How to bake a flat topped cake | How to prevent domes in cakes

I have been wanting to share this for long but somehow never got to it! Today I am going to share a very simple tip that will help you bake flat cakes. There are many ways to control the dome and this is the easiest for me. No domes, no cutting off the excess and wasting some bits cakes. I don't know where exactly I got this tip from, long before I started baking, I did a lot of research on baking. Went through tons of websites reading up on various aspects of baking and this is one tip that I have found very useful.

If you don't frost your cakes then this won't be an issue. There is a beauty in domed 'naked' (no frosting) cakes. You know, my family is so used to domed cakes that every time I bake a flat topped cake, they ask me why I can never bake a beautifully domed cake!! After all the effort I put to make the cake flat, I get these comments!! If you do frost cakes regularly then this is a handy tip.

I am so used to this now, that whatever cake I bake, whether it's a simple naked cake for my family or a beautifully frosted cake for a party, I follow this method. These are simple strips made from old turkey towels, you can use any old thick cloth too. 

Why the dome - The cake domes because the outside cooks faster than the inside. Heat from the walls of the cake pan get conducted to the sides of the cake a lot quicker than the center of the cake, the sides cook a lot faster while the middle is not done and bakes a lot slower and domes. These wet strips help is conducting the heat evenly by keeping the sides cool at the beginning of baking.

There are a lot of bake even strips available in the market like these wilton bake even strips but this is the cheapest and easiest method to follow.

I have been baking for long and and as far as I can remember I have never had to cut off the top the cake to get a leveled top (unless I forget to use these strips). You can see for yourself - check out this orange cake or this eggless orange cake or this Christmas fruit cake or this eggless mango marble cake or this.... well you get the picture!

How to make these strips
Wrap the towel around your cake pan and mark the height and length and cut it off. Make a strip for each pan.

What you need

• Old thick towels strips
• Metal safety pins
• A bowl of cold water

Method

1. When you are getting all the ingredients to bake a cake, get a bowl of cold water and soak the strips in the bowl. 

2. After you pour the batter in and tap the pan, squeeze out the excess water from the strips and wrap it around the cake pan and secure it with a safety pin.

3. Bake as usual. You may have to bake for a few more minutes.

Notes

1. Do not use plastic pins. Make sure you use only metal pins to secure the strips. If you use a pin with plastic head, it will melt in the heat.

2. You may have to bake your cake a few extra minutes than what's mentioned in your recipe if you use wet strips.

3. You can make these strips for square tins as well.

4. Make sure the cloth you use has some texture in it, if it's too soft, it will slip off.

5. Make sure the strips are cut to the right circumference of your pan. Let it not overlap too much.
6. Keep the safety pins ready. Otherwise, the oven will be pre heated, the batter ready in the pan and there I am running around the house like a chicken with it's head cut off searching for the suddenly elusive pins!!

Until next time,

Share this post if you found it useful!

Tweet