1,515 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

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.

36 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

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20252,0315

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20254,0485

Thinning out herbs

If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8^th 20252,2445

Add a bay leaf

Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31^th 20252,3545

Parsley stems

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 20252,556 13

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The grease spray

For well opened (puffed) cakes

It's always nice to have a well puffed up cake after baking, not only will it taste good but it looks great too. Let's see how to get this beautiful shape almost every time.
January 23^th 201932 K4.2

The art of the charlotte

In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
February 27^th 201343 K4.3

The Holy Grail of French bakers

While browsing through the recipes on this site, you may have noticed that while I adore cooking (everything, in fact, to do with eating and drinking), I am particularly drawn to bakery: bread, viennoiseries and all that goes with them – it’s a real passion of mine; I love making them and I...
March 24^th 201818 K 34.7

A few tips for effective kneading at home

When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23^th 2021279 K 23.7