Baking Cake Using Shaped Pan

If I were you I'd go online and get an idea/template instead of trying to make it your own from scratch. I can't "make" things myself, but once I have a good idea or template from someone else, it comes out great!!!

I also got this small bottle of "shortening"/cake release from Michael's and it's awesome. You just squeeze some of the liquid butter looking stuff onto the inside of your cake pan and NOTHING sticks or falls apart.

I love Family Fun Magazine! Here's one idea: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/pirate-ship-cake-686286/

Cake release is great stuff. Is your football-shaped pan roughly the same size as the round pan you would normally use? You'll bake your cake at the same temperature, but the cooking time may vary. I would start checking it for doneness around the time a round cake would be ready. You can give it an additional 10 minutes and check again, and so on. It won't burn or dry out if you don't let it go any longer than 10 minutes between checking on it.

By the way, your son will adore the cake, no matter how it turns out. If it crumbles, call it a shipwreck, use cookie crumbs to make a beach and get a little palm tree so the wreck has washed up on the shore, and have a little treasure chest with gold coins spilling out on the sand.

I work at Albertsons in the bakery and we sell (so do LOTS of grocery stores) just the kits for cakes...we have a *cute* Pirate ship cake and using the kits is SO much easier...you pretty much only need to make 2 - 13x9 cakes and stack, only requires minimal cutting and once you put on the pieces-whoala! Pirate ship cake!. Just a thought.

Another suggestion.... it helps make the cakes more evenly shaped..

you know how cakes always rise in the middle, making them "domed" ? That makes decorating sometimes tricky...

that is because as the cake bakes quicker along the edges, it doesn't rise there....

So.... moisten a kitchen towel, or a bunch of paper towels, and wrap them around the edge of the cake...that helps keep the outside of the cake pan cooler, and allows that area to rise a bit more, also. I doesn't really affect the overall baking time of the cake itself. Sometimes you can use small magnets to help keep the towel on the pan, depending on what the pan is made of.

Also... freeze the cake before cutting/decorating, and it is easier... less crumbs.

If you don't get the shortening release that MomOnTheGO mentioned (I've never heard of that - thanks!), you should do the old butter/flour technique on the pan. Really butter it down and dust flour to cover the butter.

Those shaped cake pans are a pain to have the cake release without issue.

Good luck!