Over-mixing the batter, not measuring flour and other dry ingredients correctly, oven was too cool, the type of recipe. Insufficient leavening ingredients or forgot to add it in, baking powder out of date, oven temp was too low, cake batter wasn't baked immediately. Mixing the batter for too long, too much flour added.
How do you know when cake is bad? Moldy appearance. Dry or crumbly texture. Hard exterior.
A good quality cake will have a soft, velvety texture without weakness, and it should not be crumbly. Cakes with rough, harsh, too compact, lumpy, or too loose textures are not desirable.
1) You forgot to add baking powder, or you used expired baking powder. 2) Your pan is too big, so the mixture can't rise enough to fill it. Or 3) You over whisked.
Texture and taste combined are what brings out the best in cake. Cakes that are sweet and savoury in flavour are best complemented with a smooth and feathery texture to create a celestial, flavoursome experience. The texture of a cake should typically be soft and velvety, and not rough, compact, or crumbly.
Butter is capable of holding air and the creaming process is when butter traps that air. While baking, that trapped air expands and produces a fluffy cake. No properly creamed butter = no air = no fluffiness. Aka a dense cake.
Making a Perfectly Baked Cake
Check the colour – golden brown for lighter cakes, or a shiny matte look for chocolate. The toothpick test – a toothpick or knife should come out clean after inserting into the centre. The internal temperature should be around 98°C/210°F.
How Failure Cake Works. Someone identifies an exception in the system. A person or team accepts responsibility for the exception and takes ownership for the resulting failure. The person (or team) that accepts ownership for the exception buys cake for the team.
A properly baked cake is sublime. It's tender, moist, and has a perfect crumb. An overbaked cake, on the other hand, can be dry and tough. And maybe worse, an underbaked cake is gummy and dense.
Typically, a cake will only stay fresh for up to three or four days before the moisture is drawn out and the texture becomes drier. A cake can last in a fridge for a little bit longer if it has been frosted as the frosting keeps the moisture in the sponge.
Cake Is Heavy or Dense
Possible reasons your cake is heavy/dense: Too little baking powder. Too many eggs. Batter is overmixed.
The reason why a cake gets rubbery is that the overmixing of flour activates the gluten. It makes cakes hard instead of the lovely soft spongy texture we associate with a good cake. And the over mixing is usually caused from incorrectly creaming butter and sugar.
"My golden rule for baking is make it cold and bake it hot," she said.
Soggy bottoms
This normally happens when the oven is not hot enough or the pastry is not baked for long enough. However, it can also be because too much water was added to the dough.
Creaming can be hard work. In 1857 Miss Leslie (an American author of popular cookbooks) described a technique that would allow cooks to beat eggs "for an hour without fatigue" but then advised: "to stir butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making.
When you overmix cake batter, the gluten in the flour can form elastic gluten strands – resulting in a more dense, chewy texture. The white batter looks airier, while the red looks thick and dense. You Can Taste The Difference: The overmixed cupcakes were gummy.
Too Much Liquid or Sugar
Using too much liquid or sugar will overpower your dry ingredients, which help give your cake structure. And, yes, sugar is considered a wet ingredient since it turns into a liquid form when heated.