Ok, I will assume you have buttered and floured your pan according to your recipe directions. If you can’t get it out of the pan at all, the cooling process won’t matter much. For most recipes when something is baked in a pan, you cool it in the pan, on a rack, for 10 minutes. Then, you remove the cake/loaf/whatever from the pan and then put it back on the rack to cool completely.
I don’t know about you but I always get the little lines from the cooling rack on the top of my cake. It isn’t always a big deal, especially if I am frosting the cake. But, I just learned this by watching Mary Berry and thought I should pass along: flip your cake onto a towel first then back onto the cooling rack. No indentations!
Here is what I did:
- Leave the cake in the pan to cool for 10 minutes
- Lay a clean kitchen towel over the top of the cake. This patterned towel may not have been the best choice but it worked out ok in the end.
- Tightly holding the towel against the pan, pick everything up together and carefully flip it over and lay it on the counter. Take off the cake pan.
- Put the cooling rack upside-down on the cake
- Tightly hold the towel against the cooling rack and flip right side up.
- Voila! Your cake is cooling without any lines or grids on the top.