Baking your cakes.

At this point you should already know the sizes of your pans and how much batter it takes to fill them from my previous blogs. You should also know how to prepare your cake pans before adding your batter. Pour in the amounts of batter from the chart into the pans (as I said earlier, if it doesn't give you the height you are looking for make a note of it on the recipe). When batter is in the pans, tap the pan on a flat surface to disspell any air bubbles. These are a bad thing. Place in center of the oven. I personally do not bake on more then one rack, I have never had good luck with this. The heat doesn't distribute well and one usually ends up not baked enough or over-baked. If I am baking a cake larger then 8-9", I most generally will reduce the heat to 325 degrees and bake a few minutes longer. This helps keep them from drying out. To check for doneness there are a couple of things you can do. I will usually check with my fingers first by lightly touching the top. If the cake feels spongy, I go ahead and check with a wooden skewer or toothpick. If you place the skewer in the center of the cake and it comes out clean, your cake is done. If it comes out wet or with wet crumbs, it isn't done yet. Once the cake tests done, remove from the oven to a cooling rack. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes. If the cake is a smaller cake, you can just turn it out onto a cardboard cake board and then reflip onto a wire rack. If it is a larger cake you may want to turn it out directly onto a heavier wire rack or a wooden cake board. I try not to let my cakes rest on the tops, because if there is a dome the cakes don't set level and will sometimes crack because of this. Once the cakes are completely cool, you can either wrap in plastic and aluminum foil and store in the freezer until you need to use them or wrap them in plastic and let them "settle" for a least a few hours to allow air pockets to settle before icing. If you don't, you could get bulging around the middle of your cake, or if you are using fondant air bubbles under your fondant. When thawing your cakes, just leave them wrapped to thaw at room temperature until completely thawed. I would also let them "settle" also for a while. Generally, I allow mine to thaw at least overnight before decorating.