15 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Baking Scratch Cakes

I was really impatient as a kid. (Ok, fine…I’m still impatient.) Anyway, I just didn’t get why it was really necessary to preheat the oven.

I would forget and then just turn on the oven and pop in the cake. Then I’d wonder why it didn’t rise properly, or took too long to bake, which made it dry.

It’s majorly important to preheat your oven though. You need to get the temp up before you put your cake in. In fact, it’s best to let it preheat for a bit longer even after your oven says it’s ready.

You don’t want heat fluctuations in the oven while baking your cake. You want your cake to rise properly, not to be super dense and not to dry out because you have to bake it longer.

I wish I’d known to check the oven temp with a thermometer:

Ok, this one took me awhile to get. I don’t know why I was so averse to just going and getting an oven thermometer, but it took me forever to decide to finally do it.

It’s really helpful though in determining if your oven is even close to what you’re setting it at. If it’s off, at least you’ll know how much to off-set the temp.

I wish I’d known to prepare the cake pans first.

Well you probably think I’m really dumb right about now, but really, there are a lot of people who don’t realize you need to prepare cake pans before adding in the batter.

It’s not dumb…we just don’t know things sometimes and when we learn, then we do better.

Different recipes will tell you to prepare your pans in different ways. That’s important to follow, because you definitely want your cakes to lift out of their pans for sure.

There are so many options for preparing pans like: Using parchment paper (not wax paper though), greasing with butter, greasing with shortening and then flouring, using the pan release recipe, or using non-stick spray.

I go into a lot of detail and show my favorite method in this post if you’d like to go deeper and get more tips: Tips for Getting Your Cakes to Release from Pans

I wish I’d known that using dark coated or slanted side pans could cause problems.

This one is a biggie. Once I learned this, things really took a corner in better cake baking.

So, dark coated pans are good for non-stick purposes, but they’re not so good for baking cakes.

If you’re using a dark coated pan, then you really need to turn down the oven temp about 25 degrees and just bake the cake a little longer.

Dark coated pans just seem to bake everything quicker, so you have to really watch it.

As far as slant side pans go, if you want a nice looking cake, these aren’t the way to go. I baked with these angled pans for a long time not understanding why my cakes didn’t look right and why they were hard to decorate.

Well the slanted sides have to be trimmed to get the sides of the cake straight up and down, or things will just look weird.

It’s easier to just bake in good pans to begin with and then you don’t have to worry about changing the temp of the oven because the pan is dark or trimming the sides of the cake to get them straight up and down.

I LOVE magic line pans. I think they bake cake layers much more evenly than other cake pans. They aren’t dark coated, so you will have to prepare them (like I mentioned above), but I’ve always had good luck with them.

You can get Magic Line Pans here: 8″ round Magic Line Pans

I also use Wilton pans. They don’t bake as evenly as the Magic Line pans, but they are still good pans and are a bit less expensive. You can find those here: 8″ round Wilton Pans

For more tips on baking cakes, you’ll also want to check out this post: 12 Must Have Tools to Start Baking Amazing Cakes

I wish I’d known that the oven rack position really matters.

Most cakes need to be baked in the middle of the oven. You definitely don’t want to bake them too high or too low, or you’ll have all kinds of issues.

Now, some cake recipes will tell you that you need to bake them on a certain rack. Just go by what the recipe says, but if it doesn’t state specifically, then it’s good to bake your cakes in the middle of the oven.

Air can circulate the best in the middle and you’ll get more even heat there.

I wish I’d known how to measure ingredients properly.

Oh my good gracious I was terrible at measuring ingredients. How important could it be, right?

Well I know I don’t have to tell you how important it is to measure baking ingredients properly. I mean cooking is okay to sort of eye-ball something, but not baking.

Baking is ALL about ratios and if you measure something wrong, the whole thing could collapse…literally.

So, it’s not just mis-measuring that’s a factor, but it’s how you measure. There are liquid measuring cups and dry measuring cups and they’re used differently.

One big example is measuring out flour. A lot of people just take a measuring cup and dip it into the flour bag to measure it. That’s a big no-no, because that’s packing the flour into the cup.

You’ll actually be adding more flour to your batter than you really need and that could cause a dense or dry cake.

