Why Do Cakes Sink?

Everyone knows a cake should rise. Just how much, or how domed, is up the the cake.

Some cakes melt before they bake, sending batter into all corners, while others need to be smoothed down before baking for an even spread and rise. There are cakes that can be piped and keep their piped shapes, and there are liquid batters which must be contained in pouring vessels before getting comfy in the oven.

Certain cakes rely on chemical leavening to help them rise. Baking Soda and Baking Powder are the two most common ones. Yeast will also make a cake rise. And if you're of the ilk to get naked and do it au naturale, a starter burbling innocently on your counter top, might be relied on to make your cake rise. But you'll need to burn some incense first.

Yogurt or beer or gingerale might also get your cake to rise, but don't count on it unless your recipe calls for such an ingredient.

Cake batters are unfinished constructions that need ovens to make them presentable. Even if you are following a cake recipe to the t, there's no insurance it will come out the same way it did last time.

Unless you know why a cake should do what the recipes says it will do.

Cakes rise because of chemical reactions. They rise because there are egg whites somewhere in the recipe. A cake that rises evenly has an even "crumb," and will feel, as well as taste, good in one's mouth. Cakes rise because the batter was a perfect emulsion and did not "break." Cakes hate to be 'overmixed' and they especially detest cold anything-- ovens, ingredients, feet, and hearts.

Cakes fall in love with ovens and baking vessels. And if you try to introduce them, later on in their lives, to 'open relationships,' they can get a bit testy. Cranky cakes are not ones you love back, unless you're the patient type who fall in like easily with difficult people.

In turn, a cake you make your own will be with you until the end of time. No matter the frosting, no matter the garnish, this is a cake you should count your lucky stars for, because, with very little effort, Your Cake can come out of the oven over and over, well.

Cakes love rhythm, consistency, heavy baking tins, hot ovens, baby offset spatulas, parchment paper, sifting and perfectly room temperature butter.

The structure, the concise emulsion, the soft and light and pretty cake batter becomes a lovely cake

because of air.

And air, is a very light thing, as you know.

Air gets created in cake batters in the first trimester: when creaming occurs.

If:
* your butter is not room temp
* you don't cream the butter until light before adding the sugar
* you throw many things in at the same time
* you don't scrape down the bowl a few times while butter & sugar are creaming
* your eggs are cold when you add them to the butter-sugar light fluffiness
* you add all your eggs at once
* you don't sift your flour and leavening
* you dump all your dries in at once

* you don't pay attention to your cake batter while it is becoming a being,

Your cake might not rise.

And, god forbid, you have to whip egg whites or triple sift or get to ribbon stage with your eggs, or any of these things that make cake baking daunting, because then you're really in trouble if that cake thinks you don't care or are resting on your laurels. God Forbid that cake knows you're cavalier!

In the professional baking world we know almost anyone can make one cake once very nicely, maybe even well. But in order to make that recipe over and over, dozens and maybe even hundreds of times, one needs understand some basic rules.

Ms. Deb, at the venerable baking-machine of a blog, Smitten Kitchen (who saw her spread in Martha Stewart like me and thought, "I know her! Wow.") has made 2 cakes recently that sank. In quickly reading through her posts I realized she didn't know why they could have done that.

Remember when I said cakes rise because of air? Air is created in the process of cake making, but held in place by structure, which, in cake baking science is generally called protein. In baking, protein provides the walls holding up roofs.

The concept is that certain proteins work in conjunction with other ingredients, thus providing cake with more than just a prayer to help it to rise. {Don't misunderstand me though-- praying does help!}

If you can, think about your ingredients like this:

1. Is that ingredient heavy?
and
2. Will that ingredient help to create or destroy my much needed air?

You and your cake relationship will go farther.

In Deb's 2 cakes: Honey Cake & Guinness Gingerbread, the batters were liquid and used volatile liquids to make them so. Volatile liquids in cake making are not flammable, but they do interfere with the tenuous process of creating and holding onto air. Liquids are heavy, and in baking they tend to be highly acidic.

Here is my comment from her Gramercy Tavern Gingerbread post:

    "The sinking in these two cakes you mentioned is from a batter being too liquidy for the ingredients in it that give it structure to keep it up. Also the liquids in both the Honey Cake and the Claudia Fleming cake here are quite volatile.

    Honey has enzymes in it that are impossible to kill and do funny things to eggs, for example. Guinness and molasses are extremely high in acid, and if this batter is not the exact right temperature, going into the exact right baking vessel, when all the stars are aligned just so, sinking will occur.

    Batters that are basically liquid love shallow baking vessels, because of how heat distributes quickly and evenly through them, making for an even, efficient bake.

    These acidic, volatile, liquid batters can’t reach very high, (no matter how many eggs, egg whites or chemical leavening you put in them,) so deep vessels are a struggle. And then you have the dreaded sink because after it struggles to reach, it has not enough structure to keep it there out of the oven, where it relies on structure ( = proteins) around air to keep its crumb intact.

