Baking Tip - Overmixing and Scraping Down
This month’s tip is a two-in-one. The tips are related so I thought I might as well do them at the same time. I’ll start with the slightly more important one – overmixing.
What happens when you overmix?
It messes with the texture of your cake. It just results in a gummy, heavy cake instead of a nice, fluffy crumb. It can actually end up looking underbaked or raw on the inside. If your cake has a glossy, almost jelly-like look on the inside, you have over mixed it.
How to prevent it?
Don’t overmix duh. Ok jokes aside, you will be fine to mix to your heart’s content until you add eggs to your batter. Most cake recipes start with creaming your butter and sugar. At this point, there is nothing to worry about. Once you start adding your eggs, only mix until just combined. This applies once you start adding wet and dry ingredients – just mix until you can’t see the individual ingredients anymore.
That brings me to the second tip – scraping down. Scraping down the sides of your bowl as you go helps with combining the ingredients well without mixing longer (obviously then resulting in the gummy cake.) Use a rubber spatula to scrape down any ingredients left on the side of the bowl, so that it can be incorporated into the batter. Do this regularly throughout the mixing process.
That’s it. They’re not the most mind-blowing tips but they do make all the difference.