Hi! This is my first topic here.
Sorry for my poor english, I promess you to do the best that I could.

My cousin asked me to make her wedding cake. The wedding is in the end of october, so I start practicing myself because practice makes perfect, right?!

So, I was looking for THE best recipe for her cake. I found the WHB white butter cake and try it. The cake was good, but it have a hard and thick crust all the way around. The center is ok, not dry.

What should I do?

Please help me!
I have to stop making and testing cake before I'm gonna to be really huge

thank you for your help!
biquette

It sounds like your oven is too hot.

Bigger cakes have to bake longer and if you bake them at the same temperature as the smaller cakes, the outsides will get overbaked and hard.

There are a couple of things you can do.

I use the baking strips around the pans. Here is a link that explains the science behind how and why these work. Basically, it slows down the baking of the outer edge of the cake so the outer edge and the center bake at the same speed. http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-6626888.html#6626888

Many on here use the flower nails in their cakes. You place the big flowers nails upside down in the cake pan, then pour the batter in. The metal flower nail helps disperse the heat evenly throughout the cake, causing the cake to bake more evenly.

But definitely reduce the heat/temp in your oven. In a home oven, I bake the larger cakes at 325 degrees instead of 350.

thank you for your help
My oven was already at 325°, I will try it at 300°, maybe my oven temp is not good, this is a very old oven

I will also look for baking strips (I didn't even know that exist )

If it doesn't work I will try the flowers nails tips (very interesting all the tips that we can find here!)

Thank you very much for your precious help.

If you can't find baking strips, you can tear some old towels into strips, wet them with cold water and pin those around the pans. Those will work, too.

Sometimes an older oven is "off" on the temperature reading. When your thermostat in the oven says 350, it may really be 375 or more.

You might want to get an oven thermometer to see if your oven is heating up to the correct temperature. Good luck with your cake!!

I believe some people use a flower nail and bake even strips together.

finally I put my meat probe on my oven and my oven is really off the temp!

Put my oven at 325°, and it was heating up to 380°
I think that explain a lot of my bad cooking hahaha

Thank you all for your tips

Wow! What a diff! But yep, that would it!

I was having the same problem until I found the awesome tip of using the flower nails. I never bake larger cakes without them now. That was one of the best and most appreciated tips I've ever gotten. Good luck on the wedding cake!