What am I doing wrong? I wanted to make a two-layer birthday cake so I mixed up the batter, transferred it to two cake pans and put them in the oven to bake at 350 degrees. The recipe said to bake the layers for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle of the layer came out clean. Luckily I checked after 20 minutes. The layers were done. In fact, they were overdone. Why did this happen?—Gloria K.
If a cake cooks much faster than it should, it’s likely
that the oven is too hot. Some people might say the quicker the better, but too
high temperatures are not good for cake-baking.
Get an oven thermometer, put it in the oven and heat the
oven to 350 degrees. Then check the thermometer
to see how hot the oven actually is. I
bet it’s registering 375 or 400 degrees.
In order to bake at 350 degrees you will have to set the oven at 300 or
325 degrees. Experiment to see which of
these two temperatures reads as 350 degrees on the oven thermometer.
On the other hand, if the cake sinks slightly and takes
more than 30 minutes to bake, the oven is not hot enough. In this situation in order to bake at 350
degrees, you will have to set the oven to 375 or 400 degrees. Experiment to see which of these temperatures
reads as 350 degrees on the oven thermometer.
Going forward you will need to set your oven according to
what the thermometer says, rather than what the oven says.
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