Need Cake Baking Help

[beck5012]

Im a man, this is not for me..My wife has been baking cakes for several yrs now..This is whats happening,,bake the cake and sides are like 1/2 inch high,middle is very high, and sometimes the sides are shrunk in from the pan and like curled in also..we have a gas/lp stove full size with racks..She has used every kind of mix and brand names as well..all the directions are followed..she said befor we got togeather she always used a electric stove and never had results like this untill this stove..It was bought new 3 yrs ago from Lowes and cooked cakes like this from day one..She uses a regular cake pan and has used sprays to oiling and buttering the pan also..is it the stove?? temperature?? pan?? rack placing in oven?? I have NO clue to this but all her cakes do the same thing!!!!! I have asked her if maybe it being baked too long? and boy thats not a good idea ANY info or ideas would be great..

 

[KAYLINDA]

My guess is the oven is cooking too hot...(at least compared to her other one). Get an oven thermometer...and check temperature...or try turning it down about 25 degrees and see what happens. Good luck!

 

[Andy M.]

My guess is the oven is cooking too hot...(at least compared to her other one). Get an oven thermometer...and check temperature...or try turning it down about 25 degrees and see what happens. Good luck!

I agree with KAYLINDA. It appears to be an oven temp problem. You can try baking cakes at a lower temperature until you hit the right temp.

You can also buy an oven thermometer to check the temp. You can call for service, or check the owners manual and see if there is a provision for adjusting the temperature.

 

[AllenOK]

Another thing to try is to get a pizza stone and place that on the lowest rack. I find that it helps by evening out the temperatures, although the oven ends up cooking a little hotter than it's actually set for. Like kaylinda and Andy said, buy an oven thermometer, put it in the oven, turn it on to 350°F, wait for it to come to temperature, then check what the thermometer reads. Adjust the temp. knob accordingly, wait a little bit for the temp. to change, then check it again.

 

[mish]

Some ideas:

The oven may need to be calibrated. The gas company may do it for free.

Dark-colored baking pans/sheets cook food more quickly.

Try rotating the pan 180 during baking - perhaps there are hot spots.

Altitude may have something to do with the end result.

Make sure all the dry ingredients are level when measured, and all ingredients are incorporated thoroughly when mixing.

An oven thermometer is a good idea. Check it regularly, and adjust cooking temps, if necessary.

 

[Constance]

I had a gas range for a long time, and loved it...except for baking. I finally got an oven thermometer, and started lowering my temperatures. That was the answer.
Be sure to pre-heat your oven! It's especially important with gas.

 

[cipher]

I concur with the oven thermometer thing. I discovered that my brand new Whirlpool range with an electronic control panel that looked like it came from the space shuttle was reporting temperatures 20F higher than it really was. Luckily the range can be reprogrammed to compensate for the error.

 

[Haggis]

This may be a bit of an obvious question but is the new gas oven a fan-forced/convection oven?

If it is, although the oven may be set at the correct temperature a convection oven will cook foods quicker. The oven temperature may need be lowered and the cooking time re-evaluated (similar but different to the solutions presented before).

Refer to your oven's manual to view the maker's recommendations regarding equivalent temperature settings and time recommendations.

 

[cipher]

This may be a bit of an obvious question but is the new gas oven a fan-forced/convection oven?

If it is, although the oven may be set at the correct temperature a convection oven will cook foods quicker. The oven temperature may need be lowered and the cooking time re-evaluated (similar but different to the solutions presented before).

Refer to your oven's manual to view the maker's recommendations regarding equivalent temperature settings and time recommendations.

It's a convection oven where the convection can be turned on or off. I use the "bake" mode which doesn't use the convection fan. Either way, convection or not, I think the temperature that I set the oven for should be what the interior oven temperature should be...not higher or lower. I did read the manual and that's where I found out I could put in an offset temperature to compensate for errors in the built-in thermostat.

 

[Haggis]

Fair enough, some convections do not have the ability of turning off the fans. Just throwing it out there :P.

