The Secret To Deliciously Moist, Uncomplicated Lemon Cake

A dry cake seems like the cardinal sin of baking, something that would end up in you getting the stinkeye from Paul Hollywood, the other sins being overmixed or underdone cake. A moist cake is tender, airy, and has a good crumb. You can increase your chances of a moist cake by starting out on the right foot – use cake flour instead of all-purpose flour. According to MasterClass, replacing all-purpose flour with cake flour will give you a moist cake with a tender crumb. You can also add some mayonnaise to your cake mix to bump up the moisture, per Epicurious. Mayonnaise is an emulsion, which will coat the flour particles better than butter alone. And be sure to monitor your oven temperature – if you feel like your oven might be a few degrees off, consider buying an oven thermometer.

If your cake comes out of the oven dry – perhaps your Zoom meeting went long, or the dog needed to go out – you can brush an easy simple syrup between layers or add a filling like jam or mousse to try to add some moisture back. Another way to get moist cake is, to some, a secret ingredient written on those family recipe cards, the ones that get passed down from generation to generation. To some everything-from-scratch purists, it's a cop-out.

It seems like a very 1970s community cookbook vibe, but adding instant pudding to your lemon cake bumps up not only the flavor and moisture but also improves the cake's rise in the oven. Call it nostalgia, call it convenience, whatever it is, it works, and it's a hit in some pretty upscale dining establishments, like Claud, or Magnolia Bakery in New York City. Food writer Esteban Castillo was trying to recreate a key lime Bundt cake sold by Nothing Bundt Cakes bakery but kept coming up short. No amount of lemon or lime zest matched the zing he was familiar with. So he added lemon instant pudding and found that the addition "keeps [the cake] really nice and moist," per The New York Times.

Joshua Pinsky, the chef at Claud, uses instant pudding in his pistachio Bundt cake but hid the boxes from his crew. In this day and age of baking completely from scratch, pure flavors, and limiting chemicals – to admit that the secret ingredient in your creations is instant pudding mix seems shameful. But it's been a staple in recipes created by busy housewives in the 1950s and 1960s, who were entering the workforce but were still responsible for cooking. Adding a box of Jell-O instant chocolate pudding was an easy way to make a delicious, moist cake for the church luncheon. And, adding pudding mix makes for tender, chewy chocolate chip cookies – really.