Cakes are baked in from fifteen minutes to three or four hours. The heat of the oven should be moderate at first, that the mixture, being evenly heated, may rise throughout. If the oven be too hot at first, the cake will crust or brown over before it becomes sufficiently light; then the mixture in rising will break through the weakest place (usually the centre) and run over the surface. Mrs. Lincoln gives the following excellent directions for baking cake: "Divide the time required into quarters. During the first quarter the heating is not manifested in appearance except by the rising; during the second the cake should continue to rise, and begin to brown; then it should become all over a rich golden brown, and, in the last quarter, settle a little, brown in the cracks, and shrink from the pan."

Sometimes, especially in the oven of a coal or wood range, it seems necessary to move a cake. In the "first quarter," or early in the second, it may be moved very gently; after this screen with tin baking sheets or paper; for, when a cake has reached its full height, and the cells have not become fixed by the heat, the slight jar of moving breaks down the cells, and no carbon dioxide remains by which other cells may be evolved, and the cake is "heavy." If desired, the oven door may be opened a reasonable number of times, providing it be done without jarring the cake.

Cakes, with the exception, perhaps, of pound cake, are fully baked when they shrink from the pan, and settle to a level. All cakes are well done, when they make only a slight singing noise, or when the surface rebounds at once on being pressed with the finger.