HELP scratch bakers!! Dede Wilson cake was ALL WRONG!!

Is it possible you are just over cooking it? If its the same recipe it should come out the same. I would just check it sooner and/or do a test run.

Bigger cakes continue cooking after you take them out of the oven - because it takes them longer to cool off. That might be part of your problem there. I would recommend taking it out of the oven sooner than you would for a smaller cake and let it cool. When you test it with a toothpick you want some crumbs to come off with it. (obviously not globs just crumbs)


Thats what works for me! Good luck!

[quote="DebbyJG"]Yeah, I tested it at the time I would have expected it to be done, but it came back still wet and gloopy in the middle. So I let it cook for 4 minutes more before testing it again. This time it came back with just a few crumbs. Nothing seemed amiss... Maybe I let it sit too long in the pan before turning it out? I wonder how much it continues to cook in the pan... my pan directions said to let cool in the pan for 12 minutes, which is what I did.[/quote]

That is strange - maybe turn your oven off when its still gloppy? And let it sit - or turn your oven down a little bit when you are cooking it and keep a thermometer handy there to keep an eye on the temperature. You might have to experiment to get it right, bigger cakes are trickier.

I just read on another website forum where the person called Dede's recipe a pound cake like recipe. Can you post the ingredients and the amounts? I have made up an excel spreadsheet where I can figure out the proportions to the flour and the total percentage in the cake.

Me personally, I would start trying other recipes in other books. I don't have Dede's book here to look at the recipe. I can get it from my local library though. As far as other yellow cakes, I wouldn't try Cake Love, they are also pound cake like cakes. Maybe you might try The Cake Bible because she also has a chart in the back that helps you when you make cakes of various sizes. I haven't personally tried to make other yellow cakes. But there are a ton of them out there that are all yellow cakes but have different amounts of ingredients and different ways of mixing the cake to make it moister. I would recommend a trip to your local library and start there. I have a list of yellow butter cakes I want to try. It's just that we are a little caked out here, so I'm taking a baking break for a couple of weeks.

Good luck. I would love to hear what you decided to do.




My scratch cakes are just as moist as a mix. I have to tell people when I make a mix or scratch as they can never tell the difference. The last batch of vanilla cupcakes I made - from The Cake Bible - went over so well that people were eating 2 to 3 instead of one. So I'm not quite getting what you mean by the overly dry for scratch. In fact my MIL, when she used to make cakes, made them from a mix. They were so dry that I always made sure to bring a half gallon of ice cream to serve with it as a "surprise" for everybody. Actually it was so I get through eating the very dry cake.

The first thing I notice, is that that recipe has WAY too much baking powder in it. You only need 1 tsp per cup of flour. That's also a LOT of eggs.

I suggest you develop your own recipe to your own liking.

Start with the basic 1-2-3-4 cake and adjust from there:

1-2-3-4 cake
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups sifted cake flour (this means sift the flour, then measure!)
4 large eggs, room temp
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp almond
1 cup milk

http://www.prestoflour.com/Portals/TheArtOfBaking/portal.aspx?tabid=14&rid=507

When a recipe says sifted flour, you sift, then measure? I've wondered about this the last few times I've used sifted flour.

If you're not ready to give up on this recipe, I would just suggest that you start torting. Torting is just one more way that you can make absolutley sure that your cake is the texture you desire, all the way through. If you're still finding them dry, then you can start adjusting from there. I also add sour cream to my scratch cakes, but I add about 1/4 cup per batch, after the milk.

Hi Debbie,
Oooh, I can't afford the Agbay either! I just use my Wilton large leveler and it's okay. I don't bother to return the torted levels to their original location, since I can just use the filling to make sure it's level. I have occasionally caught a cake a bit on the dryer side (sidetracked with the kiddos and overcooked ), but I added some simple syrup or fruit juice and "fixed" it!

I add 1/4 cup of sour cream to one batch, which is about half the recipe you posted, as mine include 2 cups flour. I don't add it to the milk to make up the amount of milk I need. I add it separately after, along with the rest of the wet ingredients. It works in pretty much any recipe I do use, including bananna or carrot or chocolate - it just adds some moisture and density.. Hope this helps!!

1. I agree with PTerrell - way too much baking powder. While sometimes leavening is put into a cake to tenderize it, it's not needed in this cake because it has not acidic ingredients in it.

2. Speaking of acidic. You are adding sour cream which is acidic without any baking soda. That may contribute to the dryness. I did a science experiment of sorts this past week where I tweaked baking soda in a cake and I shouldn't have. The cake was dry, dry, dry. You need 1/4 tsp of baking soda for each cup of flour and 1 tsp of baking powder for each cup of flour. The cake I failed was a chocolate cake so it needed lots of baking soda. Your cake could probably use 1/2 tsp of baking soda to start, with another 1 3/4 tsp of baking powder to equal the amount of flour. HOWEVER, you may need to "over leaven" in order tenderize, so I think you could co up to 1 tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp of baking powder. You can try this if you are willing to experiment.

3. The Cake Bible - I cant vouch for all her cakes, only the one I made which was the sour cream cake (I think it's called that). I added milk to it on the second batch. On the first batch it was okay. It felt like we were eating slightly sweetened bread. I loved the crumb, just not enough moisture. And I have found much moister and sweeter cake recipes out there then those. I don't understand sometimes the accolades the cakes get. Someday I'll try again, but not right now.

4. Definitely way more eggs than I see in most recipes - try 4 eggs instead.

5. If I look at this from the Baker's Formula point of view, the sugar is not equal to or more than the flour in weight. Using 4 ounces for cake flour and 7 ounces for sugar, the sugar is far below what is needed. The eggs are close enough in weight to the fat, but I see lots of recipes where this part of the equation is off, so that is okay. Your liquid is way over the weight of the sugar, so that means you should have a nice moist cake. But egg whites are a drying agent too. I would add the vegetable oil sooner than the end, maybe mix it in with the milk. In fact, I would mix the milk, sour cream and oil together as best as I can.

6. With adding the sour cream and oil, you are throwing off the balance of the fat in the recipe, not just adding more liquid. Still it should give you a moist cake. When do you add the eggs and do you weigh them? Getting them from a local farm may mean that you are adding more than the weight suggested for the recipe. Large egg yolks are a good thing too, they add richness to the cake.

7. I have been doing what you have been doing - clinging on to a recipe in hopes that I can "fix" it to get what I want. I finally said scr** it. There are enough recipes out there that I'm just going to keep trying them til I find what I like. There are so many bakeries out there that have published recipes that I'm just going through and trying them til I get the moist cake I want. One of the most interesting books is Baking Illustrated put out by the people at Cooks Illustrated. They make a ton of cakes before they give you the one recipe that works. There is a yellow cake in the book that you might want to try. I got a copy from my local library before I bought my own. They go into great detail on each recipe and what the results were of the failed recipes too. If anything it is interesting to read their experience without having to go through it yourself.

Good luck and keep me posted on what you find. I find this part of baking from scratch extremely fascinating.