11 Common Cake Baking Problems and Solutions
We all know that baking doesn’t always go as planned. You want to make a fluffy cake, but instead, you end up with a dense block that barely resembles a cake!
Or, your cake looks perfectly golden brown, and when you go to take it out of the pan, you realize that the middle is still completely unbaked.
What causes baking problems?
A mistake in the ingredients, like following a faulty recipe or a bad baking technique could be the culprit.
Successful baking takes some training, and I’m here to help!
After years and years of baking cakes, I can pinpoint some of the most common baking problems and come up with solutions to fix them.
And this is exactly what I’m about to share with you. So, let’s dive in.
11 Common Cake Baking Problems and Solutions
Perfect baking is a dream that many of us have, but a few achieve.
Yes, I must admit that some people aren’t natural-born bakers, but this doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to bake a delicious cake that impresses everyone!
Here are the most common baking problems you might encounter as a newbie, and how to deal with them:
1 – Cake Is Too Dense
When there isn’t enough air in the batter, the cake will look and feel too dense. What’s the answer here? Simple: beat the air back into the batter!
Here are a couple of ways on how to do it properly:
When there isn’t enough air in the batter, the cake will look and feel too dense. What’s the answer here? Simple: beat the air back into the batter!
Here are a couple of ways on how to do it properly:
- Ensure you’re beating the batter long enough, and spend extra time creaming the sugar and butter to make a fluffy and airy mix.
- If your batter uses oil instead of butter, mix well, and don’t rush it until the air bubbles form.
- Once you’ve added the flour, go easy on the mixing. You don’t want to overmix, as it can burst the air bubbles in the cake dough.
2 – Your Cake Didn’t Rise
Another problem that many people encounter is a cake that doesn’t rise, which also leads to a dense cake.
This could probably be due to a bad leavening agent. Maybe your baking powder or baking soda is old and no longer working.
You need a good leavening agent to help the batter rise and lock in the air during the baking process.
Moreover, too much flour in a cake will make it heavy, so it won’t rise. Flour is loaded with gluten that can weigh a cake down.
Measure your flour accurately and use cake flour, which has less gluten than all-purpose flour (it’s called cake flour for a reason—it’s perfect for cakes!).
But what if you’ve done all this and your cake didn’t rise?
Have you put the cake into the oven right after turning it on? This could be the main problem here.
In a cool oven, your cake won’t rise right away, and the batter will begin to cook before it puffs up.
Preheat your oven for at least 20 minutes before baking. When the oven is at the right temperature, your cake will rise quickly as the heat will activate the leavening agent.
3 – Your Cake Is Overflowing
How many times have you opened the oven to check on your cake, only to find a mess of pouring batter on the racks? I know I saw this a lot!
Think of all the time you’ll spend cleaning, and did I mention that the batter can catch fire? Yes, you must avoid this.
The easiest solution is to fill your pan with less batter. A good rule of thumb is to fill a cake pan halfway to two-thirds of the way up the sides of the pan.
Any more batter and you could easily have a cake explosion in your oven! So, either pick a pan suitable for the batter you have or reduce all the ingredients by half to fit the baking dish you already own.
I would always pick the first option, but if you’re a math genius, try the second one.
4 – You Have A Sunken Cake
I admit that this is probably one of the most common baking mistakes I made. The cake looks perfect right out of the oven, and I feel I’ve finally made it.
I let it sit on the rack to cool off, and come after a few minutes only to find a disaster!
My beautiful cake has collapsed in the middle. It has sunken in the center and looks like someone gave it a really good punch. What happened?
I learned, the hard way, that this probably means the cake wasn’t fully baked. I just pulled it out too soon.
Cakes can sink when there isn’t enough structure to hold the batter together. By structure, I mean eggs or flour, ingredients that bind the cake batter.
If you’re short on eggs or skimp on an ounce of flour, your cake batter won’t be firm enough to hold its shape when baked. I’m all for saving, but not when you’re baking!
Adjusting the temperature is crucial. As a matter of fact, you might have a burned exterior while the center is full of gooey uncooked batter if the temperature is too high.
