Okay ladies, can someone please help me out. What causes excessive cake shrinkage like when u take your cakes out of the oven, then u let them sit in the pan for a few minutes. I know cakes will shink some once you take them out of the oven to cool but i noticed that the Sylva Wynestock cake recipe, u know the yellow/vanilla cake everyone likes from the yellow cake bake off/trial, shrinks soooo much. there is about a 1/2 gap around the sides of the pan where the cake shrunk. Besides that, the cake is great and one of the best tasting but i can't figure out what's going on.

hi,
whenever I make cakes they always shrink away from the edges a little and this is usually how I know they are cooked through. I have never had problems with exessive shrinking, though and I can't see anything online about cake shrinking. Just keep altering your recipe a bit each time - I'm sure your family members won't mind having to test a few batches of cakes! =D hope this helps

You might want to try baking your cakes at 325 degrees and start testing for to see if they are done at the recommended baking time. You should not bake until the sides pull away from the pan as this is over baking them, like meat they continue to bake after coming out of the oven. The lower temp help eliminate the hump that develops and eliminates the baking strips use. I hope this has helped you, try it and see how it works.
evelyn

Another culprit to "excessive shrinkage" could be not measuring/weighing your flour precisely......especially in scratch baking.

I had this problem way back when I started baking....since I've converted all of my recipes to weights from measurements I've solved that problem.

I always pull my cakes out of the oven about 5 minutes before i think they'll be ready, immediately "dump" them out of the pan on a cooling rack, and allow them to continue cooking on the rack. Ive never had an issue with shrinkage or a raw cake...