are you tired of leveling cake layers like this which
let's face it the tops have become bird food now and then and instead want flatter more
evenly baked cake layers like this well stay tuned because in today's video we are going
to be testing five hacks for flat cake layers to see which ones work the best let's do this
now before we get into the hacks a quick lesson on why we get domed cakes in the first place
so when cakes go into the oven the first thing to heat up is the pan
so the batter which is on the edges and the bottom of the pan cook faster than the middle
now once cake batter is cooked it stops rising but because the middle takes longer to cook
than the edges it continues to rise until it's fully cooked resulting in that dome
so what we need to do is we need to find ways to prevent the edges of the pan from heating up
too quickly giving us a more evenly cooked cake which leads us into hack one lowering the baking
temperature so the idea behind this hack is that by lowering the temperature our pan isn't going
to heat up so quickly which is going to result in a more evenly baked cake so most recipes call for
an oven temperature of about 180 degrees celsius so all you want to do is lower that temperature
to about 150 degrees celsius which means the cooking time will also take a little bit longer so
maybe about an extra 15 minutes or so depending on the recipe that you're using so all you need
to do for this hack is prep your cake tin as you normally would i'm just greasing mine with some
homemade pan release because i'm too lazy to line my baking tins and then i'm pouring the batter in
now to keep the test fair i used the same cake batter for each hack as well as the same amount
of cake batter per tin so i weighed each cake tin to make sure they were the same i also baked each
cake layer in the middle rack of the oven and i also specifically chose a cake recipe which gives
me a decent sized dome on the top so that we can test the effects of the hacks a little bit better
now here is a side by side comparison using this hack as opposed to baking this cake as normal so
there's two noticeable differences between our two cakes the first being that the one that we baked
at the lower temperature definitely has less of a dome on the top and it also seems to have baked
more evenly so if you look at the sides and the top it's much lighter in color which indicates
to us that you know portions of the cake were less likely to over bake compared to the middle
giving this hack a tick hack two using baking strips so these are store-bought baking strips and
what you do is soak them in cold water for about a minute squeeze out the excess water and then wrap
it around the outside of the cake tin and then you just adjust it so that it fits tightly around the
tin so the idea around these baking strips is that they keep the sides of the pan cooler so
that the edges don't bake too quickly so here is a side by side comparison using the baking strips
versus not using the baking strips so again we seem to have two key differences here so the one
we used the baking strip it has much less of a dome on the top and it seems to have baked more evenly
across the entire cake as well so the exterior is a little bit lighter compared to the one where we
didn't use the baking strips so this one deserves a tick as well hack three homemade cake strips
so to make a homemade cake strip what you do is grab an old tea towel you want to soak that in
cold water and then squeeze out some of the excess water and then wrap it in tin foil so that it's
completely covered then you want to use a safety pin to secure it around the edges of the cake tin
now looking at our side by side comparison again you can see that there's much less of a doming
on the cake that we used the baking strips on and it's got a much nicer color to the exterior of
the cake so you know you can tell that it hasn't kind of overcooked on the edges like this cake has
where we didn't use the cake strips and that is another tick hack four using a flower nail
so the idea with this hack is that the flower nail will heat up and help cook the middle of the cake
faster so that the entire cake bakes more evenly now the side-by-side comparison of this hack is a
little bit of an interesting one so this is the one where i used the flower nail and this is the
one where i didn't now first of all if you look at the doming there's still a decent sized dome
on this cake here where i used the flower nail although i will say that the doming is you know
i think slightly smaller which is i guess a good thing but in terms of the exterior of the cake and
how it looks it pretty much looks exactly the same to me so some people swear by this nail hack i'm
not quite sure why it didn't work out for me perhaps my flower nail was maybe too small maybe it wasn't
thick enough that you know it didn't maybe absorb as much heat that you know it should but yeah
basically this hack was a bit of a fail for me hack five using a water bath so for this last
hack what you're going to do is fill your cake pan as normal and then place it into a tray which is
filled with some cold water about a third of the way up the sides of your cake tin and then bake
as normal so the idea here is that the water will prevent the outside of the pan from heating up
too quickly resulting in a more evenly baked cake so looking at our side by side comparison of the
water bath cake versus the no water bath cake i think this one has the most drastic differences
so firstly if we look at the doming the cake that was baked in the water bath
definitely has much less of a dome compared to the one that we just baked as normal now if you look
at the exterior of the water bath cake it's also much lighter in color and you know it looks like
it's a lot more evenly baked just visually looks a lot more appealing the edges are also a lot
softer too compared to i think any of the hacks that we used today so yeah that's a
nice little bonus as well so this hack gets the tick of approval and now it's time to do a full
comparison to see which hack works the best now in terms of doming our water bath comes in number one
and our homemade cake strips come in a close second now the store-bought cake strips and
the lower temperature also worked pretty well so i would recommend those methods as well now in terms
of the kind of crusting on the edges of the cake and you know what aesthetically looks the best
i would say that the water bath again comes in as a clear winner it's got a beautiful kind of
you know golden edge to it but again you know the two cake strip methods and the lower temperature
also have beautiful outsides to them as well now if we take a more kind of practical look at
these methods let's say you're someone who owns a thriving cake business and you bake loads and
loads of cakes a day and you know maybe using the water bath method for every single cake layer is
just maybe not the best most practical method then i would recommend using the lower temperature hack
as the most kind of practical and easiest method to use but you know if you're someone who's more
of a hobby baker and you want that perfect cake layer then maybe the water bath would be a nice
method to use as well so that is it i hope you guys enjoyed this video and learned a little bit
of the science behind you know flat cake layers if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs
up below and don't forget to subscribe but apart from that i will see you guys in the next video