Tips on Cakes

I have no idea how long I've been baking cakes. It was probably no more than 10 or 11 years ago that I actually started making birthday cakes with piping on them, but I've made cakes for longer than that. I'm guessing closer to 20 years. And yet I'm still just now learning tips that are making cake baking much easier.

• One thing I just learned yesterday was that many bakers use a combination of equal parts shortening, flour and oil mixed together to grease a pan before pouring in cake batter. It causes the cake to come out really easily. I tried this yesterday, and it totally worked. Brilliant. I'll be doing this every time I bake a cake now.
• I found a few tips for getting a flatter, more even cake. One is to dampen a towel, wrap it around the cake pan, then safety pin it in place. This works similarly to metallic cake strips that you can purchase, but you probably already have the right size towel and a safety pan in your house. And finally I just read today that, if you bake a cake at a lower temperature (like 300 degrees instead of 350) for a longer period of time, you will also have a flatter cake.
• Using a cake leveler - I bought one of these to use for Rachel's birthday cake last year. It's a metal frame with a wired stretched between two metal posts, both of which have rubber tips on the ends. I wasn't quite sure how to use it but figured I was just supposed to push the leveler across the cake to cut off the amount above the wire. Trying to do it that way, however, just resulted in the top of the cake getting ripped up a bit, not a nice even surface. So I looked it up online and found that I was backwards. The cake leveler stays in one place (hence the rubber-tipped ends) and you place the cake on a piece of wax paper. Then you put one hand on the leveler, holding it straight, and the other on the cake and gently but firmly push the cake through the leveler. Wiggling it a bit back and forth as you push gives you a nice, even top (or bottom, if you're going to flip it over after leveling).

I guess it proves you're never too old to learn new things :)