I *may* have discovered something here; I've just tried a new theory twice with two recipes, and I have to share the results.

My chocolate cake and my carrot cake are both super, super moist and wonderful, but I've always hated making them both because they, without fail, no matter what, ALways are a disaster to bake: they overflow if I'm not careful and create a mess everywhere, and then they ALways sink back so low after cooling that they only make 1 layer each, causing me to have to bake twice as many cakes.

I kept fiddling with the recipes until I realized that, since no recipes ever call for using bake-even strips, why not try making them withOUT the strips? And lo and behold--it worked! I've baked a whole chocolate wedding cake and just did a 12" tier for a carrot cake, and both rise evenly without bake-even strips, AND they don't collapse like an overworked mother after cooling down. No doming...just nice level tops. The carrot cakes didn't get as deep as I wanted, but I didn't fill the pans over even half full this time.

So, I had to share that. If you have trouble with a certain recipe sinking EVERY time, and you use bake-even strips for that recipe--try it without. I'm delighted with my beautiful, LEVEL cakes, and I don't have to go find a new recipe!

Yay! Long live experimentation!

That is great news -- yes, glad to hear it. I'm fine-tuing some recipes for larger pans too, and I'll try your ideas.

Thanks for sharing.

If the center sinks when the cake comes out of the oven it could be that the cake wasn't completely done. Have you tried a flower nail as a heating core with it?

Believe me, I've tried everything you can imagine...change/check oven temp, batter quantity, flower nails, longer bake times, everything. This seems to have done the trick with these particular two recipes.