The Sneaky Reason Your Cupcakes Aren't Rising

Making and decorating cupcakes can be a fun activity with delicious results. When they come out of the oven with a dense, sunken center, though, you'll find yourself wondering what could have gone wrong. To help answer that, we reached out to Kierin Baldwin — chef-instructor of Pastry & Baking Arts at the New York City campus of the Institute of Culinary Education, now offering a free series of virtual classes focusing on fundamental pastry and baking techniques. She explained to Daily Meal that one of the biggest mistakes to avoid when baking cupcakes is not incorporating air.

There isn't just one way to ensure that your cupcakes rise in the oven. Baldwin told us, "Pretty much all cupcakes have some form of chemical leavening included in the recipe, meaning baking soda or baking powder, and that does most of the heavy lifting (pun intended!)." A chemical reaction that creates carbon dioxide bubbles happens when you bake baking soda or powder, which is what gives baked goods their fluffy texture. However, she noted that "some cupcakes are made using methods that require incorporating air into the batter."

In a recipe that requires you to cream butter, for instance, Baldwin explained that you need to combine butter with sugar in a mixer, incorporating air until it's fluffy. The high-ratio method (or two-stage mixing method), on the other hand, produces similar results and involves mixing your ingredients in stages while aerating the batter. "When the aerated batter goes into the oven, the tiny air bubbles in the batter expand as they are heated, providing extra lift as it bakes," she continued, "If too little air is incorporated, you will end up with a shorter, denser cupcake."

Aside from not getting enough air in your cupcake batter, chef-instructor Kierin Baldwin told us that other factors can prevent cupcakes from fully rising in the oven. One of these is "using the wrong type of chemical leavener, meaning swapping baking soda for baking powder or vice versa." She clarified, "They are not interchangeable, and if you want to swap them, other ingredients in your recipe would need to be adjusted to account for the change." Since baking soda is potent, for example, you should use three times the amount of baking powder to replace it. If you're replacing baking powder, though, you'll need about one-fourth the amount of baking soda plus an acid to activate it — such as cream of tartar or lemon juice.

Another factor that results in short and dense cupcakes, Baldwin said, is using "either too much or too little chemical leavener." While it makes sense that not adding enough will keep your cupcakes from rising to their full potential, she explained that "strangely if you add too much, they often end up not rising enough once they are baked because they rise too quickly and then collapse, leaving you with cupcakes that have a fallen, dense center."  In fact, using too much is a common baking soda mistake. Similarly, using expired baking powder or soda can lead to sunken cupcakes because these ingredients lose their effectiveness over time. You can mix 1 teaspoon of baking powder in hot water or 1 teaspoon of baking soda in vinegar to see if bubbles appear, which indicates the ingredients are still good to use.