How do you make a cake lift equally and minimize doming?

Question

Some time ago, I baked a cake (Sachertorte to be exact). The taste and texture was fine, so my recipe is okay.

My biggest issue was the shape. In the middle it was really a lot higher than on the sides. I would like to redo it in the near future, but preferably with a flat(ter) surface. (Especially since I put icing on top and I don't want it to drip off this time.)

Anyone knows the cause of my problem, or even better a solution? I think I put enough butter on the side of my springform pan, in case this is an option.

Answer

When you heat leavened dough, two things happen: 1. leavening agent creates bubbles, causing the fluid/soft dough to rise. For chemically leavened doughs (baking powder or baking soda), the amount of lift mostly depends on the time the bubble creating reaction goes on and the concentration of non-spent leavening agent. 2. The gluten in the dough sets, building a sturdy 3-d mesh of long, branchey molecules. When the mesh is strong enough, further bubbles cannot stretch it bigger, despite the fact that the leavening reaction is still going on. The setting of the mesh depends mostly on heat and the amount of gluten present in flour.

The pattern you are seeing means that your cake gets hotter on the sides than in the middle. The sides get set early and stop rising, while the middle is still soft and continues rising. This happens because the walls of the pan conduct heat to the sides of the cake quicker than heat is conducted inside the cake. You see the phenomenon in an exaggarated form in a muffin, which is usually higher than wide: it is always rounded on top, and often split, because the liquid core from the middle continues to rise after a crust has formed on the surface. There are several ways to alleviate the problem; my list below comes in no particular order, and if somebody can contribute more ideas, I'll be glad to hear them.

A good solution could involve a slower, more even heating method. The first approach which comes to mind would be to use a pan which insulates well. I have had some good results baking a cake in a porcelain quiche pan. Pyrex should also work well. With an insulating pan, the sides will stay liquid longer and rise more. The trouble is that there are no insulating drop-out-bottom pans available (except for a combination of glass bottom and silicone walls, but I think that the glass isolates better than the thinnish silicone), and getting a cake layer out of a quiche pan is very hard. Also, the pan insulates the cake from the bottom and the sides, but not from the top, so you will need to bake it on a lower rack and/or reduce temperature on the upper heater in order to not burn the upper surface. If your batter is not too sticky, you use a parchment paper on the bottom and lots of fat on the sides, you can overcome the getting-it-out-in-one-piece problem, but it is a hassle. Else, you could try some DIY solution, like attaching 2-3 layers of a cut-to-fit silicone rolling mat stripes to the outside of the walls of a metal pan. However, it is quite hard to come up with a good attachment method (glue could release toxic fumes at oven temperatures, if it holds at all). So this method should work, but is somewhat hard to apply. Maybe just a metal cake pan with thicker walls will be enough when combined with other approaches. As I was writing this, I got the idea that preheating the detached bottom of a metal pan together with the oven could help too, but I haven't tried that.

A second approach is to minimize the (3-d) liquid core by making a thin cake. If the middle of the cake gets heated up quickly enough from above and below, it will set short after the walls do, and there will be no unset center to "bloom". So select a bigger pan. I think that Americans mostly use 9 inch pans, but if you used an original sacher recipe from Austria, it is probably meant for a 26 or a 28 cm pan. Also, try baking the two layers separately instead of making a single layer and cutting it. This is unorthodox, as you get more crust than with cutting, but it is better than a hunchbacked sacher. You should use a scale or at least a measuring jug to divide the batter, or else you'll end up with two layers of different thickness. Also remember to reduce the baking time, as the core will heat up faster. Use a toothpick for probing doneness.

The third idea would be to reduce the amount of the leavening agent. The walls will always set before the core, so the core will still expand a little bit more after the walls are firm - provided there is enough baking powder. If the concentration of baking powder at this point is low, you'll get less bubbles, so less lift. Of course, using too low an amount of baking powder will ruin the cake, so you'll have to be cautious and experiment a bit before hitting the correct amount.

The fourth approach would be to give the outer portions of the cake more time to rise (similar to #1) by baking at lower heat. This is somewhat risky, as it can result in a different texture of the final product, due to a different rate at which water evaporates from the dough and a longer baking time. Also, if your temperature is too low, you won't get a golden crust on a light-coloured dough (should be no problem for a frosted cake like the sacher).

The fifth one is to use a flour with less gluten, so you get a mesh which is less dense and needs more time until it gets firm enough to prevent rising. Use cake flour instead of all purpose flour. Edit: a bit more fat will help with inhibiting gluten too, but a big change will change the taste and texture considerably.

All methods I described should attribute to a solution, but probably none of them will be sufficient by itself. You'll have to pick a combination of them and see what works best for you.

Edit: you should also apply all the usual methods for getting a good cake: measure with a scale, use room-temperature ingredients, sift your flour, only combine dry mix with fluid mix at the last moment before putting it into the oven, preheat the oven well. All these ensure a better batter texture, which means a more even heating and a higher quality leavening process (because the ratio of leavening agent to other ingredients is correct, it is mixed up better, the leavening reaction does not start too early, and the heating process is even). So not following these is more likely to result in a lopsided cake or a big bubble somewhere in the cake. I realize that this hasn't happened in the case you describe, but it would be too bad to get an asymmetrically risen cake after you took all the precautions against a disproportionally rising center.

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