Cake Strips - the secret to flat cake layers

Hi hi! I am just popping in to share all my tips and tricks on cake strips and how to use them! I truly used to think that cake strips were a waste of time, but since using them, I realise they really do make a difference in how flat your cake bakes up. While they are a little bit more work, I'm never going to ask you to do something that isn't worth it. Here's a quick and dirty on why I love them:

• The cakes bake up flat. Because of how cake strips work, they mean you get a nice flat cake that is so much easier to work with. No big dome in the middle of your cake that you have to trim off and end up with exess cake.
• More cake makes it into your cake. Flatter cakes = less trimming = more cake actually makes it into your cake because you have less wastage.
• No overbaked edges. Using cake strips I find the edges of my cake bake up a little 'blonder', meaning you avoid the risk of a tough cake crust from it over baking at the edges.

I tested my vanilla cake recipe both using and not using cake strips to give you a side by side comparison, and the difference speaks for itself. If you can be bothered, the results really are worth it.

What even are cake strips? The Science Behind them

The reason that a cake domes? Because the edges bake before the middle does. The cake pan is hotter at the edges, so the sides of the cake bake first and 'set', which means that as the middle continues to bake and rise, it has nowhere to go, so it domes. Adjusting the oven temperature to a little lower helps to prevent this, but cake strips really make a big difference to how flat your cake is.

Here's how cake strips work: Cake strips are essentially just a wet material that is wrapped around the outside of the cake pan before baking. They slow down the speed that the edge of the cake bakes at so that it bakes at a similar time to the middle, giving you a flat cake. Even baking = a flat cake. The wet material stops the sides of the cake getting too hot.

You can either buy cake strips custom made for the purpose (I have a few sets of the Wilton Bake Even Strips that I have owned for years and years and you can use them over and over), or you can make your own at home (more on this later in the post).

Do cake strips really work? A side by side comparison

Unfortunately, yes they do. I am one of those people who hates to add extra steps if I don't need to / the outcome isn't worth the effort, and cake strips are one of those things which are worth it.

To demonstrate this, I made my Vanilla cake recipe (which I swear I made a hundred times during the recipe testing process), and added a cake strip to one pan and not the other. I weighed the quantity of batter in the pan, so every variable was the same, except for the cake strip.

You can see the results in the image below - the pan with the cake strips baked up super evenly, flatter, and the edges of the cake didn't slump in. You can see how much was needed to be trimmed off to make the cakes perfectly flat to assemble them, and that the cake which had a cake strip used ended up with less wastage and more even edges.

diy cake strips

If you don't own your own cake strips but still want to give this method a try, you can easily make your own cake strips at home. Either you can use an old towel cut into strips just narrower than your pan and secured with safety pins, or you can use a damp paper towel - fold it up into a strip that is just narrower than the edge of the pan, and then secure with a strip of tin foil that is slightly wider than the strip of paper towel.

Both these methods work great, I have demonstrated the paper towel version in the images below. The old towel method is probably more similar to the purpose made cake strips method as the towel will hold more moisture, so choose what works best for you (we didn't have any towels that could be cut up!)