Opening and closing the oven door too frequently to check on your cake will make the temperature rise and fall. This disrupts the baking process, and the outside will bake fast while the center takes too much time to get hot.
Use a toothpick or knife to test the center of the cake. If it comes out clean with no sticky, wet batter, your cake will be done!
Otherwise, leave the cake in the oven a little longer. It’s that easy.
5 – Your Cake Is Stuck
Once again, you think you have baked the perfect cake until you try to take it out of the pan. The cake has completely stuck to the edges and the bottom, and you just can’t lift it without breaking it into pieces.
Of course, you learn the hard way that you should always grease a cake pan well.
But here is my special tip: don’t just grease it, flour it as well! This will help the cake pop out of the pan after it bakes.
Placing a parchment circle in the bottom of the cake pan is another effective way to prevent a cake from sticking, as the paper will help lift the cake easily.
Now, what if you’re desperate, and the cake doesn’t seem to move? If you have time, wrap your cake while it’s still in the pan and freeze it for at least six hours.
A frozen cake is less likely to crumble when you try to pull it out. Use a butter knife to gently cut around the cake to remove it successfully.
6 – The Cake Has Crusty Edges
The middle of your cake is nice and fluffy, but the edges are crunchy and burned. Why did this happen?
This is most likely caused by too much pan spray or an over-greased pan. When the pan has too much grease, the edges of the cake literally get fried.
Yes, it’s important to grease the sides of the pan, but a little grease goes a long way!
7 – The Cake Batter is Too Stiff
When you’re stirring the cake batter and it feels like you are mixing cement, you have probably added too much flour. You might also have been mixing too long.
The stiff batter is caused by too much gluten. Too much flour will result in a lot of gluten, and overmixing will help develop the gluten bonds.
You can avoid this by accurately measuring all your dry ingredients, including the flour. Once you’ve added the flour, use a spatula to mix it in until it disappears.
That’s it. No need for overmixing as it‘ll push the air out of the batter.
8 – Fruits Falling to the Bottom
A cake baked with fresh fruits is a true delicacy. However, mixing fresh fruits into any cold cake batter won’t usually work.
Fruits tend to be heavy and will sink to the bottom of the cake where they unappetizingly sit. This happens when the batter is too light and fluffy or there isn’t enough flour to hold them.
When making a cake with fruits mixed in, it’s best to choose a nice, sturdy batter rather than something light like a chiffon cake.
Fruits will also sink if they’re too wet and dense. Whole cherries or strawberries are perfect examples of large, moist fruits that will sink into a cake.
If you have your heart set on these types of fruits, chop them up into small pieces before adding them to your cake batter.
You can also gently dust the fruits with some cake or all-purpose flour. This will help hold all your fruits in place.
9 – Cake Sides Are Caving In
When the sides of a cake are sunken in, and your cake looks like you put a tight belt around the center, you know you have a problem.
Cake sides sinking inward can be caused by one of three things: liquid, grease, or moisture.
First, ensure your cake batter recipe has the correct amount of liquid. Cakes that require adding buttermilk or coffee at the end, for example, can be finicky, so double-check your liquids before freely pouring them in.
Next, only use a small amount of pan spray or butter to grease your pans. While you want your cake to easily pop out of the pan once it’s baked, the cake still needs to be able to “climb” up the sides of the pan to rise.
Too much grease and the batter will simply slide down the edges. A little spray goes a long way- so, don’t overdo it!
Lastly, try not to let your cake cool in the pan for too long. Moisture can build up inside the pan as the cake cools, causing the sides to sink inward.
Let the cake cool for a few minutes, then remove it from the pan and transfer it to a cooling rack. Problem solved!
10 – Cake Top Is Cracked
If your cakes are always coming out of the oven with cracked tops, you have a temperature problem.
When the oven is too hot, the top of the cake will bake quickly and form a crust. The batter in the center of the cake will be cooking and rising, so it’ll burst through the top crust, causing the cake to crack.
A simple thermometer, like this one, will accurately measure the temperature and help you ensure your appliance is not running too hot.
