Help - Why Does My Cake Look Cinched At The "waist"?
Baking By Sweet.tooth Updated 4 Nov 2017 , 10:59pm by bakemeenchanted
This has been an intermittent problem and would love any advice! Does anyone know why my cakes look like they are cinched at the waist? Sometimes my cakes come out of the oven with beautiful sides and other times (more often than not) they come out looking like they are cinched in the middle. It looks like the cake is adhering to the bottom half of the pan only. Thank you!!
Huh. My first guesses are leavener/recipe or oven temp. It looks like it's rising in two stages. What temp do you bake? 350 or lower? Also, I have some recipes where I can preheat the oven and pop something in just as it beeps ready and others where I know I need to wait awhile, let it sit at the temp, before I put in my item.
I also see a Magic Strip in the background. How are you using it? Unusual for me to see dark golden brown sides when I use one.
My husband once made me a birthday cake that did this, it was hilarious and we have no real idea why it did it, never had it happen again and that was years ago now. His cake came out of the oven just fine but as it cooled it just took on a figure 8 shape, the inside was cooked just fine and it was a recipe he has used since he was a kid.
Sorry I couldn't help you but I am curios if anyone can explain why it happens.
I haven't had this exact thing happen to me, but I've had my cakes shrink on the top half only while the bottom half retained its shape. I don't mean that the sides were sloped. I mean literally just the top half so it looked like I'd stacked a 7" cake on top of an 8". It was fine on the inside, just hella fugly to look at.
I've noticed that this happens when I over bake the cake. And i mean overbaked by minutes only. Just long enough that I feel the crust gets too hard to shrink, and so the cake does all it's shrinking around whatever is the weakest part of the crust. The waist of the cake in your case and the top half in mine.
And it only happens with cakes which take a long time to cook, close to an hour. All I can suggest is to be very precise with your timing and take the cake out as soon as it's ready
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