So i made the 3d bear cake using this recipe from wilton
1 1/2c butter
2 1/2 c gran. sugar
5 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
3/4tsp almond flavour
3 c all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 c milk
which says it makes 7 1/2 cups of batter.
the bear pan only takes 6 2/3 cups. i measured out six cups and filled the bear and measured out 2/3 for the core...using a liquid measure cup. My bear did not fill out...it has NO LEGS!!! why..why..why...my recipe did not make 71/2 cups because i only had like 1/2 cup left over. should i have used dry measure cup? i am very disappointed. the instructions for the bear pan say that the bear fill out better if the cake over flows and then you trim the bottom level with the pan...i had nothing to trim. what happened!! so very upset. ah well it was my first try.
any suggestions for next time. its cooling right now and it looks fine except its only half a bear. i baked it at 350 like the instructions said. should i have done 325? any thoughts anyone? it baked up to about 1 inch under the arms. WHY!?!?!?!!?! please help.

I'm sorry your bear is legless! I haven't had that problem before, but maybe because I always overfill my shaped pans so that I'm guaranteed to have to trim. I put a piece of foil on the rack below the pan or in the bottom of the oven to catch the overflow so I don't have a mess to deal with afterwards.

Do you have a small round cake that you can put under the bear and fake some legs for him?

Deanna

i was just practicing so im not going to bother with trying to make legs, but i dont understand why if the instructions say 6 cups of batter and i used 6 cupsof batter it would not fill out...the cake is nice and dense and tastes fine. and also the recipe i used said it makes 7 1/2 cups and it didnt maybe i should try another recipe. sigh. i'll prob try again next week.

anyone else...any thoughts?

Well kiddo, not all batters rise the same amount. Even within the same cake mix, different flavours rise different amounts. So basically Wilton's charts are only guidelines, they are not exact. The bear pans are something you need to experiment with, then keep a written journal of what works with what. That is about the only advice I can give you. Any changes to a recipe, will alter the way a cake rises too. Sometimes your eggs will create more volume than other times. Sometimes your other leaveners when in addition to your eggs, will make a cake rise more than other times.
5 cups of a chocolate cake recipe will not rise perhaps as much as 5 cups of white.
So try and keep a chart of how different recipes perform in the different pans, it will come in handy the next time.
Hugs Squirrelly

It might be too late to help you now but if you try the 3D Bear agin try this, it worked for me and I have done the 3D Bear many times -

I did not use the heating core but I slowly cooked my cake at 300 degrees for about 1 hour. I know the directions says to use 6 cups of batter but I used 7 cups of batter. I got a little bit of spillage but I carved that off and the bear looks great.

The first time I cooked the 3D Bear I used a combination of cake and pound cake but that was way too much work . So the next time I made the 3D bear, I just used a pound cake recipe and that worked fine as well so that's what I go with.