Hello All

New to the forum and I'm just after some advice.

I love for my cakes to be tall and understand most like them to be about 4" tall. I'm just wondering how people get to this height in terms of baking.

Do you use one deep cake tin and put a large mix in, and then cut into 4 layers - or do you use individual more shallow tins and bake each layer separately? I've struggled in the past to just use one tin and one mix - I never seem to get the height, and the sides can become very brown as needing to be in the oven for longer.

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated! I have a wedding cake to do for my friend next month :)

K

Very, very few people try to bake a 4" cake in one pan; nearly everyone bakes multiple layers.  

For chocolate cakes, I bake two cakes and then cut them to make 4 layers. For most other cakes, I bake 3 layers and stack them uncut.

I would never try to bake a 4" single layer of cake.  That is a lot of batter in one pan and would take a long time to bake.  Plus I could just see issues occurring all the time with the baking process.

For all of my cakes I bake two layers in 3" deep pans.  I fill the pans 1/2 way with batter.  This doesn't get me a 3" tall layer though.  But it does get me a layer that once I torte and level will give me 2-1" layers which is exactly what I want.  So in the end I have 4-1" layers.  And once stacked and filled my cakes generally are about 4.5 to 5 inches in height.

I have always baked in 2” deep pans   Fill them no less than 1/2 full - usually 2/3rds   I seldom tort (cut) them    I prefer to bake at 300 degrees F for 20-35 minutes (depending on the size) then turn it up to 325 for an equal amount of time   This results in a flat moist cake every time:)  No hump to cut off, no wasted cake 

If you have 3 inch deep pans and use the same amount of batter called for in 2 inch deep pans as per the Wilton batter charts in your 3 inch deep pans, the cakes will rise higher in the 3 inch deep pans.  I used to have this information posted for a few recipes on the Wilton forums but unfortunately Wilton deleted the forums so you will have to experiment with various cake mixes and from-scratch recipes. You will also get a flatter top which will not require much if any levelling. So this gives you yet another option to those given here.

An added bonus is you tend to get a less dense texture with some from-scratch cake recipes.