Baking is a joyful, therapeutic pastime that encourages imagination and creativity. Our favorite cakes are light, fluffy, and bouncy when we bake them perfectly. But occasionally, despite our best efforts, we end up with a dry cake, which is disappointing due to its lack of moisture and brittle texture.
Here are four suggestions for reviving a dry cake.
1. Drizzle a glaze made of simple syrup over the cake.
With a simple syrup glaze, you can still preserve your cake if it turns out to be too dry. Boiling equal volumes of sugar and water until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has decreased and thickened is the first step in making simple syrup.
If you’re constructing a layer cake, cut the tops before applying the syrup using a pastry brush to the cake’s surface. As an alternative, you may just spoon the syrup over the cake. If you’re making a sheet cake, you may also use a wooden stick or a toothpick to make holes in the top and then brush the cake with frosting.
2. Soak the cake in cream or milk.
It may seem intimidating to soak your cake in milk, but trust me, I’ve done it before when my sponge cake turned out to be too dry. One of the easiest ways to moisten a dry cake is to soak it in milk or cream. The top of your dry cake can simply be covered with a few tablespoons of milk or cream, or for a truly decadent result, try a recipe for one-bowl tresleches poke cake, which is cooked and soaked in a mixture of whole milk, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk.
3. Include icing.
This is especially important if you weren’t planning to frost your cake in the first place or if you’re baking a type of cake that doesn’t usually have frosting, like a tea cake. Your dry cake will taste better overall if you add icing to it. Between the layers of cake, as well as on top of the cake and all around the sides, you can cover it with whipped cream, cream cheese icing, or regular buttercream. By doing this, the moisture in the cake is sealed in and is prevented from evaporating.
4. Add mousse or jam to the cake’s interior.
Use the jam you have in the refrigerator to fill a cake. Jam is a great way to revitalize a cake that has been frozen or has simply been lying in the refrigerator for a few days because it adds flavor and moisture to any cake. Because mousse is heavy in fat, it’s also an excellent alternative to use when filling cakes to prevent them from drying out.
