Let us know if you have any tips for avoiding or hiding mistakes. Subscriber club Reader offers More Good Food. Sign in. Back to Recipes Pumpkin recipes Butternut squash See more. Back to Recipes Chicken slow cooker Veggie slow cooker See more. Back to Recipes Cheesecakes Cookies See more. Back to Recipes Family meals One-pot recipes See more.
Back to Recipes Quick and healthy Quick vegetarian See more. Back to Recipes Vegetable soups Healthy soups See more. Baking soda is about 3x more potent than baking powder, and they are not interchangeable. Be sure to carefully read the amount of leavening agents a recipe calls for, and measure them precisely with a teaspoon or digital scale.
There also is a chance that the recipe might be bad! Sadly not all recipes are formulated correctly, and sometimes this can also be the problem. If you try making a certain recipe a few times and your cake is still sinking in the middle, you may want to try a new recipe.
If you need to rotate your pans, be sure to carefully close your oven door after doing so. Or if you want to sneak a peek at your cake layers, try to just look through the oven door rather than opening it. Another culprit is your oven! Unfortunately not all ovens bake accurately. You can run into some serious problems if your oven runs hot or cold. For example, say your oven runs a bit cool. This might make you think the cake is baked through.
Test your oven temperature with an oven thermometer. If your runs cold, adjust the temperature of your oven to ensure it bakes at the actual temperature the recipe calls for. Or if your oven runs hot, adjust it down as needed. Using a different pan size than a recipe calls for can drastically change the bake time required. It can cause your cake layers to be quite a bit thicker or thinner than the recipe intends.
I recommend using flower nails if you need to bake cake layers that are larger than a recipe calls for. When I bake large cake layers or sheet cakes, I like to place a few flower nails evenly apart in the center of each pan. This helps the layers bake more evenly and quickly, because they help conduct heat into the center of the cake layer. This will help ensure that your cake layers a similar thickness to what the recipe intended.
If you find yourself with a cake sunk in the middle, there are a few things you can do to fix it. The easiest and quickest fix is to level the cake layer. This allows you to cut away the under-baked or raw section, and leaves you with a level, undimpled cake layer. However, this only works the center only sinks a bit. If you notice that the center of your cake sinks right after you take it out of the oven, you can pop it back into the oven for a couple minutes. If all else fails, you can cut away the undercooked sections and just fill the cake in with a bit of extra frosting.
I hope you found this post helpful, and that your cake layers bake through fully and rise nice and high from now on? It could be that you added too much leavening like baking powder or baking soda , so the cake rose up too quickly, then fell. The leavening agent could also have been measured wrong. How to fix that: Always level off your measuring spoon before adding it to the batter.
You never want the baking powder or baking soda mounded up on the measuring spoon. If your cake is too dry, it could possibly sink in the middle.
How to fix that: Make sure you follow the recipe exactly…at least the first time you make it. Your oven temp could be too high or low…either one. Even if you set the oven temperature correctly, your oven could be off a little. How to fix that: Buy an oven thermometer like the one below and place it in your oven. I like to test mine periodically. Oven Thermometer.
Also, I know you know this, but make sure you preheat your oven. It really does make a difference. Could it be your location? How to fix that: I usually refer people to the King Arthur baking site where they suggest alterations when baking at high altitudes.
I see this question a lot: Why does my cake sink after baking? Your cake might look perfect, but once you pull it out and set it on the counter, the middle sinks. If you bake it too long, then it dries out.
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