Reasons Why Your Cake Sinks And How To Frost It

A perfectly baked cake is not expected to sunk except in cakes such as chocolate brownies where it doesn't matter if the mixture has sunk A BIT when it comes out of the oven since this makes the cake more gooey.

Reasons Why Your Cake Sinks

1.Oven Temperature And Undercooked Cake

    Cakes can be Undercooked since cake got cooked at the edges first then to the inside of the cake. A cake may appear burnt at the edges and not well cooked inside.

   The uncooked cake batter will be to dense to hold the air pocket and hence the cake sinks.

   Incorrect oven temperature, too much heat and placing the oven rack too high or too low inside the oven can results to inadequate heat supply to the cake from the top and or below. Cooking for slightly longer time at a lower temperature can help to give a more uniform result and prevent the cake from falling(sinking) which occurred when the cake is not well cooked inside.

  Always confirm your cake is well cooked by inserting a skewer into the deepest part of the cake, if the skewer comes out clean with no streaks of batter, the cake is perfectly cooked but if there's a noticeable streaks of batter indicating an undercooked cake, reduce the heat supply to your oven by at least 20°C and bake for few more minutes.

2. Wrong Measurement

   Insufficient ingredients prior to baking can alter the success and failure of the resulting cake. Not enough ingredients gives the cake a resulting insufficient structure.

3. Too Much Leavening/Raising Agent

   Despite the fact that cake need raising agent to rise, excess if this same raising agent is detrimental to the resulting cake.

   Adding too much baking powder or baking soda to cake batter will make the cake rise very rapidly at the start and a sudden fall on cooling because the cake structure can't hold the air created by the raising agent.

   It should be noted that the average ratio of baking powder to flour is 1-1½ tsp to 1 cup of all purpose flour.

   Do not add additional leaveners to self raising flour and cake mixes since they already have it premixed.

4. Over Mixing Your Cake Batter

   Incorporating too much air into your cake batter while mixing gives the cake much more air than it can hold. 

   A 5-10minutes mixing time is more than enough for cake batter especially when the dry and wet ingredients are combined as this will not only make the cake liable to falling but also make the cake dense and hard.

TIPS FOR FROSTING A SUNKEN CAKE

• If the cake sinks a little, you can fill the hole with whatever flavour that goes with the cake e.g. buttercream, sweets, fruits,etc.

• If you're covering your with fondant, slice your cake into layers and fill with buttercream, cover your cake and nobody knows anything is wrong.

• If the hole created at the middle of the cake is larger, remove the batter using a cooking cutout that's bigger that the hole to create a ring cake or a spoon to remove the sunken part, fill the hole with any edibles that looks and taste nice then Frost the sides as desired

Go creative and turn it into surprise inside cake for your guests or client. Some cake designs are results of mistakes.

   Just in case you have Frost a sunken cake in a different way other from the above, please do share using the comment box below.