I posted a similar thread last week because one of my go-to recipes failed me. I am a scratch-only baker, fairly new. Probably made 25 or so scratch cakes, and they're always great. Last week, I made a yellow cake. The batter was super thick going into the pan. When I tried to remove from the pan, it all stuck to the bottom of the pan. When I finally got it out, it all came out in pieces, so it was obviously ruined. It tasted "off" when it was finished. So I tried posting here to troubleshoot and didn't receive an answer that fixed it. So I ventured out. In the last week, I have tried the mermaid bakery yellow cake, Serious_cakes yellow cake, Toba Garrett's, and Sylivia W's yellow cake. They're all giving me the same issue. They're light in color and too thick. They are way too thick to spread nicely in the pan like normal cake batter. I don't understand it. My yellow cakes never gave me problems, and now every recipe is doing the same thing. All of my ingredients are good. I tested my baking powder - good there. I double checked each ingredient, each measurement. I'm so confused! Any helpers???

What are you greasing your pans with?

THere is a recipe on here for a homemade pan grease that works pretty well.

Are you making sure all of your ingredients are room temp before baking??

have you checked your oven temp?

Since you say you double checked your ingredients, It sounds to me like you may be overbeating your batter since it is very thick and light.

Also, how long do you wait before you turn your cakes out of the pans? I usually let them cool in the pan 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack.

You could be over-beating your batter or underbeating the butter/shortening with the sugar. The fat and sugar should be very, very light and almost whippy before you add any other ingredients, not just incorporated and a little bit lighter than before. with Serious_Cake's recipe, the shortening and sugar is a whole new texture when its done beating.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I guess that's why I'm soooooo frustrated - because it seems like I'm doing everything right, but I'm not getting the results! I greased with shortening and parchment paper on bottom - same as all of my cakes. All of my ingredients were at room temperature. I thought maybe it was my oven temperature, so a few days ago I bought an oven thermometor, but my oven is fine. I cool 10 minutes in pan and then on wracks. I creamed the butter (I used butter in stead of shortening, but I always replace butter for shortening in any cake recipe and I've never had a problem AND all of the other yellow recipes I tried call for butter) and sugar for a full 5 minutes. It was VERY light and whipped. I added the dry ingredients/milk alternatively in portions and probably only mixed for about 50 seconds total - until JUST incorporated. Then I mixed a little by hand with a whisk. And it's STILL too thick! See why I'm frustrated!!! Anyone else have anything it could possibly be? It's EVERY recipe I've tried this week.

i dont know how much it will help... but i add a bit of milk to get it to look right.
xx

Thank you! I tried that with one of the cakes. It made it a little more liquid-y (is that a word!?), but didn't help the final product much. Sigh. Very frustrating!

How do you measure your flour? The way I was taught is to shake your flour into the measuring cup and then level it off. I'm thinking you might have been using too much flour?

Here is a video on YouTube of someone who measures her flour exactly as I do

Well that is why the Serious_Cake's recipe didn't work for you. Butter has a much lower melting point than shortening, and also contains water. Replacing a tablespoon or two wouldn't make a huge difference, but because that is the base of the cake it shouldn't have been replaced. I know baking with shortening sounds gross at first, but the end cake is so tasty, light colored, and has an awesome moist, soft but still firm enough to torte and stack texture. For me, this is what every cake should be like.
HTH

And that makes sense, except for the other 5 recipes I tried did actually call for butter, not shortening, and I still had the same issue. I will try the flour measuring method and pray that does it! Thanks for all of the help. I really appreciate it. YOu all know how annoying it is when something is wrong and you just can't figure out why!

Just an idea...maybe try using cake flour instead of AP and see if that helps. I usually prefer to use cake flour as it tends to have lighter, fluffier results and the cake ends up with finer crumbs.

Also, since you mention this is happening with ALL your cakes lately, did you just recently change brand of flour? It must be a common ingredient that is causing this problem and one ingredient that is definitely in every recipe IS flour lol.

Just a few ideas...hope you find your solution...

Just a thought, but have you changed brands for one or more of your ingredients. I have not tried my hand at making cakes from scratch, but I do make cookies and I know that my batter turns out differently if I simply use a different brand of brown sugar. If you changed to a different brand than you were using before, that may be the reason for a change in your batter. Good Luck!!

I agree with the above posters. Different brands can act differently. I use Walmart Sugar, Flour, and shortening (yep, I buy the cheap stuff) Arm and hammer baking soda, the baking powder in a white can which I'm pretty sure is called hodgekins mill? and that all has worked well for me so far. I will say that I baked Serious_Cakes yellow cake with Gold Medal flour a few times, and I swear it didn't rise quite as much, dumb as it sounds.