Confessions of a Cake Snob's Guide to Better Cakes
Kiss the days of dry, disappointing cakes goodbye. In lieu of a recipe this week, I’m giving you all of my cake-baking tips and tricks.
The guide
The most important thing about baking a cake is deciding when to take it out of the oven. If you only read one section of this guide, read that one!
Equipment
I prefer thick, sturdy aluminum cake pans. Wilton and Williams Sonoma make good ones. I don’t like nonstick bakeware because it doesn’t have good durability.
For frosting, I use a small offset spatula. For decorating cakes, I like Wilton brand tips and food coloring. Wilton’s frosting colors are gels, not liquid color, so they won’t mess with the texture of the frosting when you use them.
Ingredients
Baking is expensive, so I try to save money where I can, but I do splurge on three items: cocoa powder, cake mixes, and vanilla extract (in certain situations). The quality of just these ingredients greatly affects the taste of the final product. For cocoa powder, Droste is my favorite brand, but Ghirardelli is good, too! I always use Duncan Hines brand cake mixes. My mom has determined over years of testing that they are the best. Vanilla extract quality does not matter in a cake (imitation is even fine), but in frosting or in a filling that is lightly cooked or not cooked at all, you can really taste the difference. The next time you have a friend who is going to Mexico on vacation, ask them to bring you back a large bottle! You can get a year’s supply of high-quality extract for very little money.
How to grease a cake pan
My favorite method is to line a cake pan with parchment paper. Do this by placing your pan on a sheet of parchment and tracing it with a pencil. I cut inside the pencil lines so that there’s no graphite on the bottom of the cake. Secure the parchment to the bottom of your pan with a few dabs of butter or shortening underneath to hold it in place. Make sure you grease the sides of the pan with butter or shortening as well. If you use parchment, you’ll never have to worry about your cake sticking to the pan or having to turn a broken cake into a trifle, and it dries out the bottom and edges of your cake less than greasing and flouring does.
Scraping down the mixing bowl
This is important because you don’t want floury or dry bits in your cake. Make sure you don’t just get the sides, but give the very bottom a good scrape, too, especially with a Kitchen Aid. Dry ingredients love to hang out there instead of incorporating into the rest of the batter.
Give baking strips a try!
These are strips of stiff, heat-resistant fabric that you soak with water and then attach to the outside of your cake pan. The water evaporating from the strips cools the sides of the pan so that all the heat comes from the bottom, forcing the cake up and giving it a higher rise and a lighter, airier final texture. It also prevents the edges of the cake from setting early on in the cooking process, so the cake comes out flat on top instead of domed. They’re amazing; I cannot recommend them enough!
Baking and doneness
The timing of this step is the single most important thing you can do to make sure that your cake turns out moist and delicious instead of dry and disappointing. Cakes are a little bit forgiving of being underbaked, but they will not tolerate overbaking. There is no greater tragedy in the realm of baking than a dry, tough cake. (I’m not just being hyperbolic!)
Place cake pans on the middle rack of your oven but make sure there is some space between the pans. This will result in the most even bake and distribution of heat in your oven.
Get to know your oven. Notice if it bakes things on the slower or faster range given in recipes. Make sure that you can hear that timer when it goes off, and don’t ignore it! As soon as it beeps, run over and check your precious cakes. I badly overbaked a friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner cupcakes by walking away from my kitchen while they were in the oven. By the time I walked back and heard the timer, they were dry and tough.
Always check a cake for doneness a minute or two before the lower end of the time range given in a recipe. First, turn on the oven light but don’t open the door. Does the top look pale? It’s not done. Does it look liquidy or not well risen? It’s not done. Check again in about five minutes. If the top of your cake is golden brown in spots and it looks like it’s risen in the pan, then go ahead and do the toothpick test. Stick a toothpick in the center of each cake, at least an inch deep. Check both cakes separately each time. None of us are perfect at making our cakes even, so chances are one layer will be done before the other. If the toothpick comes out with gooey batter on it, check again in three to five minutes, depending on how wet the batter looks. If crumbs are just starting to form on the toothpick, give it another three. If there are some sticky, translucent crumbs that almost but don’t quite look like baked cake, give it two more minutes. If it has moist crumbs that look like cooked cake sticking to it, take it out of the oven. Keep at it and you will develop a intuition.
