Hello all! Will appreciate any and all suggestions. I have been baking for almost 20 years and I've never had this problem so I can't imagine what's going on. For some reason the sides of my cakes are rising to a beautiful 2" but the middle is inverted and only about 1 1/2". I use bake even strips. I have tried several recipes including homemade, semi-homemade and box but they all do the same. I bake at 350 but have tried 325 and tried  preheating to 375 and turned down to 350 to bake. It does this on traditional bake and convection. All my ingredients are in date. It all started when I moved to this house a year ago. I have lived 3 other places in this same town without this problem, so I thought it was the oven, as it was over twenty years old and the dpor didn't close completely. So, I bought a brand new oven and I'm still having the same problem. I am totally out of ideas. At the end of it all the cakes look (after decorating) and taste great with a great texture but this is driving me crazy! It sure would make it easier on me if they were more level. I would even rather have a small dome than a dent. Please help!

are you possibly overfilling the pans with batter?

Have you tried using a heating core / flower nail?

I had a problem similar to this until I figured out the floor was not completely lever (older house). Once I shimmed under the oven to get it leveler and figured out exactly where on the rack to place the cake (all the way to the back) the problem has disappeared. Just a thought.

I'm with melmar02 - use a flower nail in the middle.  With everything you've tried it might be your oven or could you be overmixing?

Any chance the bottom of your pans have warped?

I haven't tried a flower nail but I could try that.y pans are not warped. It's crazy how I've never had this problem before. I'm going to check how level the oven is but I'm pretty sure it's level. It's a wall oven. Over mixing? Maybe but my homemade recipe uses reverse mixing and it's usually hard to overbeat that but I guess it's possible. One other change is that the same time we moved here is when I also bought my kitchen aid professional 6qt mixer. I love it. It does everything, but I wonder if it somehow could have changed my cakes. Maybe because it's so powerful? Any thoughts?

If you didn't have a KA before it might be more powerful than you're used to and then you've overmixed which is possible even with reverse creaming.

In which part of the mixing does over mixing happen? When the eggs are being added or through the entire process?

When the milk and eggs are being mixed in.  Some recipes give you exact times for mixing so that helps and I don't take the speed above 4.  I'd be interested to hear what others do!

I had that problem only once...when I tried to adapt my recipe for an 8"round to a ln 8" square. Turned out I got the baking time wrong (slightly under baked cake)  and the middle sort of went down while cooling. But since you use the same recipe...Idk.  or is your new oven cooler then it shows? Since your old oven door didn't close properly  (=heat escaped), could that be the problem? 

I hate when we'll established procedures suddenly go wrong in the kitchen. Feel for you and hope you can figure it out! 

Hi, 

Are your cake sunk in the centre? ( I notice it has a wrinkle effect if it has)

If so I found adding too much baking powder or over beating was the problem, I also too use a flower nail! There fab 

xx

When I use my KA I beat on 2. The recipe says to beat eggs in two parts for 10 seconds each then another 10. I think I'm going to get out the trusty hand mixer and try a batch that way and see how it works. And yes it is dented in on the top and kind of crinkled looking.