Hi everyone - I made this watering can cake for my Grandma's birthday yesterday... I used the Shubox coconut layer cake recipe from Epicurious. It tasted fantastic, but it fell apart as I was slicing it! It looked awful. Everyone had little cake mounds on their plates, instead of slices. Any ideas what would cause this? Could it be because I used cake flour instead of all-purpose?
http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=901113
Cute cute cakes! Yes, it is probably because you used cake flour. If a cake recipe calls for AP flour, it's a good idea to not try any substitutions. The AP flour would have had more protein, and therefore gluten, to keep the structure in place. Also, did you do a straight substitution of 1 cup cake flour for 1 cup AP flour? If you DO decide to substitute, for every 1 cup of AP flour you need to add 1 cup + 2 tbsp cake flour.
I am not sure if the recipe called for cake flour or all-purpose flour. But whatever a scratch recipe calls for is what I suggest using. It is calling for that particular item for a reason. Scratch baking is a science so everything in the recipe is there for a reason and is suppose to be added in a certain order for a reason, so you get the results you want.
As for cutting, my first question always is, what type of knife were you using? I find most times that a cake is crumbly that the wrong knife was used to cut.
I like to use a sharp serrated bread knife or a sharp smooth edge knife (think butchers knife) It depends on the covering and the shape of the cake which I prefer. But you need to do a straight down motion not a back and forth or it can make the cake crumble depending on the texture of it.
Great job, too bad it fell apart 
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%