How to turn out a cake
After the cakes have cooled for 10 minutes (5 minutes if you’re worried they’re overbaked), run a knife along the edge of the pan. Use a plastic knife so you don’t scratch the pan, especially if you use nonstick bakeware. Lay a piece of foil over a small cake cooling rack, then place the rack upside down on top of the cake pan. Wearing oven mitts, firmly hold the cake pan and the cooling rack tight against each other, then quickly flip the whole thing over. The key is to do it quickly and confidently. You’re less likely to make a mistake or drop your cake if you take a deep breath and just do it. It can smell fear!
Cooling a cake
If you think that you might have overbaked your cake, cover the layers with their cake pans while they are still a little warm, but not hot. That will trap a little extra moisture and help reverse the damage a bit. Otherwise wait until the layers are cooled fully before covering them with their pans. They can sit out on the counter for up to 24 hours before assembling the cake.
Assembly
If you want, you can level your layer cakes before you stack them by cutting the domes off the tops of them. (I don’t usually bother!) When placing the bottom layer on your plate or cake stand, to do so upside down, so the bottom of the cake is on the top. This will give you a nice flat surface for filling your cake. If you want a level top, make sure to stack your top layer upside down as well. When handling layers of cake, use both hands and spread your fingers wide to give them good support. Be gentle with them and they will be good to you.
Frosting
Here are a few tips, but Wilton has a bunch of YouTube videos. Watch a few of those, starting with this one! Wilton can teach you how to decorate better than I can.
I don’t always bother with crumb coating, but if you want a polished final product, you need to do it. Start with a thin coat of icing, so thin it should be see-through and just barely cover the cake, to seal in the crumbs. Wipe your spatula off before dipping it in the frosting again so that you don’t get crumbs in it. Make sure to chill the cake down for about 30 minutes before doing the second coat of frosting. The cake is ready for a second coat of frosting when it feels dry or tacky to the touch instead of sticky.
When you frost a cake, do so with gentle, large strokes instead of small, choppy ones. Try not to lift your spatula up from the cake often, and never lift it straight up. Hold the spatula at an angle to the cake instead of directly parallel to it so that only the back edge of your spatula drags through the frosting. A turntable for your cake stand makes this easier, but it won’t solve all your problems. (I thought it would for me, but it turns out frosting a cake smoothly just takes practice!) Make sure your frosting is very soft. Be patient. I’m still not the best at this. A little dusting of cinnamon or powdered sugar on top and a few piped stars can cover many flaws. And it’s not so bad if your cake looks homemade; that just shows how much effort and love went into it.
Slicing, serving, eating
For the prettiest slices, your cake should be cold. Use a large, sharp knife, and run it under hot water, then dry it off before slicing. Wipe the knife between slices to keep them neat. I don’t bother with this unless I’m taking pictures of my cakes for the newsletter!
A cold cake slices very neatly, but it tastes way better at room temperature, so you should wait to eat it. This is not just because the textures of the frosting and cake are softer. Your taste buds are more sensitive when food is warmer, and the aromatic compounds in food are more active at warmer temperatures as well. Waiting is hard, I know, but you put so much effort into baking it that you might as well wait the 15 extra minutes to give yourself the best eating experience possible.
Choosing a recipe
The most important quality in a cake is its texture. I want it to be light, fluffy, and moist. And the best way to do this is to find cake recipes that use oil as the primary fat instead of butter, partially because oil is liquid at room temperature and butter is not. Oil cakes are also much easier to make; simply dump the ingredients into a mixer and stir, no need to bother with creaming the butter, folding in dry ingredients, and making sure you don’t lose the air you incorporated into your batter. If there are pictures of the recipe, take a good long look at the texture of the cake and see if it looks dry or not. A close inspection will usually tell you if it’s going to be a good one.
The story
I was sick with the remains of a stomach bug when my friend Allie and I were developing a cake together, so I sat on the couch, gave her directions, and answered all her questions while she did the actual baking. I wanted to share that with all of you so that next time you bake a cake, you can now imagine my voice in your ear, walking you through the process. Except it would be minus my usual snark. Any dessert baked with love is a dessert worth eating. And here’s a confession: I didn’t get to be a cake snob without my fair share of second-rate baked goods along the way. I still make mistakes, like overbaking my Christmas cookies. One batch was so crunchy that they were quite the jaw workout to chew after they cooled. And if some of my tips help you improve your technique or answer some of your questions along the way, so much the better. If there’s anything you’re still wondering about, comment on the website or email me, and I’ll be happy to answer!
Spread the love
If you like this recipe, please recommend Confessions of a Cake Snob to someone you know! Also feel free to share this newsletter with a friend, comment on the website, or bake it and let me know how it went for you! Email me with comments, things you’d like to see, and suggestions at confessionsofacakesnob@substack.com. I’m excited to hear from you!