RBOEHME- whenever i get gummy-bottom cake i obviously find that i placed the pan on the heavy baking tray, not directly on the oven rack. repeating the same recipe with the tray removed seems to be the solution for me.

Great tip, Nushera!

Once again, Nushera’s comment points to underbaking as the problem. Placing the cake pan on another pan will tend to insulate the bottom and slow down cooking there.

rboehme, it surely sounds like it would help to check your oven temperature! Or if that’s going to be difficult, you could try turning the oven up by 10 degrees or so the next time you bake this recipe, and see if that helps. You say cakes back in about the right time, but a bit towards the longer end of the cooking time - once again, a sign that your oven might be running a little cool.

When I first got my stove, the oven was quite accurate - but now, five years later, I’m finding that it is running cool by somewhere around 15-20 degrees. Maybe sometime I’ll pay to get it adjusted, but in the meantime, I’m hovering by the oven window watching the thermometer inside the oven. It helps my baking results a lot!

I think the problem here is the glass pan; I would say that the glass is fairly thick, and thus would have the “on a baking pan” problem.

I used to get this problem when I first using the two-stage (one-bowl) method.  The problem had two forms: (a) gummy layer and (b) gummy spots.

Here are the things that seem to have made a difference for me:

1. Baking to the upper range of the stated baking time.  This seems to have taken care of gummy spots.
2. Making sure that I stop to scrape my mixer in between mixing stages.  I think the usual division in RLV’s CB is 1.5 min, 20 sec, 20 sec, 20 sec - after the first 1.5 min and the second 20 sec interval, I scrape the bottom of the bowl and my beater to make sure the ingredients are well incorporated.  No gummy layers since doing it this way.
3. Oh, the big one:  I may have used unbleached AP flour when I was first trying the two-stage method, but I don’t remember.  I have since used cake flour or a combination of cake flour and bleached AP in conjunction with (1) and (2) and I don’t have this problem anymore.

Julius- great findings! using the hand mixer in 2-stage method can lead to shocking result if the batter is not THOROUGHLY mixed(point#2 in your posting). and a “heavy” flour just adds fuel to the fire(point#3).
weighing i/o measuring by volume is also a good idea.

I bought my wife a scale and a couple of Rose’s books for Christmas.  This was the first recipe we tried.  (We also made pop overs and Scone’s and dough is rising for some biscuits to cook tomorrow.)  We used a glass pan and the cake texture came out perfect.  Ours was the Lemon poppy version.  It was a little too lemony, but I didn’t really measure the lemon juice very well.  We did line the pan with wax paper as we didn’t have any parchment on hand and we greased and floured it.  I am wondering if the cake is having trouble climbing up the glass wall of the pan.  Did you grease and flour the pan or use something like baker’s Joy?  Did you line the pan with anything?  Those are my suggestions, along with getting an oven thermometer and checking to make sure it is getting hot enough.