Why doesnt my cake rise enough

A flat cake? No thanks. A cake should be light, fluffy, and sky-high. If you want your cake to rise to new heights, follow some basic steps such as adding leavening, using the right oven temperature and bake time, and always cream the butter and sugar.

Howdy! My name is Michelle, and I have been baking cakes since the dawn of time. No, really. I’m pretty sure I was baking in the womb. Regardless, I know plenty of tips and tricks for sky-high cake success, and I’m here to share my inside scoop with you.

Ending up with a flat cake is one of the biggest fears for a baker. It’s just downright wrong. But the good news is, there are plenty of ways to make a cake rise higher – and that’s what this article is all about. It’s so easy; you will wonder why you haven’t been doing it since the start!

Who’s ready to bake some impressively high cakes?

If you’re tired of struggling with a sub-par, flat cake, then you need to know the right tips for high-rising success. The good news is, making sure your cake rises higher than high is pretty simple. Just follow these tricks below for ultimate cake rising.

Follow the Recipe

First things first, I have to say this: always follow the recipe in its entirety. Whichever cake recipe you’re making, it is important to follow each step and use the right ingredient and amount of said ingredient. 

Even the subtlest changes can equate to a flattened disaster, so follow the recipe closely. 

Add a Leavening Agent

Almost every cake recipe is going to call for baking soda, baking powder, or self-rising flour. And that’s great because cakes require one of these leavening agents to rise. However, don’t think you have to stop there. 

While you should 100% follow the recipe for adding leavening agents to the batter, did you know that eggs can act as leaveners too? The best way to enjoy the leavening agents of eggs is to beat the egg whites separately, then fold them into the yolks. 

You can up the level of fluffiness by beating the egg whites with sugar before folding.

Cream the Butter and Sugar

Plenty of cake recipes also ask you to cream the butter and sugar together. Basically, this just means that room temperature butter and sugar should be beaten until small bubbles are formed, creating the aeration needed to create a light texture.

You can use a wooden spoon or an electric mixer fixed with the flat beater attachment to cream the butter and sugar. 

The goal here is to cream to the right consistency, though. Overcreaming can lead to popped bubbles, which means a denser cake in the end. You can tell your butter and sugar is properly creamed if the following occurs:

• Smooth texture
• Lighter appearance

Fold Ingredients Together – Don’t Mix

When your cake recipe tells you to “fold” the ingredients together, they aren’t just trying to sound fancy. Folding the cake ingredients to form the batter is a delicate process. If done incorrectly and/or too rough, you may end up doing the following:

• Releasing essential air for a light and fluffy texture
• Activate gluten in the flour, creating a tough cake

Your goal is to handle the ingredients with care. Don’t mix, and don’t beat. Take your time to meddle the ingredients together slowly. Fold them, so they are properly blended, but don’t overdo it. 

Fill the Cake Pan Properly

Leavening and creaming are two incredibly important things to remember when baking a cake that rises sky-high. But you shouldn’t stop there. When you’re finished mixing your ingredients, it’s time to start baking. How do you avoid potential problems in the oven?

The first step is to make sure that you pour in the right amount of batter. It should reach at least the halfway mark of your pan, although ⅔ of the pan is ideal. If you don’t have enough batter, your cake simply will not have a chance to rise high and become light and fluffy.

What happens if you don’t have enough cake batter to fill half the pan? The answer is easy: make more cake batter. Yes, it might be a hassle, but it will be well worth it in the end when your cake beautifully rises.

Avoid the Batter Setting Too Quickly

If you notice that the edges of your batter are setting quicker than the rest of your cake, this can lead to a huge problem, such as a flat cake. How can you fix it – and fast? Well, you have two easy options:

• Reduce the oven temperature by around 20 degrees
• Increase the baking time by a few minutes

Yes, these are super simple solutions to a potentially big problem. But if you don’t catch it before it’s too late, you’re going to have a flat cake. So, that is why it is important to keep an eye on your cake!

Check the Oven Temperature

Plenty of bakers know that, well, ovens can be liars. In fact, plenty of ovens tend to run on the “hot” side. Why is this a problem? Because you might be baking your cake at the wrong temperature, even though you think it’s correct. This can lead to a flat cake.

What’s the best way to avoid this? Buying an oven thermometer is the only way. You can check the temperature of your oven and adjust as necessary. This will ensure that you are actually following the recommended bake temp the recipe called for, ending with a risen cake.

FAQs

Simple things you do before and during the cake baking process can lead to perfectly risen cakes every time. If you still have some questions and thoughts about making a cake rise higher, check out these interesting, commonly asked questions below.

What ingredient makes a cake rise?

It’s all about those leavening agents! That’s why cake recipes call for baking soda, baking powder, or self-rising flour. However, you can enhance the leavening by beating the egg whites with sugar and folding them back into the egg yolks.

What causes a cake not to rise?

A cake may not rise for many reasons, but the most common is adding too much or not enough leavening agents or using old and expired leaveners. Sometimes, it’s simply a problem of not baking the cake long enough!

How do you make a sponge cake rise more?

Being careful with your sponge cake is the best way to make sure it rises properly. For example, you want to cream the ingredients but slowly add the eggs in. Then, mixing all ingredients should be a delicate process to avoid losing those precious air bubbles.

Final Words

Nobody wants their cake to end up flat as a pancake. Luckily, simple changes like adding a leavening agent, creaming the butter and sugar, and filling the pan properly can make a world of difference. Always make sure you’re extra careful and follow the instructions to a tee.

