How To Get Sticks To Stay In Cake Pops

The baking trials: What's the best way to prep your cake pan to prevent sticking? We tested a dozen options. Here’s the best one.

One of the most stressful moments in baking is turning your cake pan over the cooling rack and waiting to see if the cake drops out of the pan intact — or sticks partway out and crumbles. Is today’s bake going to be ecstasy … or agony? 

To avoid a messy fate, we tested a number of methods and found the best way to line your pan for a stick-free guarantee. 

Vanilla Cake On A Stick

Your goal is to prevent your cake from sticking by creating a barrier between batter and pan (e.g., parchment, nonstick spray, or shortening and flour) prior to adding cake batter. 

After testing a dozen different options for this article, I’m happy to report that all but one resulted in an intact cake: no sticking, no crumbling. That said, some required a bit more tapping and jiggling to get the cake to release. Below are the methods I settled on, in order of preference, starting with my top pick for guaranteed success. Results are based on how each performed using Chef Zeb’s Hot Milk Cake in a 6 round pan (one recipe yields four 6 cakes). 

Parchment + nonstick pan spray. Silicone-coated baking paper (parchment) is the cake baker’s best friend. Line the bottom of your pan with nonstick parchment, then coat the pan’s sides with nonstick pan spray. Some people espouse coating the bottom of the pan with spray before adding the parchment, then spraying the parchment as well; if you lean toward a “belt and suspenders” approach, feel free to do this. 

Light And Fluffy Chiffon Cake

Baked on parchment, your cake will drop right out of the upended pan onto its cooling rack, and the parchment is easily peeled off the warm cake’s bottom. Parchment rounds are handy for round pans; if you’re baking in a square or rectangular pan, choose half-sheet parchment cut to size. 

We especially recommend the parchment-pan spray combination for cakes with sticky add-ins, like meltable chips or bits of chocolate or caramel, fresh or dried fruit or anything else (mini marshmallows?) that can become sticky when warm.

The following options yielded cakes that released from the pan intact, with only minor sticking: some crumbs left along the edge, or very thin patches of soft cake in the bottom. 

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Cake goop. If you choose not to use parchment, homemade “cake goop, ” known to seasoned cake bakers everywhere, is a super alternative. Made by mixing equal parts (by volume) vegetable shortening, flour, and vegetable oil, goop is simply painted onto your pans with a pastry brush (or rubbed on with a paper towel). Make up a batch* and store it in the fridge; it’ll stay spreadable and ready to use even when chilled.

Here’s a tip: My fellow blogger, Rossi, says you can substitute cocoa powder for flour to make chocolate goop — perfect for chocolate cakes, where flour would clash visually with the cake’s rich, deep-dark color. 

Nonstick pan spray, alone or dusted with flour; granulated sugar; cocoa powder, or nut flour (e.g., almond). Pan spray’s big advantage over older methods (shortening, butter) is its easy application and thorough coverage.  

How To Stop Cake Pops From Falling Off The Sticks

For an enticing, lightly crunchy crust, spray your cake pan (bottom and sides) with nonstick spray, then sprinkle it heavily with granulated sugar.

Dusting with flour is common, but you can branch out by matching the “dust” with your recipe, e.g., cocoa with chocolate cake, or almond flour for a touch of nutty flavor in yellow cake. Personally, I love to dust my spray-coated pan with granulated sugar; it adds a tiny bit of crunch and gleam to what otherwise might be a rather plain cake crust. 

Vegetable shortening, alone or dusted with the options above. If you’re perfectly satisfied with this traditional method of preparing a cake pan, then stick with it (though for interest’s sake you may want to try dusting with something other than flour). Shortening’s downside: you may sometimes get a hint of oily flavor, especially if your shortening isn’t super-fresh. 

Easy Cake Decorating Ideas

Butter, alone or dusted with the options above. Butter works less well than pan spray or shortening (the milk solids in the butter add a bit of stickiness), but with some coaxing — gentle loosening, firm tapping — cakes come out with perhaps just a bit of residue left in the bottom of the pan. 