11 – You Have a Crumbly Cake
You might have a crumbly cake due to several reasons, like too much flour, not enough butter, or an extremely hot oven that dries the batter.
Revising your technique and ingredients is the only key to success. But this doesn’t mean that your crumbled cake will go to waste.
Use the crumbled cake to make delicious cake pops after mixing it with icing or melted chocolate. Dip your pops into your favorite frosting, and you’ll have a delicious dessert that everyone will love.
Final Thoughts
While these cake-baking problems can be frustrating, they all have easy fixes to ensure your cakes come out perfectly.
Baking cake is an art, a science, and also a ton of fun. Of course, it’s completely worth the effort when you bite into an impeccably baked cake. Happy Baking!
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.
Why does the cake tops become sticky. My cake tops are dry when it’s baked.. It becomes sticky after it has been left out to cool.
That’s almost always due to the humidity being too high in your kitchen. The moisture in the cake rises to the top while cooling, but doesn’t have anywhere to go. You’ll also see this if you cover your cake before it’s completely cooled. I’ve heard of laying a piece of paper on the top to soak up the moisture then removing it to get rid of that sticky layer, but I’ve never tried it myself.
Thank you for replying.. I have tried placing an absorbing paper on top but then the crust sticks to the paper .
Hmm… I would try dusting the cake with some powdered sugar to try to suck up some of the moisture. You might also want to take the cake out of the kitchen to cool. Somewhere with good ventilation and less moisture. This might not solve your problem completely, but it should at least help to some extent.
Have tried the powdered sugar method too.. Doesn’t help.. Will keep the cake out of the kitchen while cooling next time. Thank you
Thank you for all of your advice. I sometimes experience some (or all) at one time or another. It’s so technical baking, what seems to be, an easy cupcake then to find sinking or cracking, etc. in the end, simple checks(which experience brings)can solve most issues. Thanks again. I am saving your advice.
Happy baking. Peaceful orders and kind clients to you.
Claudia
I’m glad you found the tips useful! Happy baking to you as well!
My pound cake came out soft at the top hard at the bottom what happened!!?
Ah, it sounds like your pound cake was a victim of a too-high temperature. With any baking, the trick is to cook the inside before the outside gets too brown. Cakes, with their higher sugar content, can brown very quickly. Cooking at a lower temperature, around 350 degrees, allows the middle to catch up before the outside browns too much. In your case, if you’ve made this recipe before, your oven might be in need of a calibration. Simply moving the oven, or even just repeated use, can put the oven off ten or more degrees. If your oven is off, you may be cooking at a much higher temperature than you intended. This can cause problems for even the most careful baker.
Before having a repair person come calibrate your oven, you can check to see if your oven is running hotter than it should be by using an oven thermometer. After hanging the thermometer from a rack in the middle of your oven, set your oven to the desired temperature, and then check the temperature on the thermometer. If the thermometer stays at a constant temperature for about five minutes, adjust your oven temperature to make up for the difference (like if the thermometer reads 375 degrees, but your oven is set to 350 degrees, lower your oven temperature to 325 degrees, and check the thermometer again).
You could also try some bake even strips. The strips are soaked in water and then wrapped around the outside of the pan. They should keep the heat from browning the sides too quickly, giving your pound cake a hard bottom. It’ll also allow some additional time for the middle to catch up.
I hope this helps! Good luck!
MY CAKE IS DENSE AND PUDDING LIKE . WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
Hi, Jean!
If your cake is fully-cooked, but still dense and pudding-like, you could have over-creamed your cake batter. When you beat together your eggs, sugar, and butter (otherwise known as creaming), you want to do so at a medium speed. After adding your flour, you’ll want to go a little slower still. Going faster than these speeds can result in over-developing the gluten in the flour, which can cause your cake to fall once out of the oven. The results are thick, moist spots in your cake, which can taste pudding-like and overly dense. Mix a little on the slower side and give it another go! Good luck!
My chocolate cake turned out to be like a brownie. What did I do wrong?
Hi Nancy!
