1,548 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Unmoulding cakes while hot

When you make a cake, pound cake or whatever (what bakers call a "travel cake" because it's easy to carry around) you've most likely made a batter, either by hand or in a food processor, which you then pour into a buttered pan.

It's a classic, and I've already talked to you about 2 or 3 tips on cold dough, or how to have a nice opening on the top etc.

That was all about the pre-bake period, but let's look at the post-bake period.

39 K 4.6/5 (25 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Baking Cooking Cake Unmoulding Tips

Last modified on: February 6^th 2021

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Unmoulding cakes while hot

First of all, the control of the baking process

First of all, the most important thing is the control of the baking process, let's be clear: a baking time indicated for a cake in a recipe is most of the time very approximate. This baking time depends on your oven, the temperature of the oven, the oven itself, the temperature of the batter, the type of pan etc. etc. The only thing missing is the age of the captain...

So the only good way to check if a cake is cooked properly is to stick a knife in the middle, if it comes out dry, the cake is cooked, and if not (trace of raw dough) it needs more time.

Not enough cooked

Enough cooked

The unmoulding

Imagine that it is well cooked => you turn off the oven, put on the gloves and take the mould out of the oven to put it on a surface that does not fear heat.
And then you wait for it to cool down.

Well no, that would be a mistake, if you do that, the cake will cool in its tin, and badly or rather unevenly, the tin acting as a heat preserver. Worse, it will form on the edges of the mold some kind of steam bubbles that will deform your cake, which gives this kind of defect:

Note that the defect will be accentuated with metal or glass molds, which conduct heat better, and a little mitigated with those made of silicone or paper.

What to do?

It's quite simple, you have to unmould your hot cake, very hot even, and put it immediately on a grid.
The easiest way to do this is :
- Once the mold is removed from the oven, wait 1 or 2 minutes that the cake begins to cool and shrink a little, it facilitates the removal
- Keep the gloves on, tip the pan with one hand, put your other hand underneath and shake lightly until the cake falls into your hand
- Turn it over and put it on a rack to cool down in a quiet place
- Bonus: Put the pan to soak right away, to make cleaning easier, and leave the oven door off so that it cools down faster (and the internal fan stops)

cake sur grille

It's all very simple, but this way your beautiful cake will cool down faster, and above all without warping.

In summary: You must remove a cake from the oven as soon as it is baked, otherwise it will warp.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,9235

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,3725

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,269

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20253,8345

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20258,2853

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201768 K 24.2

Making the most of seeds: Dry roasting

In cooking, and particularly in baking, there are a lot of seeds we can use, such as linseed, sesame, poppy, etc. Usually, recipes simply say to add them just as they are to the mixture or dough. To make a seeded loaf, for example, prepare a plain bread dough as usual, then, towards the end of...
January 30^th 201563 K4.0

How to avoid lumps

You've probably come across this unpleasant phenomenon where, when you try to incorporate an ingredient (usually a solid or powder) into a preparation (usually a liquid), the mixture doesn't mix properly and you end up with little "balls" or little lumps of the solid part that refuse to mix with the...
October 9^th 202023 K4.8

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201379 K4.0

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201883 K 24.3