If anyone could share some insite here I'd greatly appreciate it.

I just baked a 9x13 cake for 1 hour and about an hour ago took it out the oven and out of the pan to cool. I then came on to cake central to do my usual Saturday night routine and just decided now to go an peek on the cake. To my surprise the cake is split across the centre?!?!?! - please see the attached picture.

Does anyone know why this may have happened? Could this be filled with buttercream? or should I just toss it and bake another one??? This cake is free and for my friend's birthday tomorrow but is this something I could deliver? I would hate to ruin my reputation over this. Also I want to put a filling in the cake. Would I be able to with this split???

Anyone, please help!!!! Thank you in advance.

It looks like you've turned the warm cake onto the cooling rack with the 'hump' face down. Is this correct? If so, that's why it cracked. You should ALWAYS turn your cakes top side up to cool.

You can fix this with icing. You may not even need to glue the cake back together, just shove the two halves together.

i did the same thing with a round cake and it split in 3 places on one side of the cake and i had to "stick" it together with bc then make sure that i had a heavier layer of bc on that area when i did the crumb coat...once i had smoothed it all and covered it with fondant, it was barely noticable...

I agree with DianeLM. Once you put another rack on top of it and turn it over chances are the crack will heal itself. When I get ready to talke a cake out of its pan I always have 2 racks ready - one to run the cake out on and the other to put on immediately and turn it over so the "hump" side is on top.

Thanks DianeLM, jelligirl and AlamoSweets I NEVER knew that cakes should be cooled with the hump side up. I've been baking for over 12 yrs and did not know this. Also this was the 1st time ever a cake split on me. Your right DianeLM I'm sure I will be able to save this cake and just squeeze the split back together. Whew, I thought I was gonna have to stay up another 2 hrs to bake a cake.

My boston cream pie cake broke in half today! And it was one that I had to torte twice! See my photos...it survived with some TLC! I have found that if you put the cake back together when it's still warm, it will somewhat heal itself during the cooling process.