Let’s Chat … 10 Bad Baking Habits You Need to Break

I love having a chat with you so I thought I would post my 10 Bad Baking Habits you Need to Break! I have to admit I have done some of these things myself; from not reading a recipe properly and adding 300ml of cream instead of 100ml to forgetting to line the bottom of my cake tin. It happens. Mistakes are made but please, don’t willingly do any of these and if you do then it is time to break those bad habits.

Not Reading the Recipe

When you are planning to make a recipe always read the recipe as well as the ingredients list. Some recipes require you to pre-make something in advance or to set the recipe overnight in the fridge. If you miss this and only realise when you come to bake the recipe then there is nothing that can be done, and the recipe might not work if you don’t follow the steps exactly. So please always read through the recipe steps when you are planning and before you buy the ingredients.  

Not Preheating the Oven

I have to admit I was so surprised at how many people don’t preheat their oven. To me, this is one of the worst bad baking habits! There are people that just pop their baking in and leave it for an extra five minutes.

There are so many reasons why you should preheat your oven. This includes food hygiene rules and ensuring that your food is only kept at the danger zone for as little a time as possible. If you put your cake into the oven that is preheated the cake temperature will quickly rise so it won’t be in the danger zone for long. If you put your cake in the oven before it has preheated, the oven will still be heating which will take the cake longer to warm through and therefore it will be in the danger zone for longer.

Not preheating your oven might also lead to your cakes baking unevenly or not rising properly.

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Using Old Ingredients

Please throw any ingredients that are past their use-by date in the bin. Especially, flour and baking powders as the older they are the less reactive they become. If you use a baking powder that is past its use-by date then you might find that your cakes don’t rise. This is because baking powder loses its potency the older it is. The same is true for self-raising flour as this is plain flour with baking powder added so it will have the same effect.

Using old ingredients can also give bakes a funny taste. So please, please, please only use fresh ingredients.

Not Letting Cakes Cool Down

Please don’t fall foul of this bad baking habits! Letting your cakes cool completely is so important especially if you are wanting to decorate them with buttercream. Buttercream, of course, is made of predominantly butter which will melt if you put it onto a cake. Hopefully, we have all seen enough Bake Off episodes of buttercream melting off the side of a cake. Or the inevitable cakes collapsing because they were decorated while they were too hot.

I know it is frustrating but please be patient and let your cake cool fully before decorating.

Not Being Patient

This one kind of fits into the point above about being patient. No matter what you are baking you have to be patient, whether it is waiting on the dough to rise, cheesecakes to set or cakes too cool.

Another time you need to be patient is when your cakes are baking. If you open the oven too early, then it can cause your cakes to sink so please be patient. Trust me it will be worth it.

Not Using Scales

So, I live in the UK, and I have always baked using scales, but different countries use different measurement systems. I would recommend if you can to buy yourself a set of scales. You can normally get them quite inexpensively online or in local stores.

Scales are important to ensure you are getting the correct weight of each ingredient. Different ingredients weigh different, for example, a cup of flour weighs around 125g but a cup of sugar is around 200g. This is such a big difference! I always find the best way to make the best cake is ensuring that your flour, sugar, butter, and eggs are the same weight which would be pretty impossible using a cups measurement.

Having the same amount of ingredients is also super important if you are making something like Macarons, these can be super finicky to get right so being as precise as you can.

Not Allowing the Ingredients to Come to Room Temperature

This is one that not a lot of people know about. Before baking take out any ingredients you need from the fridge and let them come to room temperature. If some of your ingredients are warm and others are cold, it can cause your mixture to split or curdle.

If I am baking first thing in the morning, I will bring the ingredients out of the fridge and leave them on the worktop overnight. This way they are the correct temperature for me to bake with straight away. Or if I am planning on baking later on in the afternoon then I will bring the ingredients out at least a couple of hours before I start baking.

Overmixing the Batter

When I first started baking I was always worried that I wasn’t mixing my batter for long enough but the truth is most batters don’t need to be mixed for as long as you think.

For most bakes, I would only normally mix for around a minute or so. Just until the batter has come together and is smooth.

I wouldn’t recommend putting the ingredients into your stand mixer, putting it on and leave it while you get on with other household chores, overmixing your batter can cause so many problems.

Overfilling the Cake Tin

Ahh, this is another that I find is such a bad baking habits! This is another quite common problem. I would recommend only filling your cake tin or cupcake cases half/three-quarters full. You always need to leave room for the cake to rise. If you fill your cupcake cases or cake tins to the top then when they rise there is going to be nothing to hold the batter in.

Filling your cake tins to the top is okay when it comes to no-bake desserts like cheesecakes or fudge because these are just going to pop them into the fridge and they aren’t going to rise or expand any so you know when you come back to get it it is going to look exactly the same as when you left it.

Not Lining your Tins

I was so surprised at how many people don’t line their tins. I normally line mine with parchment paper or you could also line them with a non-stick spray or butter. This way once your cake has baked and cooled it easily comes out of the tin. By not lining your tins you are risking your cakes sticking to the cake tins and ripping and breaking when you try and remove them.

If you do have any questions about these Bad Baking Habits or any other recipes on my blog you can contact me either by sending me a DM on social media or an email. You can find all my details on the right-hand side of this page.