My favorite trick for a soft and tender cake- wrapping cake layers while they are warm. As cakes cool, moisture escapes in the form of steam. Wrapping cakes before they’ve cooled traps the stream within the cake. I cool a cake layer in its pan for 15 minutes and then turn it out of the pan and wrap it up. Then I place the cake back in the pan with the bottom side up. This allows the top of the cake to settle as it cools, so any dome will disappear as the cake rests. I cool the wrapped layers in

Slicing a thick cake layer into two thinner, even layers can be tricky. An easy way to guarantee even layers is to split the cake in the pan that you baked it in. For an 8” cake layer, I stacked 6” cake circles until they gave me enough height to raise the cake half way out of the pan. I wrapped the circles in plastic to form a ‘riser,’ and placed it in the pan before putting my chilled cake layer on top. Now the rim of the cake pan becomes a guide for my serrated knife, which cuts easily with a