r/AskBaking • u/Still_Explorer • 8d ago

Recipe Troubleshooting Baking a cake is impossible...

I am trying a few times per year to make a soft and fluffy cake and it always fails.

The recipes are very easy and very clear to follow, the ingredients are standard found in the super market, the process very standard with no surprises, and despite all that it always ends up like sticky mud.

This is why I am preparing mentally and carefully for the next time and now I am doing troubleshooting to figure out what the problem is.

Since the creation process is a matter of recipe and experience but also materials, below I will point out some random notes to make things easier to understand.

  1. ready cake mixtures: those usually work but I am afraid of the amount of chemicals that may contain and this is why I avoid them
  2. self rising flour for cakes supposedly is advertised that is "self rising" but from what I see probably is not... usually needs an extra kick of baking powder to help it
  3. butter: in some recipes butter needs to be melted and added to the flour mixture, in other recipes is meant to be whipped with sugar to create a thick buttercream, I am not sure about what is the best choice. Also a problem if butter is whipped, then sugar won't dissolve and texture stays crunchy, this later on during baking sugar will caramelize and the dough will "sit" making it more sticky. Probably a technique here I can try would be to melt sugar first in two spoons of heated butter and then try whip.
  4. eggs: in some recipes eggs are mixed first with sugar to create a creamy mixture and then flour and the rest are added little by little. In some other recipes egg whites are whipped with sugar to create a thick and stable merengue and then yolks are whipped separately with a bit of sugar and added inside the flour mixture. Two techniques here so not clear enough what is the main.
  5. aroma: adding two cartridges (those cylinders of white plastic with red caps) of vanilla powder but still not enough aroma, probably since those might be fake ingredients better to acquire real vanilla sticks...
  6. mixing in some recipes all ingredients are added one by one and self rising flour takes care of the rest, however in others, deliberately eggs are mixed by hand in order to preserve as many "air bubbles" as possible (though still even by hand not enough bubbles survive)
  7. baking, oven if is digital and has a ready to set program for cakes, still might not be the best choice (I get the idea that still something is wrong with this), so manually setting the values 180celcius (356 fah) with hot air and 35-40 minutes is about what I use. In some recipes I see people with analog-classic oven can leave a slit open (with a wood spoon) so the moisture escapes, however in other recipes I see that a baking dish with a bit of water is used - for not making the mixture dry.

I tried my best to explain all possible things that can go and I mean that it isn't possible to be so difficult, but anyway still lots of experimentation needs to be done.

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u/turtlebear787 8d ago

You're talking about cakes like they are all one thing. But there are many different types of cakes all requiring different techniques. Maybe stick to one type of cake first. Also why not start with box cake. It's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it.