    All that said, this is a challenging recipe (I worked at Gramercy Tavern when it was in production) and my hat goes off to you for making it. For St. Patrick’s Day I will be making hundreds of them…"

These two cakes sunk because the baking vessels she put them in were too tall and deep for cakes too heavy to climb tall buildings in a single bound in.

When a cake rises, the batter is actually climbing a baking vessel's sides in anticipation of becoming what it knows it was always meant to be. The baking vessel is just that. It is the container conducting heat, thus baking the intended raw ingredient.

What the baking vessel is made of-- how heavy or light it is, if it sits on top of a pan or just your oven rack, how tall or short or old or young it is, if it likes your oven or not-- all these things determine if it's the right pan for the job.

While leavening and egg whites and yeast and prayer are there to push and cajole and force that cake to rise, if all that air you so lovingly and painstakingly created is defeated under the weight of itself, it will climb and climb up the sides, where the heat is, but sink in the middle because it didn't have enough umph, enough structure to seal that air in place, like Pompey.

Cakes also sink, or collapse after cooling, because you've turned the pan in the oven too soon.

Turning the pan is what professional bakers do, to create as even a bake and rise as possible, but it hasn't quite caught on with home bakers. /Even though I think it should.

In restaurants and bakeries we set what we call 'setting' or 'shy' timers. If we think a cookie takes 20 minutes to bake, our first timer is 10-12 minutes. We always give ourselves windows from which to check up on our creations. But if we think a cake will take an hour to bake, we know it's not a good idea to turn the pan until the cake is 'set.' Upsetting the hot, fragile, precarious liquid is a bad idea until we're sure most of the baking magic has taken hold.

Cake making is a series of lessons about building and science. A cake is craft and alchemy and hope and love. Recipes are created, followed, experimented with, tweaked, changed, and tossed in the bin. Not every cake suits every person's baking facilities.

It's an honour to become intimate with a cake because all its lessons are met in the process. Making a cake just once is lovely, yes, but make it over and over is when you understand why the temperature of your butter is important, and how miraculous eggs are!

A cake companion is an amazingly loyal one. You'll both learn and teach from each other forever.

Comments

[Vivian Boroff]

Shuna I have only recently started to read your blogs and have become somewhat inspired by them. Thank you for this post in particular. I am an avid home cake baker and this has given me an understanding of the process that I really didn't have before.

[Malini]

WOW! I wish you had been my instructor when I was at pastry school.

Thank you.

[mel]

thank you so so much for this thorough detailed foray into all things cake. i've often wondered about some of the things you mention.
in the flat we're in at present i'm absolutely plagued by less than room temp butter. can't seem to get it warm enough to work with. i considered using the pilot light in the oven and sticking it in there, or even microwave but think that might just melt it.
any advice?
i'm also interested in what you think about these silicone baking vessels. have you had to adjust cooking times for them? do you still use parchment to line them?
i made a carrot cake for ms. k's photo class and had to DOUBLE the time in the oven. after the first hour it was still molten.
also is the reason no-flour cakes, like chocolate hazlenut work because of the egg whites?

[Roberto N.]

*Takes notes*

You take Stages?

Thank you

Roberto, Yes. Stagieres welcome-- if you're serious, I'll give you an address to send a CV. ~ Shuna

[Hank]

Odd. Very odd. Elise at Simply Recipes sent me here because, well, I am known as a "Meat and Fish Guy" and not a baker. But I do make a Guinness and molasses beer bread for breakfast every now and again. Mine has never (famous last words) ever fallen, and I DEFINITELY lack the exactitude of a serious baker. I use an old tin loaf pan, cold beer, self-rising flour, molasses and sugar. Bake at 350 for an hour (or so), and it's done. Top with butter while it's still hot. I add a dash of baking powder if the flour is real old.

Reading your post, this sounds like a recipe for falling cakes, yet it never happens. Is there something in my ignorance that is protecting me?

[Mallika]

What a fantastic and riveting post! Having just seen my last two attempts sink, I will put this knowledge to good use for the next one. Thanks hugely!

[John Birdsall]

Who knew a lesson in food chemistry could include a whiff of poetry? Beautiful post.

[Holly troubetzkoy]

For those fragile cakes that need as much warm surface to grow against there is always the option of increasing the surface area the cake batter can hug--use a pan with a central cone like an angle food pan but not that high--what they call a rice ring here. Or use a glass or porcelein cup which you place in the middle of the pan. I've never seen a fallen gingerbread. I use baking soda with cakes with yoghurt or buttermilk or sour milk with great success. There are also excellent cakes with no butter in them at all.
Check your egg sizes when baking since certain recipes from the 1940's and 50's in the US use medium eggs while more modern books often use large eggs.
Don't forget altitude. There are official adjustments for levening agents if one is baking in Salt Lake (high altitude)or in the Netherlands (below sea level). I used to read the conversions on packaged mixes and adjust my home recipes as instructed by the professionals.
Did win prizes with my cakes so guess they qualify as ok. Have enjoyed making forms to bake typewriter cakes, computer program cakes, dragons and dinos and whatever a heart could wish for.
You can get your butter to room temp by "defrosting"it for 30 sec at a time in a microwave oven. You can warm cold eggs is a cup of warm water for a few minutes. Make certain by seperating your eggs that there is no yolk in the whites.

