I try not to get any dome on cakes, but somehow i always get it. if i   bake 2 to3 cakes per week, i end up with lot of leftover cake after leveling. no idea what to do with it, any suggestions? 

Cake balls!

I do cake pops with them!  It's pure profit!

Mix up a box of your favorite pudding and layer scraps with pudding and top with whipped cream for dessert.  My kids favorite!

thanks you all, done all of these before, my kids arent fan of sweets, fed all neighbors, friends and guests, anything beyond that? 

I just throw what little trimmings i have away.  With a combination of magicake strips and having figured out the weight of batter I need for each pan from each of my recipes, I only end up trimming 1/8 to 1/4 inch of cake of maximum.

Have you tried using the insulated baking strips around the pan, flower nail, lowering the oven temp tricks to eliminate or greatly reduce domes?

In local bakeries they throw them in the food processor then take the crumbs and bake them low in the oven a sheet pan. Then it becomes cake crumbs for decorating the sides of simple cakes... like this:

i never used strips, i guess i should try those, also Minabakes i like your idea too. thanks all cakers.

Two suggestions -

First, I have found using heating nails to be the best way to keep my cakes pretty flat.  I use four even in an 8" round.   Obviously the bigger the cake the more I use.  My little trick is that I grease and flour my pan, then I take the nails and pierce them through my parchment paper, then grease the parchment AND the nails.  The reason is that this makes sure the nails are not imbedded in my poor cake!  Best source for these is the Webstaurant website.  Super cheap! http://www.webstaurantstore.com/ateco-909-1-1-4-flower-nail-9-august-thomsen/144909.html.

Second suggestion is to make the best bread pudding ever... use cake scraps (even with frosting) in place of bread.  It's supposedly a fancy restaurant trick.  All I can say is that when I entertain I love to make a bunch of different cakes so I always have leftovers.  I make bread pudding and it is wildly popular. Here's my recipe:

Leftover Cake Bread Pudding

Ingredients for Leftover Cake Bread Pudding:

• 2 tablespoons of salted butter for pan or Pam

• 1 1/4 cups sugar -plus 2 tablespoons

• 4 eggs

• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 teaspoon almond extract

• 3 cups half and half (see note)

• 1 cup whole milk (see note)

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter (melted and brought back to room temperature)

• 10 cups of leftover cake or bread or both (I have thrown everything imaginable in) for example:

•         2 1/2 cups moist chocolate cake (supposedly no frosting but it's forgiving) (cut into small squares)

•         2 1/2 cups stale (3 4 days old) croissants (cut into small squares)

•         5 cups cinnamon coffee cake (cut into small squares)

• 2 banana (sliced) - optional

• 3/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut - optional

• 1 cup chopped pecans - optional

• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips optional but really good!

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F

2. Butter a 9x13 baking dish and set to the side.

3. In a mixer add 1 1/4 cups sugar and eggs and mix on medium for 6 minutes.

4. Add cinnamon, vanilla extract, almond extract, half and half, milk, and butter to egg /sugar mixture. Beat to combine. Set to the side.

5. Cut chocolate cake, croissants, and coffee cake into cubes. Place them all in a bowl and mix to combine.

6. Take half of the cake cube mixture and place in the buttered baking dish, to make a neat first layer.

7. Then top with bananas, coconut, pecans, and chocolate chips. Top with the remaining cake cubes to make the top layer.

8. Pour dairy mixture of eggs/milk to the top of cake cubes. With both handsgently press down on cake cubes to make sure they are soaked in egg/milk mixture. Then sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar.

9. In a large baking dish or roasting pan (1510 inches) fill 1 inch deep with hot water to create a water bath, then place the 9 x 13 inch prepared bread pudding dish in the middle of the 15 x 10 water bath (you want the bath to go halfway up the side of the 9 x 13 inch dish) and place in oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes). (I did not use a water bath and it worked just fine)

10. Once bread pudding is done baking, remove from water bath and and let it cool for 25 minutes.

Note you can use all whole milk or even almond milk.

that sounds so yummy winkinpa, i will try this weekend. Thanks.

Excellent.  Let me know how it turns out!

I never get domes. I use home-made baking strips: wet newspaper wrapped in aluminum foil and cinched around the pan with a binder clip.

Your bread pudding reminds me of what a friend posted recently.  She uses day old baked goods, donunts, bismarks, etc. 

The best answer is to bake your cakes so they do not get humps :)

For any size or shape pan that uses one mix/batter bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn the oven up to 325 for an equal amount of time. The # of minutes is not a hard and fast rule -  Use your nose to know when a cake is done :)  When you can smell that wonderful aroma in the next room your cake is done.  If it has pulled away from the sides of the pan it most likely is overdone :(   For larger pans adjust the time by about 5 to 10 minutes each temp.  Example: a 16" round takes about 35-45 minutes each temp.   This will produce a wonderful, level, moist cake that is just perfect without all the waste!

thanks kakeladi for oven temperature advice, i will try tomorrow since i am baking a small 8" cake, will post my results. Thanks to pastrypet too, will try your trick next time.

Can I ask a numpty question - how would you use the leftovers to make cake pops please?  Btw, I love the idea of using them to decorate on the cake a couple of posts above!!  So simple and so effective.

Hep275 - what does "numpty" mean?  

Anyway - there are two methods that I know of for making cakepops... first is to bake little round cake in either a specialty baking pan or my daughter has a little machine that looks like a waffle maker that makes the rounds.  We love using that with brownie batter.  The other method is to mix cake crumbs (hence the use of the leftovers) with icing and form rounds.  That is the more common method though it's a bit overly rich for my taste.  You can find many recipes on here and other places online for the ratios.

i am really bad and in recent years just been baking for family too but i got tired of doing all the falderal -- and brilliant as it is seriously it is -- but i got crabby about nails and magic strips (too tired cahhn't breathe) and to get the right sized cakes i started baking them one inch too big so i'd have a perfect specimen after all the carving -- works great 

fist bump

but another thing you can do with the leftover is use it in place of Graham crackers for pie & cheesecake crusts

bam!

numpty means silly/dumb - perhaps an Englishism!!

make trifle/parfaits, layer cake scraps with whipped cream and fruit preserves and some liqueur infused syrup, delicious and elegant dessert.

Love the idea of coating the outside of a cake and also substituting for graham crackers in a cheesecake crust!