Hi Everyone, 

I baked a 3 layer cake late last night but the topa are not flat. I don't enough time to bake another cake as the owner will be coming to pick it up soon. Unfortunately, where I live, cake ingredients are quite expensive and I need to minimize wastage as much as possible. I haven't frosted it yet. Trimming the cake will make the layers very short. Does anyone have suggestions on how to get around not trimming without the cake looking lopsided?

Thanks

The only thing I can think of is to flip the bottom layer so that the top is on the bottom.  That will give you some height.  Then just trim the tops of the other two layers evenly, and leave a little height on each layer.  There was a tutorial about stacking wedding cakes from Global Sugar Arts, recently where the layers were not completely leveled.  Watch that tutorial and it will help.  Good luck!

I'm sorry you didn't get good information soon enough.   ALL layers of cake MUST be level for them to be stacked.   That means you might need to level/waste a bit.  Make some cake pops w/the cut-off portion - the customer will be impressed :)

For future baking make sure you have enough batter in each pan (fill the pan 1/2 to 2/3rds full.  If you use 2" deep pans make sure there is one inch of batter in it - use a clean ruler to measure), that your oven is properly set (actually is at the temp you set it for), and bake at lower temps like 300 to 325 degrees F.  for a little longer time then you have been baking.  I bake any cake that uses one cake mix for 20 minutes at 300 then turn the oven up to 325 for about an equal amount of time.  (That works for my oven - haha).  Some people wrap wet toweling around the pan to keep it cool so the center of the cake has more time to bake which helps eliminate that hump in the center.