Do you have only one good mixer and a broken arm like I do now then beat your eggwhites in the grease free bowl then move them into another bowl and beat the butter etc.
Try baking your recipe in a friend's oven where cakes seem to work and see if it is your oven that is causing the failures. A badly adjusted oven can produse chard baked goods which are runny on the inside.
Read the list in older cookbooks about why cakes fail to rise etc.
Preheat your oven. Just do it. It wastes less energy than that spent shopping and mixing and having the cake fail after all that work.

Double acting baking powder works twice: once in the bowl when the ingredients get wet and a second time in the oven when the batter responds to heat. Mix it and bake it.

For bread/cakes like banana bread where the crust is so devine, you can bake the batter in buttered muffin tins and have lots more crust. Then you bake for about 35 minutes instead of 55 minutes.

If a recipe like muffins indicates that it can be over mixed, they mean it. With a fork for max 25 stirs does not mean get in the electric mixer and try for smooth batter. Don't do it.

The texture of bread and cake are not supposed to be the same but I am living in the Netherlands where cake is what I call pound cake and much of the rest is called koek (like cook of cookie). Often it has more the texture of bread.

Holly Troubetzkoy, March 21, 2009

[Holly troubetzkoy]

Sugar has a great deal of influence on the quality of the finished product. Here in Europe the most common sugar is crystal sugar which is quite coarse. Here fine sugar is not called granulated or castor sugar but is bastard sugar. White or brown. It is much finer. There is of course also powdered sugar which usually contains some starch. Fine sugar creams much better than course sugar. IT is possible to make your sugar finer in the blender. Doing this in a plastic container can scratch the plastic (like a mini sand storm).

The logic of baking soda with chocolate and yoghurt and buttermilk and sour milk and molasses is that the soda is basic and the acidic ingredients are the acid that makes the reaction take place which releases the gas bubbles which make you baked good rise.

Baking powder has soda and an acid combined in the powder. When it becomes moist it begins to release the gas.

Yeast is a small plant and when it is moistened and fed it gives of CO2 like a tree-- that gas is what makes levened bread levened. Yeast grows best in a warm environmnet.

If you think that honey can be substituted into all recipes you may be facing a great deal of dark crusted attempts. Honey can be used instead of other sweet syrups like cane syrup and molasses. The character of the flavor will be different. There are some good honey cook books which have tested recipes which work well with honey.[no honey for small babies ]

If you have a cake or bread recipe which has a too light crust (my sour dough bread) adding a bit of honey will help it brown better. Honey provides fructose. If you bake or boil honey you will kill the enzymes (say I the bee keeper). Keep your honey pots covered because honey attracts moisture our of the air.

Holly Troubetzkoy

[Linda]

Ok...I feel empowered!
Yellow cake here I come!
Thank you....

[Edna]

Cake sounds like a tender and sweet but temperamental best friend. This entry gives me the courage to try my hand at baking a cake.

[Jenny Monk]

I am a professional but untrained (self taught) baker. I make nearly 100 cakes a week from home and until recently had little or no problems. Now, my victoria sponges are all sinking in the middle HELP! chocolate etc are fine. I haven't changed a thing. Any ideas?

hello Jenny, If you're using self-raising flour, sometimes the leaveners in them 'die,' or get very weak. There are a number of reasons your cakes are sinking though. Maybe your oven is unwell. Or the pan size is too small/batter is too tight/much? Sometimes, cakes, like us, go through phases, like moods. But usually it's an outside factor like the pan, the oven, the flour/leavener.

If you can give me any more specifics I might be able to guess more specifically... ~ Shuna

[Elke]

Hi Shuna, when i bake cupcakes it looks beautiful while it is in the oven. after it is done I take it out of the oven and let it cool, it flops. And the top is wet or too moist. Why is it? i cream butter and sugar until smooth then add dry alternately with liquid. start with dry and end with dry. where did i go wrong?

Hello Elke, I don't know the recipe you're using and so I can't say whether you have too much of one thing or not enough of another, but it sounds like there's a lot of air in your batter and maybe not a high enough oven temperature. Have you ever taken this same batter and baked a full cake with it? Do you still have the same issues?

I know it's not comforting to hear, but every recipe, every ingredient, every oven, every cake, has a different something it can be. One day the cream is thin, the next day it's thick. One day your oven runs true, the next week it's cold. See what I mean?

Line up your recipe next to others and see the difference. A moist top comes from a lot of fat &/or sugar and/or eggs in the recipe. If you want to send me more information I might be able to make better educated guesses. Good luck! ~ Shuna