Perfect Your Cake Layers

With Easter Sunday quickly approaching, you'll be wanting to show off your prettiest spring cakes. Here are a few tips and tricks to ensure your layers stack up to perfection.

Related:Luscious Layer Cakes

1. Measure Accurately. Extra sugar or leavening will cause a cake to fall; too much flour makes it dry.

2. Grease Pans with solid vegetable shortening. Margarines with a high liquid-to-fat ratio and butter (which is about 20 percent water) can cause layers to stick to the pan.

3. Bake and Freeze completely cool cake layers in zip-top plastic freezer bags up to 1 month before assembling and frosting, if desired.

4. Make and Chill pastry cream or fruit fillings up to 1 day ahead. For a firmly set filling, don't tempt fate and trim the required chill time.

5. Pipe a Ring of frosting just inside the top edge of each cake layer to hold the filling and prevent bulging. Add filling, and spread to edge of ring.

6. Wrap Cakes in plastic wrap after filling, and chill 8 to 24 hours to allow the layers to settle before spreading the frosting.

For more great recipes, tips, and tricks, head over to SouthernLiving.com!