Bake The Perfect Cake.

To create the perfect cake for decorating:

1) Start with a good, quality pan, properly prepared for baking.

2) Preheat oven to the temperature specified in your recipe.

3) Prepare the pan by polishing it liberally with solid vegetable shortening. Never use butter, margarine or a liquid based vegetable oil as those can cause the edges of your cake to crisp and burn. Oils and butters can also cause your cake to stick to the pan.

4) Dust the pan lightly with flour. Turn the pan in your hands to make sure all the greased surfaces are covered with the flour. As a rule try to use about two tablespoons of flour per nine inch pan.

Tap the bottom of the pan after dusting to see if there are any shiny spots. If so, dust the pan again.

Another popular method is to simply line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and spray the sides of the pan with cooking spray.

(Once cooled, the cake should come out easily. Then, just peel the parchment paper off the bottom of the cake.)

5) Pour cake batter in the pan and spread the batter evenly with a spatula. Give the pan a light bang on your table counter to remove any bubbles that might be in the batter.

6) Bake cake on the middle rack of a preheated oven for the amount of time specified in the recipe.

7) To test whether the cake is done, insert a toothpick or cake tester near center and remove. If tip is clean, cake is done. If batter is visible, bake a little longer until toothpick comes out clean.

When done, remove your cake from the oven and cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes.

8) To unmold the cake place a cooling rack on top and flip it over so that when the cake is unmolded it will be resting on the rack. Lift the pan carefully off of the cake and gently brush away any loose crumbs.

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