I recently made a cake for my mom, who has celiac disease. I am very familiar with baking gluten free, so I thought it would be no problem. However, the outside of the cake cooked SO much faster than the rest of the cake. It formed a crispy crust, and when the cake was cut into you could see a colour gradient as it faded from the dark brown outside to the light yellow inside. It's my mom's birthday next week and I really want to make her another cake, but I need to avoid this disaster! Any advice would be much appreciated. 

Here is the recipe I used:

http://www.livingwithout.com/recipes/gluten_free_vanilla_cake-1417-1.html 

You could try putting in a flower nail to make the center cook faster and use either the wet towel strips or wet newspaper strips on the outside so that the outside cooks slower...

Especially if you liked the taste of that recipe...

AWhat temp did you bake at? I find (especially with gluten free cakes) that cooking at a lower than normal temp for longer helps with this issue. So if your cooking at 180° celcius than turn it down to about 160°

I strictly bake GF (I have Celiac) and I checked the recipe and I don't believe that is the problem.  I bake all my cakes at 350*.  I think your personal oven is off.  Turn down the temp to 325-330 and bake it longer until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Also keep pan(s) in the center of oven, if there is more than 1 pan make sure there is at least 1 -2" of space between them.  Don't butt them up against each other, make sure there is enough space for even heating.  Or you could try the even baking strips at the 350*.  I've never used them.

Good Luck

MsGF