I just finished baking a 14" round pineapple-carrot cake for a friend's mom's 80th birthday. She wanted a single layer round cake instead of a sheet cake. I doubled my favorite carrot cake recipe and measured accurately, used a flower nail in the center and wet strips on the sides.
When I took the cake out of the oven the center caved in. Yes, I tested to see if it was done.
I thought about torting the top to even it out but I'd end up with a 1" cake! It sank that much! Does any one have any suggestions for fixing the center of this cake. I really don't want to bake another for fear that the same thing will happen again. Plus that's a lot of ingredients. I even thought of baking another smaller cake and torting that to fill in the center. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I've had that happen to me a couple of times... I always re bake them.

That's going to be a very wet cake. And even though you tested it (how?) it wasn't done. At least that why cakes usually sink that quickly out of the oven. Orrrr an abundance of leavening. But that's harder to do. Scratch or box?

I tested it with toothpicks in the center. It was a scratch cake.

Carrot cakes usually use oil. Did yours? I find that cakes with a lot of oil in them tend to give false positives when toothpick testing. The oil allows a toothpick to slide in and out cleanly even when it's not done, because the oil lets the batter slide across the toothpick without sticking.

When I have a recipe that uses lots of oil or lots of butter, I test in other ways, touch, smell color, finding that point when it stops rising and begins to settle.

Maybe there was too much batter in the pan. You should make 2 seperate batches of the 14 inch round and just layer them. That way you know its cooked... That's how I always to my carrot-pineapple cake because its pretty dense and takes a long time to cook.
Jodi

I have done this rescue before: cut out the centre of the cake, and decorate the hole - I used lemon slices, maybe in this case, a bunch of fondant carrots or a fondant bunny coming out it's burrow would work.
Depends exactly how non cooked it is! Another option might me cake balls.
xx

Thank you for all your suggestions. I'm still undecided about what I'm going to do. If I retry, how long would you suggest I bake the cake for, approximately?