Baking Tips - Cakes & Cupcakes

In my desire to become a better baker, I've been searching out tips for cakes and cupcakes.  Here are some of the things I found:

• Ingredients should all be measured properly.  Use a glass measuring cup on a level surface for wet ingredients, and use a flat-topped measuring nesting type of measuring cup for dry ingredients, using the flat edge of a knife to level it before you add it to the recipe.
• Sifting flour and sugar can help prevent lumps in your batter.
• Bring cold ingredients (such as butter or eggs) to room temperature before mixing, leaving them out for about an hour before you need to use them.  Butter will incorporate into a batter or dough easier if it's softened, and the whites of warm eggs can actually take on more volume than cold eggs.  Plus, cold eggs could potentially cause the softened butter in dough to become clumpy during the mixing process.  To bring eggs and butter to room temperature quickly, you can put eggs in a container of warm water for about 10 minutes.  Cutting up the butter into small pieces will speed the softening process, especially if you put it on a plate over the container with the eggs.  The warmth from the water will help things move along faster.
• Add ingredients a little at a time, mixing in between each addition.  If you are adding both wet ingredients and dry ingredients, begin and end with the dry, alternating with wet.  You'll achieve a better consistency that way.
• If you're making cupcakes, add batter evenly to all of your cups, filling them 1/2 to 1/3 full, depending upon how much rise you typically get out of that type of batter.  To make sure, you can bake a test cupcake and either add more or less to the remainder of the batch as needed.  A cupcake/cookie scoop or an ice cream scoop can help to achieve even batter in each cup, which will ensure more even baking from one cupcake to the next.
• Most standard-size cupcakes take anywhere from 18 to 25 minutes to bake.  Start checking for doneness at the low end of the suggested baking time.  As a general rule, a toothpick should come out clean when inserted into the center of a cupcake.  You can also press gently on the top of a cupcake.  If it's done, it should bounce back.
• Cool cupcakes for 10 to 15 minutes in the pan, then turn them out onto a baking rack to finish cooling.  Make sure that they are completely cool before they're frosted, or you'll have soft, sometimes even melted frosting as a result.
• You can freeze unfrosted cupcakes for up to 3 months or so.  Thaw them in the refrigerator or out on the counter, then frost them once they're completely thawed.