I am Petra Cox with Moms Apple Pie Bakery in Occoquan, Virginia. Today, we making a chocolate cake and to make a good chocolate cake, you need to have your cake pans properly prepared and I am going to show how I do that.

I am making a chocolate cake recipe that makes two 9-inch layers or I have to make it in 6-inch size, because thats what we make here. I am using 6-inch springform pans. They are pans with removable bottoms and its really a just piece of cake to remove the cake from the pan, when you using a springform pan. They are available at Kitchen supply store, especially cake stores, cake supply stores and you could also order online they are pretty easy to find. So, what we need to do this is, we have parchment paper. You can also use wax paper. But this make it so the cake doesnt stick to bottom because thats a hardest part. And basically I just have little lump of butter and I am just going to rub the butter on to the parchment paper. What I did to get the parchment circle was I traced the outline of the cake bottom, the cake pan bottom on parchment and I just cut it out with scissors. If you are using a larger pan, this is 9-inch pan, you can just trace around the edge on parchment paper or wax paper and cut slightly inside the line so that it fits nicely and snugly in bottom of the pan.

So, if you dont want your hands to get all greasy, its easiest just to have, I have just a little piece of parchment paper. You can use also just a paper towel and hold the butter in that way. Now, I have two pieces of cake rounds there and I am also going to grease the sides of the pan. You can be generous, its not really advisable to have huge hunks of butter on the side of the pan, but its ok if you have a nice thick layer of butter. It just makes that much easier to get a cake out after it has been baked. So, its really a quick job and this is how you would do it with the regular 9-inch pan, rather in a springform pan. So, for a 9-inch pan you would just put your piece of parchment down on the bottom there, you grease parchment. For springform pans, you need to put the bottom inside the pan. There is soluble that will lip around edge and then you tighten it. And the bottom sits in there snugly. You just put your little parchment sheet on the bottom. So, that way when you loosen the sides of the pan after the cake has been cooled, all you have to do is, take the bottom out and release cake and just peel the sheet off the bottom. It makes for a really easy release there.

Another optional step is, you can just take a little bit of flour, doesnt really matter what kind. We are using the cake flour in the recipe, so thats why I am using here. Just sprinkle it on the bottom and shake it around and between butter and flour the cake can come out really easily.

So, thats just like a thin dusting rather then big clumps of flour along the edge and thats make a cake that comes out really easily. So, that is how to properly prepare a cake pan for baking cake.