You might be surprised that the most common culprit of a dry cake is too much flour, which happens more often than you think. While baking for too long in the oven can also contribute to a dry, crumbly cake, an imbalance of flour and liquid in the cake—whether it’s oil or butter, milk or buttermilk, and eggs—drastically impacts the outcome.

How You’re Packing Flour Without Realizing It

Using the same utensil to both scoop and measure your flour unintentionally creates pressure that packs and condenses flour into the tight corners of the vessel. To get around this, most professional bakers will weigh their flour on a scale—but this isn’t always practical for home bakers. If you’ve only got measuring cups on hand, it’s important to break out another scoop—or spoon—to distribute flour into the measuring cup, rather than shovel flour with the measuring cup itself from bag to bowl.

How To Measure Flour Correctly

If you have a kitchen scale, we’ve outlined the finer points of using one in this comprehensive guide for weighing flour. But if you’re keeping things simple and economical, here’s a guide to spooning, leveling, and getting the show on the road with what you’ve got:

• Gather supplies: Gather your flour, a handled scoop or a simple tablespoon from the cutlery drawer, and your measuring cup. Open the bag of flour wide so there’s lots of room to access the flour inside with the scoop or spoon.
• Scoop flour: Dip your spoon or handled scoop into the bag of flour and pick up as much flour as it will carry. Position your measuring cup over a bin, a work surface you don’t mind getting messy, or the bag of flour itself—excess flour will inevitably fall away using this method.
• Loosely fill measuring cup: Transfer scoops of flour delicately into the measuring cup, being careful not to pack down the flour and let it cascade in a mound over the cup.
• Level: Use the handle of the spoon or a knife to “level” the flour. With

What Does Too Much Flour Do?

Flour in batter soaks up moisture when it does its job—but too much flour absorbs too much moisture, which interferes with the way the same liquids incorporate into the crumb as the cake bakes.

The batter might not be noticeably thicker, but when baked, the cake will be dry, crumbly, and dense or even hard. A “cracked” cake is often the result of too much flour in the batter.

How To Fix A Dry Cake

If your cake is too-far gone (or, in other words, already baked and a bit too dry) there’s still hope! Save a dry cake by whipping up a quick, sweet, cake soak. The saturation of flavors and textures is the principle behind Tres Leches cake, and it’s applicable to all sorts of layer cakes and sheet cakes—whether applying the soak immediately after baking or after cooling and trimming.