If you’ve ever baked a cake and ended up with a domed top, you know the frustration! Trimming and levelling it before stacking layers wastes cake and makes your layers shorter. That’s where baking strips for cakes come in. These simple tools help you bake tall, flat cake layers every time so you can skip the trimming, save time, and get professional-looking results straight from the oven.
Baking strips are long strips of fabric with loops at one end. They're designed to wrap around the outside of your cake pans. When soaked in water before baking, they keep the outer edge of the cake tin cooler for longer. This means the cake bakes more evenly from the outside in, preventing domed cakes.
The process is simple but there are a few important cake baking tips to follow to get the best results.
First, fit your baking strip around your cake pan. Thread the end through both loops and pull it tight. Using both loops is essential! The second loop keeps the end of the strip up so it doesn't touch the hot metal of the oven and catch fire. Slide that loop all the way to the end to hold it in place.
Next, soak the strip in cold water. An extra cake pan works perfectly for this! Just fill it with water and press the strip down until it’s fully submerged. Let it soak for about five minutes while you grease your pans and prepare your cake batter. This ensures the fabric absorbs enough water to stay damp throughout baking.
After soaking, squeeze out the excess water so it’s damp but not dripping. If it’s too wet you’ll create extra steam in your oven. Wrap the strip back around your cake pan and it should fit perfectly if you adjusted it before soaking.
Use baking strips with any cake batter but you'll notice more of a difference with some recipes than others. I notice the most drastic difference with my Very Vanilla Cake layers - more about that next! When using baking strips your cake batter will bake more slowly so add 5 to 10 minutes to the recipe baking time. The extra time is worth it for the flat tops you’ll get!
To show the difference I baked two identical cakes, one with baking strips and one without. The cake with baking strips (on the left) is taller and has a perfectly flat top. The one without (on the right) is shorter and domed, which means you’ll need to trim it before stacking. After trimming, the layer baked without baking strips can be just half the height of the one baked with strips!
Flat cake layers aren’t just prettier, they stack more evenly and have a better texture because they’ve risen evenly from the edges to the centre.
To prevent domed cakes, baking strips are the best tool for baking even layers. They’re reusable, inexpensive, and work with any cake pan size. They’re also a huge time saver because you can go straight from oven to assembly without levelling the cake first.
Baking strips for cakes are available from most cake decorating shops and online baking supply stores. There are a few different brands and designs but they all work in the same way. I love these! I recommend choosing ones with adjustable loops so you can fit them snugly around different sized cake pans.
If you want your cakes to look beautiful both in and out, baking strips are a worthwhile investment. They prevent domed cakes, make layering cakes quicker and easier and give you beautiful, professional-looking layers with every slice. Once you try them, you’ll wonder how you ever baked without them!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on how to use baking strips for cakes:
