I made my sour cream chocolate cake with a ganache frosting for Christmas for the first time ever and it was delicious and looked great. My complaint is that though the layers seemed to rise appropriately (although a little crooked - I think my stove rack must not be exactly level in the middle), when they cooled they weren’t as thick in the middle as they were on the edges. They did appear to be cooked completely.

Why does this happen? Might the oven temperature have been a bit too low? Seems I saw the answer either on the forum or in TCB, but now I can’t find it again.

Thanks.

This is classically due to lack of structure, possibly caused by not enough flour or insufficient mixing.

it could also be from the temperature being too low.  Part of the structure of the cake comes from the cake setting in the innitial baking and if the oven temp is low, this doesn’t happen.  I had this problem and then found out that my new expensive oven was “off” by 25 degrees.  Now I bake at “375” (which is actually 350) and all is right with the world.