My cake fell.

[no_hypocrisy]

Why?

[PADemD]

1. Did you open the oven door and let it slam shut?

Box mix or scratch cake?

Did you forget an ingredient?

Were your baking soda or baking powder expired?

[Nac Mac Feegle]

2. What kind of cake?

A cake is essentially a foam. When a foam deflates, it means that it has lost the structure that it was supposed to keep it inflated. If the structure wasn't 'set', it may be that the matrix hadn't dried enough to keep it open. Did you have a failure in the oven temperature? There might not have been enough heat into the batter enough to drive out enough moisture to let the batter chemically cook in the foamed state.

Check your oven temperature. Ovens often have a large difference between the actual temp and what is on the dial. Check the cake with a toothpick or cake tester before taking it out of the oven. Don't open the oven any more than is absolutely necessary, the heat has to be replaced somehow, that means longer cooking time.


Just a few wild guesses

[kentauros]

3. There are any number of reasons for that, as asked already.

Also, what kind of cake was it? The mixing process could be at fault, especially if the type of cake required more incorporation of air, such as for a genoise.

If you can post an image of it, let us see it

[pinto]

4. No clue, but it's happened to me. I turned it out, upside down, skillet and made a pancake thingy.

Weird, but it's worked.

[Warpy]

5. Funniest one I can remember is one my mother baked in the early 1950s

when the Air Force was allowing sonic booms everywhere at all times because exceeding the sound barrier was their new toy.

I got a birthday cookie that year and her language peeled some of the wallpaper off the kitchen walls.

I've seen it happen with thunder and with a kid dribbling a basketball through the kitchen. Most often, it happens because someone just had to take a peek at it and dropped the oven temperature at a critical moment.

As someone pointed out, the batter is a sponge with small air bubbles trapped by eggs and gluten. It's fragile and subject to shocks of all types. Leaving the door closed so the sponge can dry out thoroughly, rendering it stable, is how you bake a cake as long as nobody is jumping up and down or otherwise shaking the air out of it.

The only other thing I know is using too little flour at high altitude. It didn't make much difference at 500 feet but makes a huge one at 6000 feet.

[SheilaT]

6. No, no, no, about the too little flour at high altitude.

I can't quite figure out why so many who probably DO know more about baking than I do, get this one wrong.

When making cakes, cookies, or brownies at high altitude these are the rules: leave the sugar alone. Cut leavening in half. Add a trifle more liquid, such as a larger egg size than you normally use, and a smidgeon more of shortening/butter/oil. And REDUCE the flour by about one tablespoon per cup.

Here's the problem about adding flour at higher altitudes. It's already very dry here. Flour is a dry ingredient. You'll get a drier product which will go stale faster if you add more flour. I think that's why the bread I buy at Sprouts or Albertson's goes stale almost immediately. They're following the conventional advice and adding more flour. Don't do that.

You will probably also have to fiddle with baking times, as things take slightly longer to cook at higher altitude. For instance, if making any pasta dish, do NOT just follow the time advice for the cooking, but check the pasta carefully to make sure it's cooked as far as you want. Al dente is one thing, but undercooked is another.

I live in Santa Fe, 7,000 feet, and I tell you I could bring about world peace with my chocolate chip cookies.

[Warpy]

7. I live south of you and ditto

I sifted my flour beforehand and that made the difference. I used to make an apple cake that brought people to tears of joy, I kid you not.

I did add extra flour to it.

[SheilaT]

8. I never sift flour.

I once had a discussion with a man who liked to bake who was totally horrified that I didn't ever sift. Don't need to. My things all come out quite good without sifting.

Whenever I bake a cake or cookies or brownies and share them with people, it is embarrassingly obvious that most of them have never had any of those things baked from scratch. I've given up on most bakeries, since they're also using mixes. And again, my complaint here is that they're doing something wrong (which I still think is the adding of extra flour) and so their things go stale too fast.

[Nac Mac Feegle]

9. Warning - Science moment - Warning

The reason recipes need to be adjusted for altitude is that the air density is less than at sea level. Lower air pressure means lower boiling point for water: it evaporates out of the mixture more quickly.

