When cooking cakes (especially lemon cakes for whatever reason; perhaps they're sweeter or have a different type of sugar?), I have trouble with the surface of the cake becoming too brown or burning while waiting for the inside to cook through. I frequently have to leave the cake in substantially longer than what the recipe states, and do my best to remove burnt bits afterwards.
This is probably partly because I often use a deep tin in order to get the right shaped cake for decorating, but I'm interested in techniques to reduce the browning/burning on the surface.
If I reduce the oven temperature, cooking time will take much longer, but that might be ok if the surface doesn't burn. How much would reducing the temperature help with this problem?
Are there other techniques that could slow the cooking of the top surface of the cake, such as shielding from above with tin foil, or increasing the humidity of the oven with a dish of water?