OK, so before I found the wasc recipe, I used madiera cake all the time. No probs. Found the wasc recipe, made up half a batter, baked it and was converted there and then! perfect. Somebody wanted a birthday cake so I chose to do the wasc cake but with the whole recipe because it was a bigger cake.
Baked it and everything seemed fine, untill the next day when I carved it!!
About an inch up from the base of the cake was a HARD disc in the center of the cake. Was in a perfectly straight line and is almost wet looking, but rock hard to the touch! directly above that, perfectly soft moist beautiful sponge. Its kind of hard to explain it, but If I took away all the good cake and was left with the hard bit, it would be the exact size and shape of a music cd, only a centimeter thick! WEIRD 
So thought that was just a bad run, cake was for the next day, decided to make my tried and tested, trusty madeira..............SAME THING! 
Was late at night, out of eggs, had to tell the lady I couldn't do the cake! NOT GOOD.
Recieved my kitchen aid a couple of days ago, thinking maybe I have been mixing something wrong, or not well enough, made a wasc yesterday and all seemed well. although apon eating, instead of a disc found multiple little randomly placed lumps of the same stuff!
Im lost, I dont know what it could be. Im in the uk and dont have cake flour so use AP, taking out the 2 tablesspoons and replacing with ccorn flour, but that shouldn't be the issue because I usually use ap flour in my maderia with no probs? Could it be my oven.
I am scared to make cakes for anyone incase I give them a hard cake, so all is on standby. This is really stressing me out! Any suggestions will be grately recived, I have faith in you CC!
LOU
I have a kitchenaid and find that I get a hard lump of batter at the bottom where the "dimple" in the bowl is. I have to make sure to scrape the dimple when I do the side of the bowl while mixing. If I don't - like if the batch of cake batter is big a fills just about the whole bowl which makes scraping the dimple difficult - I'm careful to not let that hard batter go in my cake pans.
The scraper style plastic paddle that's available now keeps this dimple issue from happening and makes it so you don't even have to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
If you put your wet ingredients into the mixer bowl first it helps to keep that dry hard lump from forming.
That said I have never had success with the WASC recipes 
...I really want to, but after trying over and over and wasting lots of money on trial and error-error-error, I've given up.
One other thing, are you using Betty Crocker brand mixes? They are the preferred brand for the WASC recipe.
I hope you are more successful than I.
Good luck! 
Yes, it has happened to me once. I always do everything pretty much the same, been baking cakes for a long time. It happen to me with a l4" cake. Its almost like a jelly appearance to it distributed throughout. It was really strange, it only happened once, I don't think I used the heating core, so that is what I think it was, it took so long to bake, not really sure what happened.
I used butter in both recipes, but never had a problem with it before. And I dont think it was because I didnt use a heating core, the cakes were only 8 inches and have never need to use the core for that size cake before. Would it be better to use shortening or margerine instead of butter?
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%