 

[Chopstix]

Beck,

Constance mentioned the importance of pre-heating your oven. Alton Brown says that even if your oven chimes up telling you that the target temp has been reached, you must wait at least 20 minutes more before opening the door tp slide anything in.

The reason for this is that the oven chimes as soon as the air inside the oven reaches the target temp. However, once you open the door, most of the heat will escape up. Recovering that temp will take a while, especially if the item you placed is cold and large, thereby screwing up your effective bake time and temp. Now if you leave the oven untouched for the next 20 min after chiming, you will allow the mass of the oven (ceiling, walls, floor) to get good and hot, allowing faster temp recovery after you place something inside.

Hope this helps...

 

[Jenny]

Beck,

Constance mentioned the importance of pre-heating your oven. Alton Brown says that even if your oven chimes up telling you that the target temp has been reached, you must wait at least 20 minutes more before opening the door tp slide anything in.

The reason for this is that the oven chimes as soon as the air inside the oven reaches the target temp. However, once you open the door, most of the heat will escape up. Recovering that temp will take a while, especially if the item you placed is cold and large, thereby screwing up your effective bake time and temp. Now if you leave the oven untouched for the next 20 min after chiming, you will allow the mass of the oven (ceiling, walls, floor) to get good and hot, allowing faster temp recovery after you place something inside.

Hope this helps...

that is very interesting. Logical, makes good sense

 

[cipher]

that is very interesting. Logical, makes good sense

Someone posted an explanation as to why you should pre-heat an oven after you hear the "ding"...basically, the oven temperature will yo-yo up and down until all surfaces have reached the temperature you set it for. The thermostat only measures the air temperature...not the temperature of the surfaces. I made some corrections to spelling and grammar for clarity...

RE: Myth Busters - Preheating the oven

The test performed is not truely representative of what goes on when an oven is preheating. When using a graph style temperature tester you can actually see the results of preheating.

Example: If the oven is set for 350F, the oven temp will start rising and since it takes a while the bake element is glowing red hot. As the temp hits the 350F mark the thermostat turns off the power to the elements but since the element is still very hot the oven continues to heat. This is called "over-run". The temp will rise another 20 to 30 degrees.
Now the oven begins to cool off which it starts to do fairly rapidly since all the surfaces in the oven aren't really 350F yet and heat always travels to cold the oven surfaces that are absorbing the heat.
Now when the thermostat reads that the temperature has dropped to about 340 the thermostat turns the power back on to the element. It takes a little time for the element to start heating again so the oven actually loses a few more degrees before it actually starts gaining temperature. Again the temp rises to about 350 and the element switches off again and the overun only goes about 15 degrees hotter. The temp then starts to fall again taking longer this time until it drops to 340 since all the surfaces by this time have pretty much settled close to the 350 mark.
This cycling continues until the the cycle waves are only fluctuating only about 10 degrees.
On a temperature chart it looks like an intial large wave and large trough with each successive wave getting smaller and smaller until you have a very small wave that continues to stay the same size.

So preheating an oven does actually help stabilize the oven temps. But long preheats really only makes a big difference if your doing "Fine" baking. But as Linda1215 said it won't make a huge difference on Lasagna or a cassarole. Jakvis the techie

 

[Chopstix]

Cipher, I think your text refers to electric ovens right? I don't think it applies to gas ovens.

 

[cipher]

Cipher, I think your text refers to electric ovens right? I don't think it applies to gas ovens.

Good point. For an electric oven it does apply. I'm not sure how a gas oven maintains it's temperature. If it uses a thermostat to measure the air temperature, then preheating is still required since the surfaces inside a gas oven still take time to heat up. Until the surfaces reach the set temperature, the air temps will yo-yo (though not as severely as an electric oven) as the cooler surfaces absorb heat from the hotter air.

 

[Andy M.]

It works basically the same way in a gas oven. The major difference is that the overrun is less because the gas flame turns off and there is less residual heat in the element to continue raising the temperature.

In testing my oven, I found the same kind of over then under repeating. My goal was to get the over and the under to be equal with the average of the max. and min. being the target temp.