I have a cake for this weekend, have a new stove. I made some muffins yesterday and they turned out fine, of course they were only in the oven 15 min. Today I started baking my first of 2 cakes and since I was somewhat concerned about the heating(knowing all too well that not all ovens heat the same) my recipe says 350 but I lowered it to 325 and after only what seemed to be 10 minutes I smelled burning, when I opened the oven door the cake top was completely burned and it was still liquid, what happened. I'm afraid that I might end up contacting the customer to cancel so they can get a cake elsewhere. Should I have lowered the temp even lower. I noticed that unlike my old stove this one has a coil on top, Being careful in case of spills, I put the cake pan on a cookie sheet on the lower shelf, should I have done something different, Is there anything I can do to make a new cake and not have to cancel for this weekend or should I just go ahead and cancel. Totally stressed. Thanks

Are you sure that you didn't set the oven on 'broil' rather than bake? that's what it sounds like to me.

Get an oven thermometer and test it to make sure it doesn't need any calibration.

Make sure your racks inside the oven are lowered. If the cake is too close to the top is will burn.

Thanks for all the reply tried to do a 2nd just to make sure I didn't accidentally set it to broil, but no such luck it burnt as well, Didn't have the heart to dissapoint the little girl I was making this cake for so I decided next course of action(not what I wanted to do) I opted to get a cake from a local bakery and do the decorating myself. I told them I wanted a 9' round cake for 15-20 people and just to frost it pink with buttercream filling.( I guess I learned that old saying if you want something done right do it yourself) went to pick up the cake it looked like a 6" but the owner swore it was a 9" he even went to get a ruler to prove to me it was a 9' when he measured it was a 6 1/2' he said that's because due to the trim she took off, well if this was originally a 9" and she had to trim it she trimmed off more than 2" off which I felt was unecessary, Don't know about the rest but when I get an order for a cake I usually do a larger one thinking ahead of the trim that will be taken off. Well ended up getting a cake from a bakery which although not completely satifised it was a lot better than the bakery, To make sure there was enough I bought 12 cupcakes and decorated them to go around. Thank God, they were happy with what we delivered.Hope this never happens again. I was so stressed, finally got someone to look at stove and it needed a thermostat .

will post cake tomorrow. Thanks for all of your feed back.

I just have to chime in and say it is RIDICULOUS that someone would look you in the eye and tell you that a 6" cake is a 9" cake. You should have told him to save those lines for his wife! Every single cake I have ever made has ended up a tad larger than the pan size it was baked in after frosting and such. Ridiculous liar!!

Right on KoryAK. Why in the world would you trim off 2" of cake anyway? And even if you do that, don't you think you would start off with a lrger cake and trim to the size the customer ordered???

Thank you Jones5cm! I don't remember where how or why I came across it but I loved it when I read it too.