Have you ever dealt with a flat cake? How did you fix it for next time? Comment below, bakers!

Have you ever found yourself on your knees screaming to the baking gods: “Why won’t my cake rise??!!” after an afternoon of measuring, mixing and nervous peeks through the oven door?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

The thing is, and I know you’ve heard this before, baking is a science. It doesn’t have to be the dull science of your school days, but it does serve you to know a teensy bit about what’s going on when you make a cake. It’ll stop you from having a full on existential melt-down as you ponder why you can’t even bake a simple cake. I promise.

Basically, the thing that makes a cake rise is bubbles, and lots of tiny little ones. You get the bubbles in there with a chemical raising agent like baking powder or by whisking up egg whites. Most recipes will use a chemical raising agent because it’s a lot more predictable and a lot less hard work than whisking for 3 years.

So what do you think happens if anything affects the little bubbles that are on a mission to lift up the other ingredients? That’s right, sinking cake syndrome.

 Sunken Cake Syndrome, Source: Party Animal Online

Unfortunately, there are quite a few factors that affect these bubbles, so you do need to take care when baking, in a way you just don’t need to with most conventional recipes. The good news is that if you think you’re hopeless at baking, you’re most definitely NOT, you just need to know what’s going wrong...

Sinking cake syndrome troubleshooting

OVEN TEMP

I’d be willing to wager a fair few quid that most baking disasters stem from oven temperature or a rubbish heating element. The correct heat will raise your cake batter up in the first two thirds of baking, before ‘setting’ and become stable enough to take out of the oven. The problem is, almost all home ovens aren’t very accurate and their temp can be out by a catastrophic number of degrees. Do yourself a huge favour and buy an oven thermometer (less than £10) and adjust the oven dials accordingly until they match the temperature in the recipe.

Oven Thermometer, Source: Zyliss

CAKE TINS

OK, if you’re having trouble with your cakes rising, you probably don’t have a whole cupboard of differently sized cake tins, I get it. So if the recipe says use a 20cm round cake tin and you only have a 26cm rectangle tin it’ll do won’t it? WRONG! The volume of cake batter in a tin has a huge impact on how it rises. Spread it too thinly and it’ll overcook in the time and turn out more like a biscuit. Pile it into a tiny tin and the batter will struggle under its own weight, causing a dense and soggy cake. If you don’t have the right size of cake tin stated in the recipe, either buy the right one (for a few quid it’ll be worth the investment) or think about doubling or halving the quantities to suit your tin. Although that is an option for the more confident/adept at calculating volume!

Overmixed Cake Batter, Source: King Art

BAKING POWDER

I’ve talked about the tiny little bubble heroes that raise the cake batter up and the majority of them come from baking powder or bicarbonate of soda. This powdery stuff should be sifted in with your flour to ensure it gets mixed through evenly. If it isn’t? You’ll get little volcanic pockets of super charged bubble power and an uneven cake rise. This stuff also loses effectiveness over time, so if you’re using that tub at the back of your cupboard from 1999, it’s time to buy a new one. One more thing: think of this as cake fairy dust and only use as much as the recipe states. Too much will cause your cake to over-rise and sink back down on itself while in the oven.

Sunken Cake, Source: Veronica Tang

MIXING

One of the most important things to take care with when making your cake batter is how you go about mixing it. When you’re dealing with things like butter and sugar, they actually like a bit of a beating, it softens them up. But flour needs a little bit of gentle encouragement or it tenses up. Once you’ve added the flour to your mix, you need to gently fold or mix it in and then stop as soon as it looks combined. If you keep mixing, it develops the gluten bonds in the flour which is great for a chewy loaf of bread, but terrible for a fluffy cake and the little bubbles trying to pull the stringy flour up. Undermixing is also a bad thing, as lumps of flour will affect how evenly the whole thing rises. So basically, you’ve got to get it juuuust right.

Lumpy Cake Batter Source: Flickr

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

If you think you can set the timer on your oven to whatever your recipe says and walk away, you are doomed to never make a good cake! Dramatic, I know, but each cake and oven is slightly different so you’ve got to take it on a cake by cake basis. Even I have to sometimes give the cakes a bit less or longer in the ovens we’ve been using for years. As a guide, check on the cake 5 minutes before the recipe states (looking through the door, not opening it). If you can smell delicious cake and it looks nice and golden, you can use a toothpick or end of a knife inserted in the middle to see if it’s ready. If it comes out with batter on the end, it needs another 5-10 minutes. If you take it out too early, the centre won’t have set and you’ll get sinking cake syndrome.

Toothpick Cake Test, Source: The Hungry

INGREDIENTS

This one is a bit of a general baking rule, but it is also particularly relevant to cake rise issues. Make sure your ingredients are all at the same temperature, or more specifically, room temperature. This will help them to combine easily with each other, but if they’re too cold then ingredients like butter will stay in chunks and ruin your rise. Sifting flour is all in the name of even distribution throughout the mix and in my experience has little to do with ‘adding air into the mixture’ and more to do with slaying lumps. Finally, always bake with the best ingredients you can find. This means nice fresh eggs, proper butter with plenty of fat in it and finely milled flour. It won’t save your cake if you’ve overlooked the other areas, but it will give you better flavour and better rise.

If you’ve just binned yet another flat cake- don’t get in a pickle- we can make and deliver birthday cakes, wedding cakes and ‘just because’ cakes so you can enjoy the best bit without the stress!