The 13 most common baking fails and how to avoid them

Many common baking disasters are often the result of one mistake, such as adding too much liquid or having the oven at the incorrect temperature - Andrew Crowley

The annual appearance of the Great British Bake Off always serves as a nail-biting reminder of the joys and perils of home baking. While we’re rarely whipping up our creations under a hot tent’s spotlights or racing against a ticking clock, the technical challenges faced by each cohort of amateur bakers can feel uncomfortably familiar.

Granted, few of our confections are scrutinised by such exacting judges, but the common pitfalls remain the same: that dreaded, disappointingly tough pastry, the despair of a curdled cake mixture and the ultimate cliché of baking blunders – the soggy bottom. Baking requires precision, and even the slightest mistake in timing or technique can lead to disaster. But we’ve compiled the ultimate guide to troubleshooting these problems, ensuring your next session in the kitchen ends with a handshake, not a collapse.

Here’s how to avoid, rescue or remedy a baker’s dozen of disasters.

1. Pastry that’s as tough as old boots

A good pastry should be delicate, with a flaky or slightly crumbly texture that melts in the mouth. Tough pastry is chewy and dense, and heavy handling tends to sit at the heart of the problem. The bestselling author and former Great British Bake Off quarter-finalist Martha Collison explains that “overworking pastry with your hands causes too much gluten to develop.”

This leads to tough pastry that’s also likely to shrink during baking (see below). There’s a simple way round this, Collison says: “I always use a food processor for shortcrust pastry, as the blades do a far more successful job at mixing the ingredients without developing gluten chains.”

Silvana Franco spoke to Martha Collison to troubleshoot the baking blunders that affect many amateur bakers - Andrew Crowley

2. A shrunken pastry case

As well as overworking the pastry, a common culprit here is not chilling it adequately. Chilling the pastry for 30 minutes once it’s made, and then again after you’ve used it to line the tin, will allow the gluten to relax and the fat to firm up, both of which will minimise shrinkage.

Careful handling is also needed to avoid stretching the pastry as you roll it (always roll it directly forwards, turning the pastry rather than the pin) and to ease it gently into the tin. Stretching the pastry puts the gluten strands under tension, and just like a stretched rubber band, they want to snap back to their original size. If your baked case has shrunken beyond use, Collison recommends “bashing it up or blitzing it up to use in a tiffin, for cheesecake bases or in layered desserts served in glasses.”

A shrunken case can be caused by failing to sufficiently chill the pastry - Andrew Crowley

3. A pie (or tart) with a soggy bottom

This is a top complaint among bakers. The base can fail to cook properly for a variety of reasons, including a failure to blind-bake the crust or a filling that contains too much moisture. While the pie or tart might look perfect on the surface, it’s only once it’s lifted from the tin that the undercooked, doughy base is revealed.

Luckily, Collison has an excellent fix, if your oven has a bottom-heat-only setting. “This is very useful for rescuing a soggy bottom caused by underbaked pastry,” she says. “Preheat the oven with a baking tray on the bottom shelf to get it piping hot. Place the tart or pie (in the tin, or remove it if you can) on the hot tray then bake, watching carefully, until the pastry is crisper”.

4. Curdled cake mix

Curdling is what happens when a smooth mixture of butter and sugar breaks apart into a grainy mess after you add eggs. It’s a sign that the fat and liquid haven’t properly emulsified. All the ingredients, including the eggs and butter, should be at room temperature for successful blending and for best results, add the eggs gradually rather than in one go. If your mixture splits, try placing the mixing bowl over a pan of hot water for a few minutes.

This will slightly warm the ingredients, allowing the butter to soften and re-emulsify with the eggs. “A tablespoon of flour added to a curdled cake mix will usually bring things back together,” Collison advises, “but don’t be tempted to chuck in lots of flour or mix it to death. Curdled mixture will often still bake ok,” she continues. “Perhaps not perfectly, but it will still generate an edible result which is better than wasting it!”

A curdled cake mixture might be unsightly, but it can often be salvaged with a spoonful of flour - Andrew Crowley

5. A cake with a sunken middle

A classic baking disappointment that almost always points to one central issue – the cake was removed from the oven before it was fully baked and set. The middle of a cake is the last part to cook; if you take it out too soon, the structure isn’t strong enough to support itself and it collapses as it cools.

A sudden drop in temperature can shock a delicate cake that is still setting. If you open the door in the first two-thirds of the baking time, the cold air rushing in will cause the cake to sink – so resist looking until the last 10 minutes of baking time.

6. A cake with a dark top but undercooked middle

Likely caused by the oven being too hot or the item being too close to the top heating element. Check the accuracy of your oven by investing in a thermometer that can tell you the real temperature inside. Always bake in the centre of the oven and if you can see your cake getting too dark on top towards the end of the cooking time, you can tent it with aluminum foil. Loosely place a piece of foil over the top to shield the surface from the direct heat and allow the inside to continue baking without burning.

