To me, there’s nothing better than a beautiful layered cake to mark an occasion, whether that’s a birthday or just a Saturday dinner at home with friends. Baking one can often seem a bit intimidating, but it’s not if you know the right tips and tricks.
We rounded up our seven favorite cake-baking tips that will guarantee success regardless of the occasion.
1. Choose the right tools.
Bakers are only as good their tools. Once you know how to bake a cake, stocking your kitchen with the most essential baking tools is the key to sweet success. But don’t be intimidated — you likely already have many of the seven that made our list!
While we love baking cakes from scratch, we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that sometimes we need to take the easy way out. That’s why there’s nothing wrong with leaning on boxed cake mix when you’re in a pinch; it’s an affordable, convenient choice when you need a quick dessert. Choose the right one for the job, whether you’re in need of a cake with a soft and tender crumb, one that’s not too sweet, or one that fools you for homemade.
If you simply try to pour cake batter among a few pans and hope you’re pouring equal amounts into each, you’ll more than likely end up with layers that bake up in all difference sizes — short, tall, and in-between. Instead, lean on these three smart tips.
Beyond getting your cake layers to bake up evenly, you also want them to bake up nice and flat — a domed cake is difficult to frost. Luckily there are a few tricks to achieve success.
You know you need to let those cake layers cool to room temperature before you touch them, but before you spread even an ounce of buttercream on them, you should stick them in the refrigerator. Letting the cakes chill for a couple of hours helps them firm up and makes frosting them easier.
Don’t Skip This Step: The One Step You Shouldn’t Skip Before Frosting a Cake
6. Embrace the crumb coat.
Even when chilled, you still run the risk of collecting pesky little crumbs in the frosting when you spread it over your cake. The best way to avoid this is to apply a crumb coat first — a thin layer of frosting that covers the top and sides of the cake — then chill it again for 10 to 15 minutes. Then when you go to apply a second thicker (and final layer) of frosting, it will be clean and crumb-less.
A delicious frosting is the key to a delicious cake, but buttercream can be tricky to get right. All too often, it can be too sweet, not thick enough, or worse: gritty. By avoiding these mistakes you’ll be on your way to better buttercream.
Butter is capable of holding air and the creaming process is when butter traps that air.While baking, that trapped air expands and produces a fluffy cake. No properly creamed butter = no air = no fluffiness. Aka a dense cake.
Never bake without measuring your ingredients. Unlike cooking, baking is first a science, then anything else. If you start adding ingredients like baking powder and sugar without measuring, it can lead to some spectacular baking disasters.
When it comes to creating moist and delicious cakes, sometimes the secret ingredient is something unexpected. In this case, it's applesauce. Not only does applesauce add moisture to your cake, but it also serves as a healthier alternative to high-fat ingredients.
The most crucial tip? Instead of buying an entire box of cake flour, simply incorporate two tablespoons of cornstarch into 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour. This blocks the formation of gluten in the flour, which produces a lighter, fluffier cake.
In order to bake cake evenly, you have to insulate its edges. Preventing the temperature of batter at the edge from increasing quickly allows the cake to rise longer before it sets. A cake whose edges rise at nearly the same rate as its center will remain flat across the top — no dome, perfect for stacking and icing.
As a commonly used fat, butter is largely responsible for the amount of moisture in your cake, cookies, cupcakes, and so on. So, the more butter you add, the closer you'll get to that ultra-soft texture of your sheet cake dreams. Less butter results in a drier, chewier cake.
Baking powder is mixed with the flour. When water is added to this flour to make dough, baking powder undergoes a chemical reaction during which carbon dioxide gas is produced. This carbon dioxide gas gets trapped into the dough and bubbles out which causes the cake to rise making it soft and spongy.
A blend of these two ingredients gives the cake the best possible flavor and texture. Butter provides flavor while oil adds moisture and keeps it from being too dry. A cake made with all oil would be moist but lacking in flavor, and an all-butter cake may have a more buttery taste, but would be more dry.
Introduction: My name is Melvina Ondricka, I am a helpful, fancy, friendly, innocent, outstanding, courageous, thoughtful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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