Q&A for How to Fix Cake Disasters

This can be tricky to work out but some of the reasons might be: 1. The oven door was opened too soon during baking; 2. The cake batter was not thick enough and failed to hold the fruit in place; 3. The fruit was not covered in flour before adding it (where the recipe called for this); 4. If using glazed fruit, the syrup wasn't washed off. Check also that the right type of fruit was used as called for by the recipe (fresh, dried, glazed, etc.) and that the amounts were accurate.

Curdling can occur when the ingredients are a mixture of room temperature ingredients with ingredients that are either too hot or too cold; next time ensure all ingredients are at room temperature. Or, you may have added the egg too quickly and failed to beat it sufficiently into the other ingredients; this can be avoided next time by adding a tablespoon of flour with the egg (take the tablespoon from the overall amount of flour for the recipe) and beating the egg in more slowly.

A cake that is too moist is often under baked, so you could try to continue the baking process until it is baked. Other reasons behind an overly moist cake include failing to completely cool it before storing or frosting the cake or storing it in too warm a place. Try putting the cake in a dry, cool place to let the moisture come out in a day. If it doesn't improve, add the cake to a dessert dish.

This is probably due to the cake either being under cooked and therefore still very fragile or it still being warm when adding the frosting. Another possibility is pressing too hard when adding the frosting. The frosting itself could be the cause -- if too thick or difficult to spread, this can cause the cake to break up through pressure to put it on.

It is likely to burn on the top and/or bottom if you overcook it. This can be scraped or sliced off, but the cake will be slightly tainted by the burnt flavour. It may also be drier than expected.

It is possible that you transferred it to the fridge before allowing it to cool down completely. If it is still warm, then it is not fully firmed up and the clash of temperatures will weaken its structure when placed in the fridge, causing it to sink.

You can add a little bit more flour to it, but you may have extra cake batter.

Make syrup made up of 50 percent water and 50 percent sugar melted and put all over the cake after taking it out so it stays moist. You can also use maple syrup but it has a distinctive flavor.

Use icing to stick the crumbled parts together, wait until the icing hardens, then continue decorating the cake. You can also make mini cakes out of the larger pieces instead. Lastly, you can crumble the cake up completely, mix it with frosting, and make cake pops .

Think back to how you made the cake. If a fat and sugar were over-creamed or you added too much raising agent, these can cause a cake to sink in the middle. Another cause can be cooking at too cool a temperature or checking by opening the door too early during cooking.

Push the two halves together, then cover the whole cake with royal icing. Nobody will notice and when it's cut, the crumbling at the join can just be scooped onto plates and excused as part of the cutting process.

The cake needs time to rest so once you take it out of the pan it wouldn't crumble or break. You could try putting it in the fridge for a couple minutes and then take it out of the pan.

Follow the recipe to the letter! Baking is science, so if you want the perfect cake, you must use the proper ingredients and the proper measurements perfectly. Otherwise, the cake will not turn out as it should.

Turn it into trifle or some other dessert base. It needs liquid and soft foods such as cream or fruits to be place onto it, so that it can benefit from the moisture in those items. Trifles were basically invented for such a cake mishap and are therefore ideal but you can experiment with other dessert fixes too.

Yes, I have done it before and my cake turned out fine

Yes, it can because they will not get as much heat as they would when one is by itself.

You may have added too much butter. The butter makes the cake very moist, but if it's too much, that will make the cake fall apart because it becomes too soft.

You may be over-mixing your batter. If you mix your batter too much, air bubbles can get trapped in the batter causing holes to form in the cake.

If your cake appears cooked on the outside, but in reality is raw/undercooked in the middle, there's not much you could do with it besides bake another one. Baking it longer could burn the top layer, and removing the cooked layer so that you can put the raw one back in the oven won't work either because you'll lose the original shape of your cake.

Make sure the oil is completely incorporated into the batter before baking, and make sure everything is at room temperature. Also, flour your pans heavily instead of using butter or cooking spray - this reduces the oil content. If all else fails, replace the oil in the recipe with applesauce or mashed bananas (much healthier too, and does not alter the texture, and if you add extra flavoring like almond or vanilla, you'll barely taste it).

You probably frosted it while the cake was still warm, so the frosting melted. Put the cake in the freezer until the frosting is solid but not dry, then move it to the refrigerator so it can stay cool.

Soaking it in a fruity wine works beautifully. If you don't drink, soak it in raspberry or cranberry juice.

Okay, so first, bake them at the regular temperature - lowering it will actually make them sink even more. When you add the berries, lightly coat them in flour and fold them gently into the batter, don't beat or quickly mix them in.

What could have possibly caused it is too much activator (vinegar, baking soda, baking powder, etc.). It may have caused the cake to rise too much until it split.

Absolutely! Mix all the wet ingredients together and add them to the dry SLOWLY. Depending on how you bake personally, this might even be better. When sugar and eggs sit together for too long, the eggs can actually start to naturally cook and be ruined.

Make a parfait type dessert with layers of fruit or other garnishes like crumbled cookies.

You can always put on another layer of frosting later, once the cake has cooled. You can also decorate it with fruit to make it look better. When you eat it, you won't be able to tell that it was frosted too early.

If it's a large hole, you can try to stick the cake back on and cement it with some frosting. If the hole is small, you can just cover it up with frosting and discard the fallen cake.

Write large reminder notes on Post-Its and stick them on the recipe page. Alternatively, perhaps you are subconsciously choosing to leave sugar out. In which case, if you're happy with the end flavor, let it be. If you want to use a sugar substitute, then do so and you will probably remember because you're not so ambivalent about it as you are for sugar.

Add a lot of frosting, and cut extra layers to add more frosting. If all else fails, crumble the cake and put it over ice cream.