Why is my cake greasy or oily?

A greasy cake looks heavy, feels oily on the fingers and often has a dense band near the base. It is nearly always a broken emulsion rather than a baking fault.

Step by step

1. Get everything to room temperature.Butter, eggs and any milk. Cold eggs hitting creamed butter chill the fat, which seizes and refuses to hold the liquid. This is the most common single cause.
2. Recognise a split batter.Curdled, grainy, separated-looking. It should be smooth and slightly glossy. Once you can spot it, you can rescue it before it goes in the oven.
3. Rescue it with a spoonful of flour.If it splits while adding eggs, add a tablespoon of the measured flour and beat it in. It absorbs the free liquid and brings the emulsion back.
4. Add eggs slowly.One at a time, beating fully between each. Adding all the egg at once is more liquid than the creamed butter can take up in one go.
5. Cream properly but not endlessly.Butter and sugar until pale and fluffy — usually three to five minutes. Under-creaming gives poor structure; creaming for a very long time in a warm kitchen softens the butter until it will not hold air.
6. Check the fat quantity against the flour.If you scaled a recipe or substituted, the ratio may simply be wrong. More fat than the flour and eggs can carry will bake out regardless of technique.
7. Watch for spread substitutions.Low-fat spreads contain more water and behave differently. Baking with one where the recipe expects butter commonly gives a greasy, heavy result.
8. Do not over-melt in a melted-butter recipe.Butter melted and left hot separates. Let it cool to barely warm before mixing, or it will not emulsify with the eggs.
9. Check the oven temperature.Too cool and the structure sets slowly, letting fat pool and run out before the crumb can hold it. An oven thermometer is worth having — many ovens run well below their dial.
10. Do not over-grease the tin.A thick layer of butter or oil in the tin fries the outside and adds grease that has nowhere to go. A thin film and a lining is enough.
11. Get it in the oven promptly.A batter standing on the counter warms and the emulsion loosens. Have the oven up to temperature before you start mixing.
12. Cool it out of the tin.Left in a hot tin, any fat that has rendered sits against the cake and soaks back in. Turn out onto a rack after the stated few minutes.

Tips

• Room temperature eggs and butter. That one change prevents most split batters.
• A tablespoon of the measured flour brings a curdling batter straight back. Learn to spot it before it goes in the tin.
• Check your oven with a thermometer. A cool oven is a surprisingly common cause of greasy cakes.

Common mistakes

• Adding cold eggs to creamed butter — The cold seizes the fat so it cannot take up the liquid, the emulsion splits, and the fat bakes out as grease.
• Baking with a low-fat spread instead of butter — The extra water content changes the emulsion entirely and commonly produces a heavy, greasy crumb.

If it doesn't work