7. Fruit sinking to the bottom of cake

This is caused by the fruit being heavier than the batter. As the cake bakes the mix rises but, rather than rising with it, the fruit drops downwards. There are a couple of ways to minimise the chances of this occurring. Collison favours the most popular approach: “Toss the fruit in flour! A tried and tested method that allows the fruit to grip onto the batter and not slip to the bottom.” But it’s also a good idea to pat the fruit dry with kitchen paper before using as any excess moisture will just add to the density. If working with a light cake batter, cut the fruit into small pieces so their weight can be supported.

Dusting fruit lightly in flour before folding into the cake mix can help to prevent sinking - Andrew Crowley

8. The base of the cake sticking to the tin

Even non-stick coated surfaces can sometimes cling on, especially at the bottom and in corners, making turning out a beautiful cake near-impossible. For an easy release, firstly coat the cake tin generously with butter or use a neutral spray oil. Place a disc of baking parchment in the base; make sure it’s slightly smaller than the base and doesn’t go up the sides where the edges can get caught in the cake mix, making it difficult to remove.

After baking, leave the cake to cool for 5 minutes before lifting it from the tin – this allows the structure to firm up, making it easier to handle. After this initial cooling, invert the cake onto a wire rack to finish cooling completely. If you wait too long, the steam trapped in the tin can cause the cake to become soggy and stick.

9. Overflowing or peaking cupcakes and muffins

Overmixing can be a factor here as it can incorporate too much air, which expands rapidly in the oven and causes the bakes to burst. Mix the batter just until the ingredients are combined; a few small lumps are better than a smooth batter that has been overworked. Overfilling is another thing to address – take care not to fill the cupcake/muffin cases by more than two-thirds to avoid an overflow. Using an ice-cream scoop is a good way to ensure the mixture is divided evenly between the moulds.

Most importantly, make sure the oven temperature is not too high as it will cause the outside of the cupcake to set too quickly while the inside is still trying to rise. This forces the center of the cupcake to erupt upwards through the already-set crust, creating a pointy, peaked top that often cracks. If you see this happening, lower the oven temperature by 15C and continue to bake until set.

If the oven is too hot, the outside of your cakes can set too quickly while the middle is still trying to rise, causing cracked peaks to form - Andrew Crowley

10. Spreading biscuits and cookies

Flat cookies and biscuits are likely caused by butter that is too soft or a dough that has too little flour in the mix. This leads to the cookies losing their structure and spreading out during baking. Chill the dough or the formed biscuits for at least 30 minutes before baking so the mixture can firm up (in my experience, chilling the shaped biscuits on the baking sheet usually achieves the perkiest results). Collison has a brilliant save for biscuits that have spread: “try the cookie scoot! Take a large round cookie cutter or glass (one slightly bigger than you’d like the cookies to be), and place around the warm spread biscuits. Keeping the cutter in contact with the surface, move it in a circular motion to round off the edges and then allow the biscuits to cool”.

11. Weeping meringues

While cracked meringues have a certain homespun charm, those with amber beads or syrup seeping from the base are not quite so attractive. There are two reasons why weeping might occur. The first is that the sugar has not fully dissolved in the egg whites before baking. The key here is to whip the meringue until it is thick and glossy, adding the sugar slowly so it has time to dissolve; you should be able to rub a small amount between your finger tips and not feel any grainy sugar crystals.

Secondly, baking at too high a temperature can cause the sugar to heat and caramelise too quickly, forcing the syrup out. The high heat is usually responsible for cracking, too, as it causes the outside of the meringue to set too quickly while the inside is still expanding. Bake low and slow and leave the cooked meringues to cool in the oven with its door open.

12. Dry, crumbly brownies

Not all brownie recipes are created equally and those with higher fat and sugar content and less flour tend to yield the fudgy centres and glossy tops that signal a top-notch example. If your homemade brownies have dry crumbly corners and a cakey texture, Collison says the solution is simple.

“Don’t overbake! It’s far easier to rescue an underbaked brownie with a quick trip to the oven than an overbaked brownie that has become crumbly. Look for the centre to be just set before removing from the oven,” she advises. But a dry result shouldn’t be wasted, either. “Crumbly brownies can be repurposed in ice cream, squished into cake pops or layered into trifles or tiramisu.”

Timing is everything if you want to enjoy the perfect brownie that retains a sticky texture - Andrew Crowley

13. Rock-hard scones

“Hard, tough scones are most often due to overhandling the dough,” says Collison. To avoid this, “as soon as you have a cohesive mixture, pat it gently into a flat patty and then use a floured cutter to cut out your scones. Don’t rescrunch the remaining dough,” she stresses. “Simply push it all into the centre and apply enough pressure to stick it back into a ball before flattening and repeating. The first rolled scones will be better, so save those for people you’d like to impress.”

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