My latest hobby has become baking.  After reading a variety of blogs that mentioned Rose’s books I decided to purchase The Cake Bible, The Bread Bible, The Pie and Pastry Bible and ofcourse Rose’s Heavenly Cakes.  Last night I ventured to make my first cake from my newly acquired cookbooks and I choose the Lemon Poppyseed Sour Cream cake (because I absolutely love the lemon poppyseed cake at Starbucks).  I am new to the whole cake baking thing so I had no clue what a tube pan or flute pan was but I did bake the cake in a non-stick bundt pan.  Not even sure what size bundt pan it was either.  The cake appeared to have risen well however after removing from the oven and adding the syrup/glaze the cake instantly shrunk. It shrunk down and inwards away from the pan.    In the end my cake turned out to be about two inches high if so much.  It still tasted great and met my expectations but I just wanted to know what I did wrong and why the cake shrunk.  Please help.

Did you 1) weigh all your ingredients, and 2) use bleached cake flour?

In addition to Charles’ solutions, also consider whether the cake may have been underbaked.  Did it shrink mostly in the middle and less at the edge where the cake meets the pan?

Julie!  It’s 4:30 am.

I did weigh all my ingredients, however, I didn’t use bleached cake flour. I used regular bleached all-purpose flour.  I’ll be sure to get some cake flour and try the receptive again. Thank you both for the response.  On the plus side I did make the white velvet cake and the chocolate butter cake and they both disappeared before my eyes. Everyone enjoyed it.

CharlesT - 03 November 2012 05:43 AM

Julie!  It’s 4:30 am.

I come from a long line of insomniacs…

Fortheloveofbaking - 05 November 2012 07:01 PM

I did weigh all my ingredients, however, I didn’t use bleached cake flour. I used regular bleached all-purpose flour.  I’ll be sure to get some cake flour and try the receptive again. Thank you both for the response.  On the plus side I did make the white velvet cake and the chocolate butter cake and they both disappeared before my eyes. Everyone enjoyed it.

If your AP flour was bleached, it shouldn’t have caused the collapse of your cake.  Bleached AP can be subbed for cake flour in nearly all of Rose’s recipes as long as you sub by weight. 

Congratulations on your white velvet and All-American chocolate cakes!  Given that those turned out well, I would suspect either the wrong size pan or underbaking (oven too cool or not baked long enough).  A bundt pan is the brand name for a fluted tube pan, so you chose the right thing.  To check the volume of your pan before trying again, pour water into it and see how much it holds.  To check for doneness, consider using an instant read thermometer (CDN has one that Rose recommends, not too pricey) to check the internal temp of the cake- with the tip in the middle (spot likely to be the coolest), it should read at least 190F when you take it out of the oven.  A toothpick inserted in the same spot should come out clean and the cake should spring back when very gently indented with a finger.