is a tricky thing when it comes to cakes. To avoid over baking, there are three indicators that you should look for to determine if your cake is done: The cake should be slightly pulling away from the side of the pan, a cake tester inserted into the deepest part of the cake comes out clean, and the cake should spring back when gently pressed. Avoid dipping your measuring cup into the bag as this presses the flour into your cup and you’ll end up with too much flour. Spoon the flour into the measuring cup and level off evenly. Solution: Ensure that you’re measuring your flour properly. A second, and equally damaging culprit, is over-baking. The culprits for dry cake are ingredients that absorb moisture, such as flour or other starches, cocoa or any milk solids. Make sure your ingredients (eggs, liquid and dairy) are as close to room temperature as possible to encourage proper mixing. Standing mixers are incredibly efficient, but will mix your cakes very quickly. If you have a recipe that calls for hand-mixing, yet you use a hand blender, you’ll need to mix much less. Solution: Consider what mixing method you’re using. You can always fill the holes with frosting to cover them up, but of course preventing them in the first place is the better plan. Holes in cakes are caused by improper mixing (generally over-mixing). There are holes and tunnels in your cakeĬakes that have holes are problematic, especially if you plan to slice them horizontally. A cake that bakes too slowly takes longer to set and may fall, causing a dense texture. Solution: Make sure you’re using wet measures for wet ingredients and dry measures for dry check the freshness of your baking soda and powder, and check your oven temp to make sure it’s hot enough. Six common baking-fails, and how they can be prevented Your cake is too denseĪ cake that is overly dense typically has too much liquid, too much sugar or too little leavening (not excess flour, as is commonly thought). Especially ones that have structural impact. With the exception of spices, don’t substitute ingredients. Old ingredients taste bad, and old leaveners (like baking soda) simply don’t work. Source out a recipe for a larger volume instead. Don’t try to double the recipeĬake recipes are more complex than that. Otherwise you’re looking at uneven baking, which means an uneven cake. If it doesn’t specify otherwise, that’s how the recipe was designed. Bake in the centre of the oven (unless otherwise specified) The cakes needs to bake at the right temperature, no shortcuts. It’s insurance that your cake will slide out cleanly after cooling. To help you on your quest to bake the perfect cake, here’s a breakdown of important dos and don’ts: The seven rules for baking a perfect cake Always grease the pan and line with parchment Similarly, there are a lot of bad habits that can have equal influence on your recipe to negative effect. When baking a cake, there are a lot of little things you can do to improve your odds of a winning finished product. When something goes amiss in the kitchen, it’s important to understand what went wrong.
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