A lovely woman recently bought Kiss My Bundt cookbook, and asked a baking question.
Lovely Customer: Hope all is well. I had a question regarding the lime basil cake. When I make this it seems to get a little dried out too fast. Any suggestions on making this a little more moist?
After I thanked her for buying the book and being a fellow Bundt Lover, I shared that all of the recipes that were in the Kiss My Bundt Cookbook were tested at least 3 times, some up to 5 times. Recipes were tested by acclaimed chefs, baking experts, and inexperienced home bakers. The reason I mention this is just to say that our recipes yield great cakes.
If you bake one of our recipes and it comes out questionably, it’s likely the result of equipment, oven temperature, or technique.
We’ll get to the bottom of this!
The Lime Basil Cake from the Kiss My Bundt Cookbook is a butter-based cake. That being said, the following advice can be used for any of the butter-based cakes that you may make that come out a little dry.
(1) Since the recipes in the book measure by volume rather than weight, make sure to measure the flour using the "Scoop and Level" technique I refer to in the book.
(2) Sift all dry ingredients after you've measured them.
(3) Stop after the Dry-Wet Alternation. When mixing the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture, be sure to stop mixing at the point you no longer see any more flour. Mixing beyond the point that the flour is dissolved is "overmixing" which will make the cake dry.
(4) Be sure not to over bake the cake. Check the cake 5 minutes earlier than you did the last time. As soon as a toothpick/skewer/knife inserted in a cake comes out clean (e.g. no wet batter on it), the cake is done.
(5) Once the cake is baked, try covering it with a frosting or a glaze. This helps keep the cake protected from dry air.
(7) Keep the cake covered with a lid or saran wrap after it’s all done, and especially after it’s been cut into. Please know that butter cakes dry out really fast.
(8) Don’t refrigerate a butter cake as it will get really dry. Imagine a stick of room temperature butter. It’s soft, really moist. Now imagine a stick of butter fresh from the fridge. It’s hard. A butter cake that is room temperature is soft, but once it’s in the fridge, the butter will get hard (as butter does).
Good luck,
Chrysta
Chef-Owner-Author-Instructor
Kiss My Bundt Bakery
Comments