The leavening agents also are more effective due to the lower pressure, too.

The result of these is that the baked good end up drier. To compensate for this, there has to be a rise in the wet ingredients and/or decrease in dr ingredients, along with a decrease in the leavening agent.

Oils/fats can help keep moisture in the baked goods a little longer.


Pure water boils at 212 degrees F only at sea level at a 'normal' barometric pressure. As the pressure decreases, the boiling point lowers, meaning that the water can be evaporated out of a batter or dough before enough heat has gotten in to cause the chemical reactions that do the cooking.

This is one of the reasons that in professional baking they are not referred to as recipes, but as formulas.

[SheilaT]

10. Thank you. You have expressed succinctly the actual science behind

the changes that need to be made.

I actually know all those things, but most people don't.

What I honestly don't get is why the conventional wisdom about high altitude baking is to increase the flour.

Oh, and for what it's worth, when I use my bread machine, the ONLY change I make is to decrease the yeast. And the bread comes out perfect. The first time I used my bread machine at altitude, I was a bit nervous, because I've also been known to make bread completely by hand, which means I get a good feel for what's going on when I'm kneading the dough. But the machine does it right with just the one change.

[Luminous Animal]

11. How does your machine compare to by hand?

My wrists are starting to crap out and hand baking bread can aggravate them so I am thinking about getting a machine.

[SheilaT]

12. I like the machine a lot, although

I haven't gotten around to using it in a year or so. It seems much easier to make a wide variety of breads using the machine. A lot of by hand recipes are for two or more loaves, which is not practical for someone who lives alone as I do.

So if the hand kneading is becoming a problem, research some machines and buy one. Or maybe even start a thread here and get feedback from others.

[Luminous Animal]

13. Thank you. I might do that when I get home from dinner.

[no_hypocrisy]

14. Itwas a fresh homemade pineapple upside down cake

baked in a circular 9-inch pan. Golden cake.

350 degrees 42 minutes.

I took it out of the oven at 42 minutes and put it on the rack and let it cool.

I inverted the pain and the center fell.

No, I didn't open the door before it finished baking.

No, I didn't heavily stomp on the floor while it was baking.

[SheilaT]

15. Had you ever made this cake before?

Was it entirely from scratch or did you use a packaged cake mix?

It seems to me the main reason a cake falls -- and others here who know more or better can correct me on this -- is that there's something off about the leavening. I'm thinking that if too much leavening is used a cake will over-rise, then fall when taken out of the oven. Or perhaps the cooking time wasn't actually long enough, and so the cake hadn't actually set properly. Was it very moist to the point of being undercooked in the middle?

[no_hypocrisy]

16. That's why it's vexing.

I thought I did everything right.

From scratch, no mix.

Toothpick in center came out dry/clean.

Tested the baking powder and it fizzed.

I thought if I left it in the oven any longer, the cake would be dry.

BTW, the cake was moist and delicious. It just fell.

[SheilaT]

17. When you made it before, did you also bake for 42 minutes?

If you did everything exactly the same, my guess is that for some reason the baking gods decided to poop on you this time. They do that, you know.

[no_hypocrisy]

18. OK, I'll buy the Cake Karma Theory.

Flat cake happens.

Yes I baked it 42 minutes without opening the door or stomping on the floor.

[Nac Mac Feegle]

19. Did you by any chance use fresh pineapple?

Last edited Fri Jan 23, 2015, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)

You used this phrase "Fresh Pineapple Upside Down Cake."

Fresh pineapple has been known to do weird things to proteins. You cannot use fresh pineapple in Jello, because it chemically makes it unable to set up, for example.

Canned pineapple is Pasteurized (heated up while canning) for food safety reasons. That is what lets it be used in Jello type dishes, otherwise they wouldn't set up.

If you used fresh, it may have messed up the chemistry of the cake.

Just a wild guess from a possibly misunderstood phrase, that's all.

[blackcrow]

20. if it was completely baked through (see: toothpick)

I am having a hard time understanding how it could fall. Was it a very light textured cake and the pineapple part was heavy?