Usually, yellow cake recipes involve creaming room-temperature butter and sugar into a mixture. After the mixture becomes airy and lighter in color in a few minutes, the remaining ingredients follow, ending with dry ingredients like flour. However, improper mixing can lead to a dry cake, while not creaming the ingredients enough will give a dense cake.

To avoid those results, try Rose Levy Beranbaum's "reverse creaming" technique, which involves mixing all the dry ingredients in a stand mixer, including sugar; adding diced pieces of room temperature butter and beating until the mixture resembles sand. The wet ingredients are thrown in last, minimizing the time they interact with the flour.

The butter acts like a force field coating the flour, preventing a gluten build-up and therefore a tough cake. The outcome is a tender, moist bake that's virtually impossible to mess up. Berenbaum’s technique went mainstream and now, it’s the go-to way to bake a yellow cake.