I know this has been explained before, but I can't find it anywhere. How do I bake my cake in a terra cotta flower pot? Do I use Pam so it doesn't stick? To what temp. should I heat my oven? About how long should I leave it in? Can I torte the cake when it's finished? Will the cake be stable if I do? Any and all tips and ideas would be VERY appreciated! Thanks guys!!!
-Courtney

If you bake the cake in the pot, make sure you soak the pot in water for about 30 minutes so that it has some moisture in it when you are baking. If you don't do this your cake will lose all of its moisture. You can also line the pot with tin foil to help with the moisture loss and so that you don't lose the cake out the hole in the bottom.
I am sure you could torte the cake, depending on the size of the pot you might want to stick a dowl rod through all of the layers just in case.
Don't know about the baking temperature or time though.

Thank you SO much! Okay, now, any cute ideas as to a filling? I'm using chocolate cake (I want it to look like a flower pot with flowers planted in it, so I'm making flower cookies on sticks too.) My husband suggested gummi worms, and I think it's a great idea, but I don't want JUST gummi worms in the middle. Any ideas on what I could mix them with for a filling? (This whole thing looks great in my head, but who knows if I'll be able to actually do any of this!!!) Oh, and it's for a birthday party for my neices. One's turning 10, the other 8.

When I made my "bushel of crabs" cake I soaked the pot in water (like when baking in clay bakers) and put foil over the hole in the bottom. I did spray the flower pot with the baking spray pam and I baked the cake at 325 for an hour. Oh - I did not use a center dowl and it turned out fine but would probably use one next time to speed the baking along. Take a knife around the edges before inverting it and yes you can torte the cake.

good luck!
Debbie

A center dowl to speed the baking?

How about chocolate pudding so that it looks like mud or dirt?

Oooh! That's agreat idea!!! Thanks!

Take a metal dowel- maybe like a metel skewer used to make shishkabobs to help have more heat conducted into the middle of the cake so that it bakes faster.
I meant a dowel rod for when you assemble the cake tp keep it stable.

Aha! Gotcha. Thanks sooo much, I really appreciate it.

You can use crushed up chocolate cookies for dirt too and you can put the gummy worms through it like they are crawling through the dirt.

Debbie

Oh! I love this site! You guys are just brimming with the best ideas!!!

If it's really tall, I suggest torting it into four layers...three cuts. That way, you can fill two spaces (the top and bottom cut) with filling and the middle cut with the icing that you are using. So, when you go to cut it, you don't get huge tall pieces that don't serve well...you can lift off the top half at the middle cut where the icing is and make two servable sized cakes. That's what I did for my popcorn cake and it worked really well.

My .02,
Suzanne M.

I hope this makes sense...if I haven't explained it well...ask me to try again.

MAkes perfect sense. Thanks! I'll definately do that!

Check out the flower pot cake at this website.
http://www.mikesamazingcakes.com/wedding.html