I’m sorry to hear you are getting brownies when you want cake! I can think of two reasons that you would be having this problem. One is the ratio of fats and sugar to flour. If you have too much fat or sugar, the gluten in the flour doesn’t develop as well, which leaves you with a more fudge-like consistency. What recipe are you using? The other reason could be that it is being left too long to cool. Sometimes when a cake is left to cool a little longer, condensation can form on the bottom, which can create the gooey-ness that you might be experiencing.
Yes, I am having trouble with my cake crumble on me after they are cool and really to take out
Hi, Pam!
If you’re having trouble with your cake crumbling, you are probably having some sticking. You can try to grease the pan more, or you can cut out a piece of parchment paper for the bottom of the pan. Hope that helps!
Found a metal spoon in the cake after cooked is it still good to eat or is it tainted
Hi, Amanda!
Oh no! I’m sorry to hear this. I’ve done this a few times. Whoops!
Personally, I probably would not eat it. There is a chance that chemicals could leach into the cake from the heated metal spoon. It really depends on the type of metal that the spoon is made of, as stainless steel (without scratches) would be less likely to leach anything. I tend to err on the side of caution though.
Hello.
I tried baking Claudia Roden’s Orange and almond cake. Cake was pasty on the inside and burnt on the outside. I did exactly as the instructions said. 400 degrees (not convection) for 1 hour. I even used an oven thermometer to test that it was at 400. The cake was awful and bitter. Has potential if I could fix all the problems. I used Bob’s red mill finely ground almond flour, 6 eggs, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 2 pulverized Valencia oranges. I cooked them for 2 hours as instructed and then ground them up in my blender. I greased and floured with coconut oil and almond flour – maybe I used too much coconut oil – but the top was also burnt. Sooo…why is it undercooked? Why are the oranges still bitter after two hours of boiling? Why was the outside of the entire cake lightly burnt (I used a 9×3 pan with removable bottom – fat daddios brand). Why was the inside pasty and undercooked. Help. Please! I really want to make a good version of this cake.
Hi, Sky!!
Cakes that don’t work are so frustrating! I took a look at the recipe you referenced and noted a few things. First, the cake is supposed to be a bit more moist than normal. I’m assuming this is because it’s a flourless cake, and it doesn’t dry out nearly as much in the oven. Second, the recipe calls for sugar. Did you happen to use it? I didn’t see it in your list of ingredients. Cooking the citrus is supposed to take the bitterness away, so you should definitely not be left with a bitter cake! And third, if your cake is browning a bit too much, I would definitely suggest keeping an eye on it in the oven and either pulling the cake out or turning the temp down to 375 when it starts to look a little too brown. Give it another try, and let me know how it goes! Good luck!!
My cake is uncooked in the middle..it is still the initial texture of the mixture..I rebaked it more than thrice in the oven and ni result..Please wat is my mistake and wat could the fault be??
Hi, Shirley!
It could be the temperature you are cooking at, but I would have to know what recipe you used in order to give you better advice. Could you share that with me?
I keep trying to make a 7 up pound cake. I followed the recipe that was given to me to the letter. 3 cups sugar, 3 cups flour and the 6 eggs, butter, margarine 7-up and lemon extract This time, I think, my pan was too small. It was a 10 inch tube pan I used, It spilled over in the oven and of course it sank. When I tried it previously, I used a 12 inch tube pan and again it fell. What am I doing wrong?
My plum cake rises but after sometime it sinks back. Can you kelp me in that
Hi, my chiffon cake always have huge cracks at the side when I removed the cake after cooled down, what could be the possible reasons ? Thank You .
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My cakes look perfect in the oven, my skewer comes out dry to suggest perfectly cooked, however when I cut into the cake it is underdone in the centre. I don’t want to overdo or even burn the cake – what am I doing wrong?
I have bake three different recipes and they are just boiling in the pan. One recipe I have used numerous times. I have used an oven thermemter but the cakes just boil. Please tell me what is happening.
Judy, baking from scratch, I am having this problem in the finished product of biscuits, cake or cookies, I can taste the baking powder, baking soda, in some parts of the product. I have sifted twice or whisked profusely but still have this problem what am I doing wrong.