I am trying to make the wilton soccer ball cake. I am using my from scratch red velvet cake. So far I have tried baking it on 350 with a flower nail, and it sunk horribly. So I tried again with the flower nail and lowering the temp. to 325 and it still sunk. Normally it would not matter a whole lot if I was just using buttercream to frost it but I will be making a dragon cake so it will also have fondant and gumpaste scales and wings. (this is like the practise dragon in my photos but paired down a great deal) I do have a little time but I still have to bake all the cakes for the 4 tier wedding cake. I am freezing the cakes until the 11th.

My husbands idea is to bake a 6" cake and cut down to fill in the hole. It would work but I really want everything to be perfect because this is a surprise grooms cake for my little brother.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dawn

Maybe try using less batter or the same amount of batter but bake it for a longer period of time.

It sounds like it is baking too rapidly on the outside and under-baking on the inside. If you try baking the cake again you can try a flower nail in the middle and clip some wet rags to the outside of the pan to lower the temp of the outside of the pan. Also don't take the pan out to check on it too soon, that is when I get sunken cakes. Peep in through the window and don't touch it until you can see it starting to pull away from the sides.

My tried and true chocolate cake starting doing the same thing, sinking in the middle even though I always bake at 325 with bake even strips around the outside. I lowered the temp even more and didn't pull out to test for done until I saw it pulling away from edges and while it still sunk a little, not as much as it had been doing. So I too would like to see some other suggestions.

Sometimes the weather can affect it (low pressure - cold and humid). I always add an extra egg or egg white now to prevent it from happening.

Oh...that stinks and I know exactly how you feel. If all the above suggestions don't help...you may need a new oven. I had the same problem about a month ago. I baked two tried and true cake recipes (several times) and they kept falling on me. Not that I am baker extraordinair but I suspected that the oven was the culprit so I called GE and they sent someone out to do a diagnostic on my oven. Come to find out that the ignitor was going so the oven wasn't holding its temp I had to buy a new oven because what it would have cost to repair it was a little less than half of what a brand new oven would cost....so I went with getting a new oven

HTH

Thanks for the advice.
I never thought about the weather, it has been raining and humid here today. I will try lower the temp. down to 300, add baking strips and not open the door and see what happens.
I know it is not my oven because it is only a year old.
I'll try again tomorrow and let you know what happens.

do you have an oven thermometer? Even a new oven can be off by many degrees from where you have it set.

do you have an oven thermometer? Even a new oven can be off by many degrees from where you have it set.

you may need to use a core in the center so it gets baked all the way in the center

Just wanted to thank everyone for their help.
I was able to bake the cake with almost no sinking. The little bit of sinkage can be filled with 2-3 tbsp of frosting.

I ended up using 2 flower nails, about a cup less batter, dropped the temp. to 315 and did not open the oven- it all worked. The sinkage happened as it was cooling.

Thanks for the advice of the even temp. my oven is off- the left side is registering 10 degrees less than the right, the right side is correct.

Thanks again.