Play By the Rules

If you're working off a recipe, follow it, plain and simple. Baking a cake isn't just a matter of mixing the ingredients in a bowl and throwing them in the oven -- it's chemistry, and the chemical reactions that take place can directly lead to a moist or a dry cake. If your butter is too soft, for example, it can't hold onto the pockets of air that should form inside when you whip it, and you need those pockets of air to expand in the oven to make your cake light and fluffy. If you overbeat your flour, the increased formation of gluten can make your cake tough. Your recipe got the way it is for a reason, so do exactly what it says, in the order that it says.

Switch Up Your Ingredients

When the recipe isn't working, it's time to improvise. If your recipe doesn't already tell you to add your ingredients by alternating wet and dry, do it. Combining your ingredients in this pattern facilitates emulsion -- when ingredients break down and mix -- and keeps the texture consistent from start to finish. Adding too many wet or dry ingredients together at the same time makes your batter soupy or lumpy, which means you have to mix it more vigorously to emulsify it. That vigorous beating makes your cake tough, instead of soft and moist.

Dairy It Up

Dairy is critical to most cake recipes, whether you're adding milk, sour cream, cream cheese or buttermilk. To prevent a cake from drying out in the oven, though, add a little extra dairy. Experiment with adding an extra dash of dairy to your cake batter when you mix it to see if it makes a difference. Buttermilk and sour cream, for example, are loaded with acid, which softens the gluten in your flour, binding the cake and preventing it from being too crumby.

Bake to Perfection

You can't bake a cake without the heat of the oven, but that heat can just as easily dry out and ruin what you've worked on. When your cake is almost finished according to the recipe's instructions, pull it out of the oven to test it. The middle should feel soft and springy, and if you stick a toothpick into it, the toothpick should come out dry and clean. These are your signs that the cake is finished -- if you're still not convinced, take your cake's temperature. Stick an instant-read thermometer into the middle of your cake, and if it's 210 degrees Fahrenheit, it's done.