Prepping Cake Pans

This is my foolproof tutorial of my preferred method of prepping cake pans: grease and flour. Your cakes will seriously drop out of the pan so clean!

This post may contain affiliate links, please see my disclosure policy.

Step One

For this method - in addition to your pans - you are going to need two ingredients: shortening and flour. The utensils pictured are completely optional.

Step Two

You are going to spread the shortening all around both the bottom and the sides of the pan. I typically use a pastry brush to do this, but you certainly don't need to. You can definitely spread the shortening around by holding the stick with your hand (it just gets a little messy). Another example would be to use a Ziploc inside-out to hold the shortening while spreading to avoid greasy fingers.

Step Three

Next, put a small amount of flour into your cake pan (1 tbsp is plenty!). You'll want the flour to cling to every inch of your pan, so roll it around well to cover everything. You'll notice the flour clumping in areas at first - that's completely normal! You'll want to firmly tap the outside of the pan to loosen the excess flour to create a smooth surface for your batter. Continue rolling the flour around and tapping until the entire inside of your pan is smooth. Dump out the remaining flour.

Step Four

Once you've rolled around the flour and tapped the outside of your pan thoroughly enough, it'll leave you with what's pictured above - a smooth seal of flour on top of the shortening. When your pan looks like this it's ready for your cake batter.

Cake Pan Prep Complete!