I’ve got an entire post all about measuring. There’s also a video on how to properly measure liquid and dry ingredients. You can find that here: Measuring Ingredients for Baking Cakes

I wish I’d known that substituting, adding, or eliminating ingredients can cause a lot of problems.

Making substitutions and changing out ingredients or adding and taking out ingredients here and there is a bad idea.

I used to make ALL of those mistakes myself and then wonder why things didn’t turn out well. The thing is, we think something won’t make that much of a difference, but it actually does.

Take sugar for example: If you lower the amount of sugar that the recipe calls for, you could sacrifice moisture, since sugar not only makes a cake sweet, but it adds to the moistness of the cake.

Another example is subbing baking soda for baking powder, or vice versa. Those aren’t the same thing and using them interchangeably can cause some major issues. I’ve got a post here that goes into detail: What’s the Difference Between Baking Soda and Baking Powder?

There are a few substitutions that will work just fine, but you want to be super careful about it. If you want even more details about what you can sub out and a printable cheat sheet, you’ll want to check out this post: Cake Baking Substitutions & Cheat Sheet

I wish I’d known that just adding more liquid, won’t necessarily make the cake more moist.

Adding in more liquid to make a cake more moist just isn’t a good idea.

That changes the ratio, and besides, liquid isn’t the only thing that makes a cake moist. Fat (as in oils, eggs, cream etc) helps as well as sugar.

If you add too much liquid, you could get a really weirdly textured cake that can be kind of rubbery, kind of like if you over mix it. Trust me, I’ve done it myself.

I do have a post and video that goes into how to get moist cakes here that you might want to check out if you’re having trouble: How to Get Moist Cakes

I also have another post that goes into detail about dry cakes, why they happen and what you can do about it here: Why Are My Cakes Dry?

I wish I’d known not to microwave the butter.

Oh my goodness, I used to do this ALL the time! I’d always forget to set the butter out. (Let’s get real, I still do.)

Anyway, microwaving the butter just doesn’t heat it evenly. Parts of it melt and parts are still cold and well that just doesn’t mix well with the other ingreients.

So what I’ve found works now is to just cut the butter up and leave out on a plate. It’s usually down to room temperature in about an hour or so.

I wish I’d known that not paying attention to the mixing method could cause problems.

Oh this is a big one…and I was the world’s worst at following directions. I just thought, ‘Why the heck should I do all these steps and use all these bowls”?

It just didn’t make any sense to me…until I read more about baking and then actually started to follow the recipe instructions. I then released how much better my cakes were.

You sometimes just don’t know what you’re missing until you try a different way of doing things and that was me.

It really makes a difference how you mix ingredients. The recipes aren’t just saying all that stuff to give you more work. (That’s what I used to think.)

When ingredients are mixed a certain way, it ensures everything emulsifies properly and that it rises properly.

I go into a lot more detail about mixing methods in this post: Types of Flour and Mixing Methods for Cakes

I also have a post with lots of details about making scratch cakes here: How to Bake a Cake from Scratch

I wish I’d known not to over mix the cake batter.

In my opinion, over mixing the cake batter is the biggest mistake I see.

I’ll just say it right out…Don’t mix that cake batter to death to get all the tiny specks out. Actually that is a HUGE mistake.

It seems counterintuitive to not mix it super, super well until it’s completely smooth, but the gluten will become overdeveloped if you do that and the cake will be very dense and rubbery.

You just want to mix until everything is well combined. Get the large lumps out, but it doesn’t need to be perfectly smooth.

The first time I heard this, I read it somewhere online or in a cookbook, but it was referring to making pancakes. So, the next time I made them, I tried not mixing the batter to death and to my surprise, the pancakes were even fluffier!

Then I realized it was the same concept for any other baked good really. If you think about it, it’s kind of a relief to know you don’t have to work so hard. 😉

I do have a post on how long to mix cake batter and it even has a video that will show you ‘real time’ mixing…not fast forwarded so that you can get a good idea of how long I’m talking about. How to Mix Cake Batter

I wish I’d known not to try so hard to get flat cake layers.

I wish I’d known that cake layers can be baked ahead of time and frozen.