Silicone cake pan -- tips or tricks?

[eamcd]

My daughter got one of the "as seen on tv" giant cupcake pans for Christmas. Tomorrow's her 11th birthday and she wants to make one for her friends.

We've used it once. While it worked overall (and looked cute), the center of the cake in both "pans" rose up into a dome and the edges were a little crispy. It took quite a while for the center to be cooked, so the edges got a little brown (not burnt).

She's using a cake mix, because these are her first tries at doing cakes completely by herself.

We trimmed off the "bumps" on both baked cakes so we could to assemble it. So it worked, but was a little smaller since the extra cake was trimmed off so the pieces could be stacked.

Any tips for baking in silicone pans? Do you adjust the temp or timing? Any ideas of how to keep the "mounds" forming in the middle?

Here's the pan:
http://www.amazon.com/Allstar-Marketi...

[roxlet]

I think that you should try to put a magic cake strip around the perimeter of the pan. A magic cake strip is a strip of fabric with the outside sewn with silver heat resistent fabric. You soak it in water and then wrap it around the cake pan. This prevents the outside of the cake from cooking before the center of the cake, and therefore prevents doming. in the web site recommended below, Rose talks about their use. I use them on all my cake pans -- springform pans with cheesecake included, which stops the cheesecake from cracking.

[sunshine842]

I'm not sure a cake strip would work in this instance, for two reasons -- first, because the pan is silicon, it doesn't transfer heat like a metal pan to begin with.

Second, cake strips are usually an inch or so high -- won't have much, if any, impact on a silicon pan that's several inches tall.

[sunshine842]

Looks like there's lots of suggestions in the comments on Amazon -- I'd pay particular attention to the recommendation to NOT scrimp on the nonstick spray.

[eamcd]

Thanks! We did spray it well and had absolutely no problem getting it out of the pans/molds.

We did lower the temp, but maybe need to lower it even further.

I did check out the reviews, but unless I missed one, I wasn't clear on the strange hill forming in the center of both pans. So I thought there might be other tricks to using the silicone.

It does turn out cute, even without doing any fancy frosting or decorating. Just buttercream and sprinkles and it looks like a giant cupcake.

[sunshine842]

this talks about domed cakes and what to do about them, from the lady who really did write The Cake Bible:

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/200...

maybe a little extra baking powder or butter will help out.