How to Keep Cakes from Sticking to Pan

It never fails. You bake the perfect smelling cake that looks beautiful in the pan. Your head spins of thoughts of ways to decorate it until you dump it out of the pan and half of the cake stays stuck onto the pan itself. Then all your time is consumed by trying to piece the cake back together rather than decorating it. There’s an easy way to overcome that from the beginning, just prepare your pans the right way and the cake will not stick to the bottom of the pan! So how do you do that? It’s pretty easy. First you’ll need the baking pans that you plan on using, shortening, parchment paper, scissors and flour. Unfortunately this technique will not work on pans that are for bundt cake or other specialty molded cake pans, like elmo’s face cake pans. But if you cake pan has a flat bottom, the shape of the pan does not matter and it should always work. First you need to grease the entire pan, especially the corners using a paper towel and the shortening. Just put a little shortening and rub it all over the inside of the pan, in the corners and everywhere until the pan is well massaged and loved. You shouldn’t have any big white splotches of shortening, it’s just hard to take pictures while doing this. Now cut out a piece of parchment paper that will fit perfectly in the bottom of your pan without going up the sides of the pan. It helps if you just lay the pan on top of the paper and trace around the bottom. Them just cut it away but cut about an extra 1/4th of an inch off of your template. Place it in the pan and make adjustments to the size as necessary. The shortening will help it stick to the pan so just gently press it down and it should stay! Now you’re going to flour each pan with the parchment paper still in the pan. Pour a little flour into one pan and roll the pan around to make sure the flour gets in all the edges and up the sides of the pan. The flour will not stick to the paper but don’t worry about it. Just make sure that you get the edges and sides, the parchment paper has the bottom covered. This is what they should look like when they are ready. There is a fine layer of flour all over the edges and corners of both pans and if you look closely you can see the parchment paper in the bottom of the pan. Now just add your batter and bake! When your cake is done in the oven, let it cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning it over onto a cooling rack or a plate. You might want to gently run a butter knife around the edge of the cake first to loosen it if it has not pulled away from the edges.  As you can see, the paper is still stuck to the bottom of the cake. All you need to do now is gently pull off the paper and throw it away. Then you’ll have a beautiful unfrosted layer waiting for you to decorate it and ship a piece to me. That wasn’t so hard was it? No fancy pans to make, just a simple way that helps keep your cake from sticking in the pan.