Borrow An Ingredient From Your Bar Cart For Moister Cakes

No matter the occasion, you can't go wrong with cake. From wedding cakes to birthday cakes (a tradition that began with the ancient Romans), the frosted and fluffy dessert is fit for all sorts of special celebrations. However, baking one from scratch is a bit complicated. Achieving a soft, moist texture can be tricky for even the most experienced bakers. As it turns out, a lot can go wrong when making a cake. Accidentally over-mixing the batter can result in a dense crumb structure while baking it for too long can dry it out. Even a dark pan can mess up your carefully calculated math, causing cake batter to heat too quickly or unevenly. Fortunately, there's a special technique you can use to add moisture to cakes after they come out of the oven, taking your dessert from dry to delectable.

From mayonnaise to buttermilk, there are lots of different hacks and ingredient swaps for improving boxed cake mix and scratch-made batters alike. But the simplest secret to moister cakes can be found in your bar cart. Often used to sweeten cocktails, simple syrup can serve as a baker's saving grace when dealing with a dry crumb. In the context of cake-making, bakers can brush the liquid onto each layer to achieve a perfectly moist texture.

While many ingredients can be used for both bartending and baking, simple syrup won't add a boozy twist to your desserts. Plus, it shouldn't impact a cake's flavor or sweetness — unless you want it to.

Whether you're a fan of the fizzy French 75 cocktail or are on the hunt for a corn syrup swap, simple syrup is a staple ingredient for many sweet drinks (boozy or non-alcoholic) and desserts alike. You probably won't ever add it directly to a batter, but the slightly viscous liquid sweetener can come in handy for locking moisture into a cake once the baking's all said and done.

Just as you might apply a coating of egg wash onto pastry, use a pastry brush to gently spread simple syrup onto the top and sides of each cake layer to manually add moisture. Be mindful to start with a little at a time, though; you want the liquid to seep into the crumb, but not to the point that the cake becomes sopping wet. This go-to approach for tweaking a cake's texture could save you from messing it up before it bakes, as most recommendations for enhancing moisture involve mixing new ingredients into the batter. While a spoonful or two of extra fat might not seem like much, adjusting a recipe when baking can often lead things to go awry.

Don't have any simple syrup at home? Don't worry, it's easy to make — no trip to the store required. The concoction calls for bringing a 1-to-1 mixture of granulated sugar and water to boil on the stovetop until the crystals melt, then letting the syrup cool.

Part of the beauty of moistening your cake layers with simple syrup is that the liquid sweetener is an excellent vehicle for flavor. While it doesn't ordinarily taste like anything besides sugar, if you make simple syrup at home, you can infuse it with fruits, herbs, spices, or extracts. This presents the opportunity to get more creative with your cakes.

Baking a chocolate cake that you want to come out irresistibly moist? Follow in Ina Garten's footsteps and enhance the richness and depth of the chocolate with coffee by adding some of the freshly brewed beverage to a saucepan of simple syrup. Assembling a beautiful multi-layered blood orange cake? Double down on the fruit's flavor by infusing the liquid sweetener with citrus peel. Even simple white cake can be made to taste more like vanilla by stirring some of the extract into the sweetener as it simmers.

Note that infused simple syrup doesn't necessarily stay fresh for as long as the standard sweetener. While the store-bought stuff may last longest, both it and homemade versions should be stored in the fridge in airtight containers once used. A basic simple syrup is usually good for about a month, while flavored ones should be used within a couple of weeks. Worst case, if you don't have plans to bake more cakes, you can always bring infused simple syrup back to the bar cart, so to speak, and spice up standard cocktails.