Cake Decorating - Three Ways to Get a Level Cake

Sandy Sheppard: Hi I am Sandy Sheppard master cake decorator, and I am here today to show you three different tips. They will probably cut this in three different videos. But the first tip on how to fill up your cake pan, so that you end up with a nice level cake. Let me show you a real nice level cake.

This cake is nice and level, and thats the way we want our cakes to look, so that when we put them together they have a very professional look to them. First tip is to make sure to fill up your pans properly. I have some cake batter here, a nice chocolate cake that I have mixed up. You want to fill up your pans, approximately half full. Now, this will depend upon your recipe. Some recipes require you to fill them up full, because they dont rise as well that I know that this cake recipe fills up two eight inch pans, and so if I fill up both pans equally, then it will be very nice. See how handy that spatula is, it cleans every little bit out of that pan. Just spread that around real nice and easy in my pan, and there we go. As you can see both pans are approximately half full and they are nice and leveled.

Okay. My next little step for helping your pans to -- your cakes to bake nice and flat like this one has. Now thats the bottom of the pan, but thats the top of the cake and it is very nice and flat. I have three tips for that, one is making sure your cake pan is filled properly. The second one is to wrap it with a toweling strip. This is just from an old bath towel that I have cut in strips that fit the depth of the pan. I have taken this over to my sink and gotten it nice and wet and squeezed out the excess water, so that its wet.

Now I take this towel strip, put it around my pan, just wrap it nice and gently and where did my little t-pin go. Then I bough this t-shape pin, I dont know how well you can see that there, but this little t-pin and its called that, because it looked like a letter T, you could buy at any fabric department store, any department store that has fabrics and such. Then I take this and I am just going to pin right through the layers of the toweling to hold it together, and now its ready to be baked.

Now, if the cake comes out of the oven and its not nice and leveled, there is one more trick that I have to show you. Take it out of your oven, and as soon as it comes out of the oven, now this one is pretty leveled, but as soon as it comes out of the oven take a nice dry towel, a terrycloth towel so its fairly thick, I have it folded in half, I lay it across the hot cake and gently press it, and flatten the top of the cake, and thats three tips for helping you to come out with a nice level finished cake.