Cake

So I could not figure out how to get perfect cakes, like the one above, at home. I had no problem getting perfect cakes at school though. I figured it was just the oven and I was going to have to deal with it. That is until I found this nifty little pin on Pintrest. All you do is take strips of towel (I used paper towel) get them wet, not dripping but fairly wet, and wrap it around the cake pan. It took two strips of paper towel so I held them together with paperclips, then bake as directed.
My cakes came out so much better than they had! The wet towel keeps the sides of the cake cooler so they don't bake as fast. The reason you get mounded cakes is because the sides of the cake bake faster and don't have the time to properly rise with the inner portion of the cake. Also, you want to make sure you have a thermometer inside your oven. I couldn't figure out why my stuff wasn't baking correctly until I bought a thermometer and found out my oven was baking 50 degrees hotter that the dial said! That's a lot!
Also a little tip for perfect cupcakes. Bake them 25 degrees cooler that directed and a few minutes longer. Fill them 3/4 full, not 2/3. Doing this they wont be flat, they will mound like you want them too and be soft and fluffy inside!