How do you make your sandwich cakes flat?

[AllGoodDogs]

Mine always rise so much in the middle that I lose too much height by lopping the top off to make a flat sandwich cake. Is there a knack to getting them to rise evenly? Is it the flour (normal SR I use), too much mixing vs not enough.... Help me please, I have a 4 layer chequer board recipe I have my eye on but it'll be no good if its all wonky or only 2" deep! Thanks

Bake each layer in separate tins rather than splitting one cake, and make sure your oven isn't too hot causing them to rise too fast and peak.

Wet newspaper and wrap it round your tins, stops the sides cooking too quickly which causes the middle to rise

I chopped up an old towel that I wet and pin around the outsides of the cake tins instead of newspaper. Works a treat (but I miss having the tops to nibble on while decorating the rest!)

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Check your oven isn't too hot. My sister had this same problem in a new (to her) oven. She realised it was a fan oven so the temperature needed to be slightly lower - she makes very level cakes now. And i help her eat them

When you’re cooling the cakes on a wire rack, turn them upside down and they should settle down flat

I’m no expert, but have found that lowering the oven rack helps, as does turning over the sponges so the flat bit appears at the top of the finished cake.

Oops - location info on! Will have to wait till morning to ask for deletion

Ooh that’s a lovely looking flat cake tinsel! Think that’s what our cheapskate copies are tying to mimic with the towels and newspaper, but they look like they do a great job.

Wow loads of responses all of a sudden, thanks! Will give some a go.

That cake looks fab, tinsel. Could rest a spirit level on it

Thank you, I feel rather proud

Definitely bake your cakes in sandwich tins, low and slow. I do mine at 150/160 deg C on fan setting. Also, my cleaner trained as a baker in Hungary and her top tip is to make a deep well in the middle of the mixture and pull the excess out to the sides with a scraper/palette knife. It works a treat!

I do that too mumslave but always worry that I’m knocking the air out of it if I spend too much time faffing. I think it helps rhe cake to ‘climb’ up the sides of the tin if there’s some mixture already stuck up there.

As long as it’s done quickly and confidently in one motion (ie not repeatedly pulling the mixture around), don’t worry about knocking the air out. If the alternative is to have a cake with a big peak that gets cut off and wasted, a slightly less risen sponge isn’t so bad anyway (I say this as a fully trained patisserie chef).