Baking Secret

Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of a very dear friend, so Saturday I baked her a cake. She really enjoys chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, but I hadn't made peanut butter icing in years. You know where I went looking for a good recipe; Pinterest of course! While I found an icing that is now a favorite ( you will have to email me for the recipe, I think I'm keeping it a secret for awhile). My  mom complimented it twice; once she said she thought she liked the icing more than the cake.

Well, the icing is not the secret I am sharing (today anyway). While I was perusing Pinterest, I stumbled across a baker's secret, which I had not heard of before that bakes your cakes without that domed center you usually get when baking cakes. For those of you who like to decorate cakes know that you usually have to trim your cakes to make them flat and even. Well, go figure there's an "app" for that!

These are bake even strips that you wet and wrap around your cake pan before baking!  You can buy them in packages of two or four strips.  The package of two strips joined together was perfect for wrapping around a 13x9 pan. Knowing I was baking two cakes to make a double layer, I wanted flat cakes.

Behold, I got flat cakes!

I tried to take a picture while the cakes were baking so you could see how they baked from the outside into the center. If you look closely you will be able to see the outline of how the cakes baked.

Can you see what I mean?  Who thinks up this stuff!? 

The cake and icing were delicious! I was a happy baker not having to trim anything off the cakes and there were NO crumbs in the icing; didn't even need to 'dirty' ice it first.

* I bought my baking strips at Michael's but you could order them from Amazon.