Help! Why does my cake have a skin on top!

[Debs102]

Hi everyone! This is driving me mad! Whenever I make a cake it always ends up with a sort of wrinkly skin on top that can be somewhat peeled off! It doesn't affect the taste of the cake or texture and everybody has always said how lovely my cakes are but I hate the skin thing. I usually cut the stuff off and that's fine when covered in buttercream, fondant etc, but sometimes I would just like to sprinkle some icing sugar on top but it looks horrible! Any ideas would be much appreciated! The recipe I always follow is I weigh my eggs and then have the equal amount of weight for my flour, caster sugar and fat (I use Stork not butter). My method is I cream the Stork and sugar then add eggs and then fold in the flour. I use self raising flour I don't use any baking powder. Cake is baked at 160 degrees for about 40 mins. Thanks!

Did you get an answer? I can't see any on the thread. I have the same issue 😩

It's pretty normal, I usually take it off too when I'm filling a cake as I actually don't like to see layer of brown in middle of cake. I use butter so it's not the marg causing it. It's just a feature of certain recipes, I don't get it on chocolate cakes for example or on a whisked fatless sponge, well there is a brown 'skin' as such but it's not loose or easily peeled, it's just the cooked layer. I have never noticed it so bad though that I wouldn't just sprinkle sugar on top if that was what I wanted to do.

When you say baked for 40 minutes what size cake is that? I bake in layers usually and none take longer than about 30 mins so maybe you are overcooking slightly? The less cooked the top of cake is the less likely to peel off but that's not always the best solution either, maybe putting it lower down in oven unless it's a fan oven when it won't matter where it is!