Juniper Lime Drizzle Cake

Warning: while there may be a recipe for a juniper lime drizzle cake included with this post, I can’t recommend that you make it. You see, I created this loaf cake with dried juniper berries for the reddit 52 week baking challenge (Week 31: unusual ingredients). But it has provided me more with lessons about why cakes fall in the oven than with a delicious cake for you to make.

Although I will admit I’ve happily eaten a piece of one of the three cake variations for breakfast for most of the last couple of weeks.

The fourth cake I gave away.

I can’t tell you why I purchased those dried juniper berries. But they were the “unusual ingredient” I immediately reached for.

I had the idea to make a cake with gin and tonic flavors using ground juniper berries and lime.

I mistakenly thought it would be simple. I would take my recipe for blackberry lemon bread, leave out the blackberries, substitute lime for lemon, and add some finely ground juniper berries for flavor.

Nope. My cake fell while it was still in the oven.

I had been baking in a rush and doing too many things at the same time. So I thought I had made a mistake in measuring or something. I had also made the mistake of opening the door of the oven to take a picture of the batter in the pans before it baked.

I immediately made a second cake, reducing a bit of the liquid. But it fell again in the exact same way.

Probably the most common reason for why cakes fall after baking is because they are underbaked. The moist cake/bread/etc can’t sustain the structure and collapses.

But why cakes fall during baking is less clear. Or at least it was less clear to me So I reached out for help. Below were all of the suggested explanations.

Reasons why a cake might fall during baking

Possible reason #1: Opening the door during baking. The rush of room temperature air into the oven could have contributed to why my first loaf collapsed. But not any others.

Possible reason #2: Inadequate chemical leavening. I initially wondered whether the change from lemon juice to lime juice could have varied the acidity enough to result in less reaction with the chemical leavening agents.

It turns out that limes are actually more acidic than lemons, so there was no reason to suspect less chemical reaction. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) reacts with acid to release carbon dioxide: NaHCO₃ + H⁺ → Na⁺ + CO₂ + H₂O

Although baking soda is more potent than baking powder, it can also produce a metallic taste, so one recommendation was for me to increase the baking powder in the recipe.

But first I wanted to check to make sure both were active. To do this, you mix baking powder with boiling water – it should froth up immediately. Mixing baking soda with vinegar should do the same.

Possible reason #3: insufficient mechanical leavening. Someone suggested that perhaps I needed to adequately cream my butter and sugar in the first step, which I already do, or to beating it for longer at the end, which I generally try to avoid so I don’t build up the gluten too much and get holes in my cakes.

Possible reason #4: Change in altitude or barometric pressure.

Possible reason #5: cake pan the wrong size. I thought this was an interesting idea, that maybe I was baking the cake in the wrong pan. So for my third and fourth cakes, I baked in a 9″x5″ (what I had been baking in) and a 8.5″x4.5″ just to see if baking it in a smaller pan would be helpful.

As you can see in the pic below, the smaller pan actually resulted in a larger collapse than the 9″x5″, although the cake in the larger pan still did fall.

FAQs about juniper and this juniper lime drizzle cake

What’s next?

If you have any questions about falling cakes or want to suggest another potential solution for this juniper lime drizzle cake, please leave a comment or send me a message!

Check out other uglyduckling bakery cake recipes like the purple velvet cake, Earl Grey and lavender cake, or, the house favorite, the peanut butter and chocolate layer cake.

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Previous challenges:

Week 1: New Year new recipe – blueberry galette
Week 2: seasonal – Smitten Kitchen’s grapefruit pound cake
Week 3: Great British Bake Off – Kate’s sticky toffee apple caramel cake
Week 4: Australia – sausage rolls
Week 5: bite sized – cookies
Week 6: Chinese New Year – mushroom bao
Week 7: new tool – baguette baker
Week 8: chocolate – chocolate peanut butter bonbons
Week 9: timed bake – under 1 hour! chocolate chip scones
Week 10: allergy/diet restriction – macarons
Week 11: quick breads – kale and cheese quick bread
Week 12: signature bake – purple cow bread
Week 13: enriched breads (kale and cheese babka fail)
Week 14: childhood favorite –fudgy triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting
Week 15: decorating challenge – purple velvet cake
Week 16: crispy crunchy – bacon cheddar popcorn
Week 17: p52 of a favorite cookbook, or your favorite blog – chocolate peanut butter drip cake
Week 18: pâte à choux – bacon cheese puffs
Week 19: veggies turned sweet – red velvet beet waffles
Week 20: plating – chocolate chip cookie (butter challenge)
Week 21: Birthday Party! – chocolate orange cake
Weed 22: Scandinavian – Swedish apple cake (plus a bonus sourdough discard apple cake)
Week 23: Layers – Pecan apple oat bars (post is pending)
Week 24: Tarts – rainbow fruit tart
Week 25: Bagels and donuts – maple donut cake
Week 26: Surprise inside – surprise heart yeast bread (pending)
Week 27: Local favorite – Rainier cherry crisp
Week 28: Seasonal ingredients – blackberry lemon bread
Week 29: Classic French dessert – peanut butter banana clafoutis (a classic with non-classic flavors!)
Week 30: Savory baking – pizza

Next week: gelatin