Common Baking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

This article explores some of the most common baking mistakes and shows you how to avoid them.

Oven

One of the most common baking mistakes is not letting your oven pre-heat.

The first step when baking a cake should be to pre-heat the oven. It is ideal to let the oven come to the correct temperature before putting anything in to bake, otherwise it could take a lot longer to bake than anticipated.

If a cake would go in at a low temperature, this could mean that it will not be able to rise and your sponge will end up being quite dense, whereas you ideally want a light and fluffy sponge.

Incorporating

When baking, there are several ways to incorporate ingredients. Examples of these include folding, creaming, rubbing in or even all in one method. If you are not using the correct method for your specific recipe, then this could result in an undesirable bake.

When a recipe asks you to fold ingredients in, this is usually done with a spatula and you need to be careful to not lose any air. An example would be meringues, where you must be quite delicate when folding in, otherwise the meringues will become quite dense.

Baking

When baking macarons or eclairs, the recipe usually states that the oven should not be opened during baking. Usually with most bakes you can open the oven to check if they are ready, however this is not possible with these types of desserts because they can deflate due to not having time to form a proper structure. This means they are very delicate and will then deflate very easily if the oven is opened.

Frosting

When finishing a cake, a common error is to frost the cake as soon as it has come out of the oven, or to not leave enough time for the cake to cool.

Since the sponges will be quite warm after coming out of the oven, the frosting will melt and not hold the cake together properly.

Ideally you should leave the sponges to cool at room temperature for at least one or two hours before attempting to add frosting and layer them.

Decorating

When tiering a cake, you need to make sure you level the cake before tiering. This is so you do not end up with a wonky cake.

The cake sponges can usually come out quite uneven after baking due to a few different reasons such as the mixture not being spread out correctly in the tin before baking.

There are tools that can be bought which will help to make your cake level, such as a cake leveller. You can also use a serrated knife if you do not have a cake leveller. This will help the layers be clean and level, and you will have a lovely and even cake to start tiering.

The tips above will help you in your cake making endeavours but, if you want to ensure that you have the best cake possible for your occasion, you should seriously considering ordering one from a online cake shop like Jack and Beyond.