Okay, I have been using this white cake recipe for a while now. So far it has been great. Now all of the sudden (the past 3 times I have used it) the cake rises, spills over the sides of my pan and then has a big hole in the middle of the cake. What can I do?

Are you using mixes or is this recipe from scratch? Can you post your recipe?

It is from scratch. This is it.

1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
3 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Grease and lightly flour a 9-inch (23cm) square baking pan.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, shortening and sugar. Beat in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. In a small mixing bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form; gently fold into batter.

Pour batter into prepared baking pan and bake at 350 degrees F (180 C) for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove cake from oven and let cool in pan for 10 minutes. Turn cake out onto a plate or cooling rack; then chill cake in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

There is nothing acidic in the batter to warrant so much baking powder. Try knocking it down to match the flour, 1 1/3 tsp, or about 1 1/2 should do it. Why it started to happen all of a sudden is hard to guess, but it could be it is over leavened.

I had the same problem recently with a box mix. I opened the oven to take a peek and both white cakes had peaked so high and the middle was gushing out of the top and spilling over the sides like a volcano. It looked more like a science project. Never has that happened before. After it was done, I simply cut the top off and it was really moist, but quite alarming.

do you live at a high altitude? i do and if i do not altitude adjust my recipes the same thing happens to me. the eggs must be increased. the leaveners decreased. liquids increased. and sugars decreased.

If you've been using this recipe and all of a sudden there is an issue - and you haven't moved or gotten a new oven, I would guess it's NOT the recipe - Is the oven heating differently or distributing the air differently? If the recipe has always work ed- it's not the recipe.