How Overdoing This One Ingredient Can Lead To A Sunken Cake

We all want our cakes to shine, especially considering how much effort it can take to make one. Whether you are attempting to create an incredibly moist sponge cake or revamp a classic chocolate cake recipe, the baked good's appearance matters nearly as much as its taste — especially if you're serving it to others. And that is where Odette D'Aniello, baking expert and CEO at Dragonfly Cakes comes in. Food Republic got the skinny from D'Aniello on how home bakers might be overdoing it with their leavening ingredients, namely baking powder or baking soda. "We see this one a lot with home bakers trying to get a taller or fluffier cake," she commiserated.

"When there's too much leavening, the cake rises too quickly and doesn't have the structure to hold itself up," D'Aniello told us. "The bubbles expand fast, then collapse in the middle. It's a case of too much of a good thing — precise measurement really matters here." It's also one of the reasons that not accurately measuring your ingredients landed itself on our list of the 13 mistakes everyone makes when baking a cake.

As the expert advised, using the correct amount of your leavening ingredient is essential to crafting cakes that are domed or fluffy — not cratered and deflated. But how do you know when it's too much or if you're measuring correctly? Odette D'Aniello explained, "Use proper measuring spoons and level them off with a straight edge — no eyeballing!" While you can definitely measure with your heart when throwing together a pasta dish, the same is not true of baking. Measure precisely, using the flat edge of a butter knife or a dough scraper across the top of the measuring spoon — no heaping teaspoons here.

According to D'Aniello, foamy batter with lots of bubbles can also be a clue that something has gone awry. "It might mean you've added too much baking powder or soda," the expert warned. Unfortunately, if you have reached the point where you have mixed the wet and dry ingredients into a batter and it starts to foam, you've come too far to fix it — you'll have to start over, or just go ahead and bake it, knowing it might sink (and let that be a lesson to you for next time). Of course, this unfortunate consistency issue isn't always your fault. D'Aniello added, "Check expiration dates — old leavening can throw things off, too."