I know through out the years when watching my mom bake a cake I always asked her, Mom how do you know when the cake is done? She would always pull out the little trusty toothpick and stick it in the middle of the cake and tell me when the tooth pick is clean that means the cake is finished baking. Well moms are always right, right. So that is how I baked my cakes over the years while my 2 sons were growing up. There were times that my cakes were drier than the clothes I had on my back. I always blamed it on that old oven I had, because you know I was doing it the way mom always did.
Over the past year while making up different cake recipes for my cake decorating business I became very conscience of my cakes being dry, and this was something I had to get to the bottom of. I would just get myself all worked up trying to get my cakes moist and I would try different things. One day I had to leave to take my son to band practice and I had a cake in the oven, It seemed as though it was taking forever in a day to bake, I checked it with a toothpick and there were still some cake crumbs on it but I said to myself oh well I will just have to deal with it I have to go and I don’t have them time to leave it in the oven any longer. Lo and behold this cake was one of the most moist cakes I had ever baked. After much thought, I began thinking maybe I had been over cooking the cakes this entire time by waiting for the toothpick to come out clean when checking the cake. So I now take all my cakes out of the oven just when there are a few cake crumbs still showing on the trusty toothpick and let me tell you it seems to work perfect each time. The cakes never come out dry anymore. I let the cake cool in the pan on the stove after I take it out of the oven for approx. 20 mins and then put it on a cooling rack to finish cooling before I begin to ice the cake. I get compliments about how moist my cake are now and its a great feeling, there is nothing worse than a dry cake. So the next time you bake a cake try taking it out of the oven when your toothpick is still showing a few cake crunbs and see how it turns out.
Happy Baking!
Donna
The Sugar Lane 
Hi.yhank you so much for this tip.baked two cakes in the last week both as dry as old harry………..many thanks for posting i will try it and give feedback
This would be helpful 😀 I always wondered if the toothpick is suppose to comes out totally clean or a few crumbs would be acceptable =P it looks like I over-baked the last black forest cake! Oh and thank you for posting this ^^
Thank you! Several of my cakes have been dry lately. I will try that!
Thanks for the tip, I was just mulling over the dry cake I made last night, next time I’ll try this.
thank you i would like to now more & more about cake decoration & do you do courses in london thank you very mush