Pan spray dusted with confectioners’ sugar. How about adding sweetness to your pan coating without the crunch of granulated sugar? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but apparently the cornstarch in the sugar mixed with the cake batter’s liquid and turned into glue! My experimental cake stuck badly and broke into pieces. 

Give your nonstick pans the help they need to yield great results. Had I lined this pan with parchment and/or treated it with pan spray, the cake would have popped right out.

How To Build A Layered Cake

Nonstick pan without any prep. “My pan’s nonstick, so why do I need to coat it with anything?” Cake batter is inherently sticky, and as it bakes it bonds to your pan’s surface. Even a nonstick pan can only go so far to resist this. Don't be stubborn: Prep even your nonstick cake pan.

If you use a nonstick cake pan — a 9” round, 8” square, Bundt, springform, whatever — and you prep it with pan spray, wash the pan in warm soapy water just as soon as you’ve removed the cake, while the pan is still warm. Pan spray bonds to nonstick pans as they cool, forming a tacky residue that builds up over time and, counterintuitively, negates the pan’s nonstick qualities. It’s a real pain to scrub off that stickiness without damaging the pan’s surface — so clean up as you go! 

PJ Hamel grew up in New England, graduated from Brown University, and was an award-winning Maine journalist (favorite topics: sports and food) before joining King Arthur Flour in 1990. Hired to write the newly launched Baker’s Catalogue, PJ became the small but growing company’s sixth employee.    ...

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Baking trials: What’s the best way to stabilize whipped cream? From cornstarch to crème fraîche, here’s how to keep your whipped cream from weeping and deflating.This cake. It is absolutely, without a doubt, the best chocolate sheet cake ever. God bless my mother-in-law, who shared the recipe with me when I got engaged to Ladd. I tweaked it slightly over time with sinful results. The icing is poured over the cake while it's still warm, creating a thick fudgy effect, and the resulting homemade cake is moist beyond imagination, chocolaty and rich like no tomorrow, and 100% of the time, causes moans and groans from anyone who takes a bite. You can skip the nuts if you want, but they add delicious crunch and texture to the cake. Whether it's birthday parties or holidays or any ol' weeknight, every occasion deserves some of this decadence.

Chocolate Mint Cake

Sheet cake is thinner than a traditional layer cake, which means it bakes much more quickly. I make mine in an 18-by-13-inch sheet pan, but a jelly roll pan works fine too. Either way, you end up with a high frosting-to-cake ratio!

Some say that the first recipe for a thin chocolate sheet cake originated in a Texas newspaper sometime in the '50s or '60s… but no one really knows. Don't worry about where it came from, just make one—you won't regret it!

Here's a good rule of thumb with sheet cakes: It's about the same amount of batter that goes into a regular 9-inch layer cake or a 9-by-13-inch cake—it just ends up much thinner because it's in such a big pan.

Chocolate Chocolate Cake

Dutch processed cocoa, Madagascar vanilla extract, or creme fraiche. All you need for this wonderful cake is sugar, flour, salt, butter, cocoa, baking soda, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, powdered sugar, milk, and pecans. Are you ready? Let’s go dance with the devil!

Living way out in the country, I often find myself missing key ingredients for many recipes and have had to learn to improvise. I usually don’t have buttermilk in the fridge when I want to make this cake, so here’s what I do: pour just under 1/2 cup regular milk into the measuring cup, then add enough regular vinegar to the milk to bring the quantity up to 1/2 cup. Within seconds, it turns into buttermilk and works perfectly. Try it sometime!

In a saucepan (I always wash and use the same one as before), melt 1 3/4 sticks of regular butter (not to be confused with 1 1/2 sticks or 2 sticks, for pete’s sake.)

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., but I was too embarrassed to admit that I wouldn’t be able to tell you what quantity that is. So add a pound, but hold a little back, and please don’t ask me how much that is, because I hate math.

The warmth of the