Ok I don't get it.  I baked the cake put the toothpick in the middle and no crumbs or anything on it.  So I took it out of the oven.  Then  cooled, froze the cakes and now tort the cake  and the middle is kind of gooey .  What happened?  How the heck can the tooth pick come out clean and the middle be like that?  I guess its beyond help and I have to do it again?  What am I doing wrong? Please help this desperate  frustrated baker.

Hi Amaniemom

Its hard to say what went wrong without your recipe, so tell us that and how long you baked, how much did you fill the tins... etc.

What I can say is that I use a skewer, not a toothpick to check my cakes. the toothpick is short so you may have only checked the very top of the cake and not through to the middle that way. It might have needed like 5 more minutes perhaps to get the very middle done.

Good  luck!

AYep, Pearl's right. I baked some chocolate cakes recently and checked with toothpicks, came out clean but I decided to re-check digging the toothpick all the way down to the bottom. Sure enough, the cake needed more time in the oven. This tends to happen when there's a lot of batter in the pan (more than 1/2 full).

Also, get to know your batters, and jot down info as you go. I know for instance that my yellow cake takes 40-45 mins to bake when I use 22 oz of batter, and 50-52 minutes when I use 25 oz for slightly taller layers. So when I bake this, I don't even go near the oven until the time I know it'll be ready.

Yup you guys were right my tooth pick   didn't go all the way to the bottom.  I was so distracted  by my little guy having a fever probably just wasn't thinking ( lack of sleep lol).Well listen learned ( focus or don't bake lol).

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.