I made a birthday cake for my daughter a few days ago and none of the layers baked right. I used wilton pans 6" and 10". I made 2 layers of each. I even used a flower nail in the 10" pans and the center of all my cakes took forever to finish baking! Because the middle took so long the tops got over cooked. I thought the flower nail was supposed to help this. I was also suprised the 6" ones did the same thing. I have an oven thermometer and it was cooking at 325. Any ideas on what went wrong?

Why don't you go to the "baking from scratch tutorial" that's going on in this forum?
Read the discussion and if you still can't find the answer to what you are doing wrong, ask it again.

Where do you live? I moved from San Diego to Fort Collins Colorado and I had to make some serious changes in my recipes. So maybe that's the problem?

you could try using the magic line pans or the baking strips to see if that helps. the magic line pans make a tremendous difference in the way my cakes turn out.

I occasionally have this problem. I set my timer for about 2/3 of the baking time and ck the progress. If the top is getting dark too early I tent the cake with foil and ck every 5 min after that. It seems to work well. Also I don't use flower nails, I use the heat core that Wilton sells for about 6.00.

Dave

What recipe (or brand of mix) did you use? How long did you bake? Was the oven pre-heated?
These are just a few things to think about.

I use the bake-even strips on all my cakes, brownies and corn bread.

Was this cake failure a scratch, mix or doctored mix recipe?
(And how matter batter did you put in each pan.)

If doctored mix, the substitution of liquid coffee creamer for the liquid specificed can cause the middle to be gummy (and fall after cooling) as will the addition of instant pudding mix (unless the recipe calls for it).

Also, if using 3" deep pans, a sugar/fat heavy recipe can result in cake like you described.

If this is a recipe you have made successfully before perhaps a change in altitude is the cause.

Here are some high altititude scratch recipes:

http://tinyurl.com/33pmvy

Several cake troubleshooting charts:

http://tinyurl.com/2p5bdu
http://tinyurl.com/3dmp96

Overbeating the batter can result in a cake with a rubbery (gummy) texture:

http://www.ochef.com/625.htm

7 Professional Secrets to Baking a Great Cake:

http://tinyurl.com/2fxvuv

HTH

JanH you are the king of links! And they always help

Thanks everyone for the help! I used 2" wilton pans and did use the bake even strips. This was a scratch recipe. The oven was preheated to 325. I live in TX so altitude is no issue. It worked out fine when I baked this recipe using different pans. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I overbeat it. Thanks again for all the suggestions and help.

How many pans did you have in the oven at the same time?

By the way, thanks Jan for all the links. Very good info there.

I had two 6" pans in the oven at once. Another time one 10".

Huh. I was wondering if maybe your oven was over-crowded (like two 6" and two 10" at once) but it doesn't sound like it!