There are a plethora of reasons why you would wish to bake a cake. Some folks just like baking and may feel it is time to bake a cake for themselves. Others may choose to make a cake for a special occasion, such as a celebration or a holiday.
As many bakers will discover, there are numerous technicalities involved in baking and getting the proportions exactly so. If you mismeasure anything even little, you may end up with a cake that is no longer edible.
As a result, many individuals who are new to baking may find themselves in circumstances where they don’t know what to do or how to save the cake.
Cakes, fortunately, are one of the most forgiving sorts of treats you may make for yourself. If you identify a problem with your cake, it is typically rather simple to make the required modifications to get your cake back into good shape.
Yet, this raises the issue of having to know what to do to repair various issues that may arise during baking.
Consider the following scenario: you discover that your cake was quite fine while you were preparing the batter and pouring it into the cake pan. Nevertheless, as you remove the cake from the oven and attempt to cut into it, you realize that it is crumbling.
If you prepared that cake for a particular occasion, you could be at a loss for what to do or what caused the cake to respond in this manner.
Knowing what causes issues in baking is the first step toward understanding how to remedy the problem. After all, if you have a better understanding of what went wrong when baking, you will have a lot simpler time finding a solution to the issue.
This implies that if your cake crumbles as soon as you start cutting into it, you should investigate what went wrong.
What Causes Crumbly Cakes?
There are several issues that might result in a cake that will not retain its form when you begin cutting into it. Identifying which issue pertains to you and your circumstances will be very beneficial when learning how to address this kind of problem.
One of the most prevalent reasons of a cake being too crumbly is that something is wrong with the cake’s batter. It’s possible that the cake flour has too much gluten. Gluten, like many other aspects of baking, plays a part in cake-making.
Gluten’s function in baking is to keep the cake light and airy. When there is too much gluten in the wheat mix used for your cake, the gluten will do more than simply hold the cake together. It will bond much more tightly to the cake and cake pieces, resulting in a cake that does not stand on its own and does not have a light texture.
Instead, you’ll be left with a cake that won’t retain its form and will collapse if you put too much pressure to its structure. Obviously, the simplest solution will be to choose a cake flour combination that has an acceptable proportion of gluten.
Make Sure the Cake Is Being Cut Right
Another reason cakes may not maintain their form when you start cutting into them is because you are not cutting the cake correctly. Although many people assume that bakers’ abundance of knives is unneeded, it may truly make a difference when you cut into food with the appropriate knife.
For cutting conventional layer cakes, use a knife with a long, thin blade and cut with a very gently sawing motion to easily separate all of the layers of the cake, leaving you with a clean slice.
Cakes that are designed to be fluffier, such as chiffon or angel food, must, on the other hand, be cut with a serrated knife. You would still employ a sawing motion here, but you would want to be careful so as not to impair the airiness of the cake. Another alternative is the angel food cake braker, which can be found on Amazon.
Cheesecakes and other thick desserts may be cut with almost any sort of knife, however a long and thin knife blade is preferred. Nevertheless, before you begin cutting the cake, immerse the knife in hot water to ensure that it glides through the cake rather than ripping it.
Fixing a Crumbling Cake
Although there isn’t much you can do for a cake that has begun to crumble outside of the oven, there are a few things to keep in mind. Let the cake to cool somewhat before cutting into it, since biting into a piping hot cake will not help it retain its structure.
You may also attempt to be kinder with the cutting knife, however how well this works depends on the type and condition of the cake.
If you discover that the cake batter is not forming properly, there are still methods to rescue this recipe since it has not yet entered the oven. The greatest thing you can do is add some butter or oil to the cake to give it the moisture it needs to hold together.
Extra ingredients might include butter and oil, applesauce, bananas, fruit purees, and so forth. Any of these ingredients may provide enough substantial moisture to prevent the cake from falling apart.
Before you even start baking the cake, be sure you’re using flour with the suitable gluten content. Most cakes should have a gluten concentration of 7% to 9%, which will result in a lighter and airier cake than if you used regular bread flour.
In instance, most regular bread flour has between 12% and 14% gluten.