How do you avoid the “mountainous bulge” in the middle of a cake when baking? How do you achieve a cake with a flat evenly baked top?
Kitchen Witch,
How do you know when you are beginning to “over-mix” the batter? Should ALL cake recipes be mixed just enough to incorporate the ingredients, and no further? Or, do some recipes benefit from continued mixing?
Above advice is all true, but sometimes it ends up with a mountainous middle anyway and if you are frosting “fancy” then you definitely want a flat-top cake. I discovered something from cake decorating class - bake-even strips (I got mine brand-new on ebay for cheap).
Bake even strips are special cloth, and you get them wet and pin them around the outside of the pan, and they keep the outside edges from baking too fast so the cake bakes evenly and perfectly, rising up nicely but wonderfully flat all across the top. I swear by them now!