I was wondering if anyone knew of good cake pans to use for creating bowl shaped cakes. I've tried to do this several times w/ different bowls - but my middles always come out mushy. I haven't tried a baking core b/c I knew it wouldn't go all the way down through the middle of the "bowl" shape. I had an awful awful experience making the popcorn bowl cake in Collette Peters book.... I made SEVERAL cakes - even using her own recipes and none of them came out right. I finally got one that stuck together and decorated it and was all ready to take a picture..... and it cracked in the middle and just slowly broke apart into pieces..... yep I cried for a bit. It tasted good - but it was no longer of any use and I was so frustrated I chucked the whole thing in the garbage! (okay I ate a bit first - cake helps depression!) I'd love any tips anyone has on bowl shapes - especially where to buy pans or what kind of pans to look for. This was a metal pyrex bowl that I used last....
I have the Betty Crocker Bake-n-Fill pan which has several pans in it. One of them is half-ball pan and the other is a dome pan, I used that one to make a hill. I have had no problems with them undercooking, and I also use a simple syrup over them to make them more moist.
what kind of cake batter did you try? I know you said you tried a few bowls, but was that with a mix or a "light" cake recipe? I have baked a few bowl cakes and had pretty good success with the "one-bowl chocolate cake" recipe from Martha Stewart's site (I am not familiar with Collette Peter's recipe, sorry). Since scratch cakes tend to be more dense than mixes, I'd try either the chocolate one mentioned above or a classic butter cake recipe from your favorite cookbook. I never fill the bowl more than half full and always turn the oven temp down by 25ish degrees and bake longer than normal. My bowls are just cheapo grocery store mixing bowls--came in a set of 3 sizes with lids for ~$10. Also, I always cut my bowl cakes in half or thirds and fill them for extra height and better flavor. Maybe the filling helped "glue" everything together for me? good luck!
I think the top choices would be, the Betty Crocker Bake n' FIll (either the large or minis), the Wilton Ball Pan (in the middle between the other to sizes), or you could try flower nails. I have never used the flower nail method but meny people have told me it works beter than the baking core.
Try the Durable cake for 3D and wedding cakes recipe here on CC. I made it in both white and chocolate. It is more dense, but I think you need that. And if you are baking for a very long time, you can start oven at 350 and say after half hour or 45 min, if it still needs more time, turn it down to 325 and continue to bake. This way, it won't burn. HTH
Last week I tried a Wilton ball pan to make the bowl for my ice cream sundae cake...fortunately I also baked an oval cake, because the 1/2 ball wrapped in fondant broke in two by the next morning. I had a pretty stable cake...DH butter vanilla, and I had trimmed the roundness of the ball a bit to set it flat on the cake board, but it still could not hold its shape. I will try it again next time, but build a pretty high 'bowl base' around the bottom to help with support/stability. Good luck with finding a solution on this one!
I used the Pampered Chef glass batter bowl to bake a cake in and it worked out well. thanks to tips from this site, I cut the temp down from 350 to 325 and it worked pretty well....used a boxed mix, baked it for about an hour and a half....seems like a long time, but the center just kept jiggling. also, once it was done, there was a huge dome on top that i had to cut off. this was the best part of the process, everything was fine until i tried to decorate and then it all fell apart, literally! the idea was to make a flower pot and top with royal icing flowers. i think it got too top heavy because the buttercream started falling away from the sides and the flowers came off, and it split in three places!!!! what a nightmare! But, i refuse to be bested, and plan to start again with a few changes....will post a pic once it's done. the first one ended up in the trash too, but only after i tasted it! lol!
Just baked a bowl cake (see fire helmet cake in my pictures). I used my Pyrex bowl and baked a long time. Used SquirrellyCakes chocolate cake recipe that I found by doing a search in the forums for 3D chocolate cake (easy scratch recipe) -- the key here was a put a flower nail in the bottom center of the bowl facing up into the bowl and baked at 325 for about an hour and 15 minutes. The cake was moist and not too done on the outside -- held its shape well, allowed for carving and torted well.
Good luck!
Lisanne
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