Cakes Not Rising :-(

[Firefox]

I've never had much trouble making cakes but for some reason the last 3 cakes I've made have not risen. I'm using the classic 6oz SR flour, 6oz sugar, 6oz butter and 3 eggs with a tsp of baking powder too but nope they are flat like pancakes. What am I doing wrong?

[gossifer]

flour doesn't keep forever - is it old?

[munz]

overbeating?

[pinkmama]

Maybe its something with your oven Firefox? Might not be heating right. Hope its just your flour is too old though!

[gingerbear]

how long do you bake & what temp?

[tortoiseshell]

Do you fold the flour in after beating the butter and sugar. What I do is beat the butter and sugar to 'cream' it, then beat in the eggs, alternating an egg with a spoonful of flour, then 'fold' in the rest of the flour so as not to lose any air. I don't use baking powder at all.

Have you definitely got SR flour?

[Firefox]

I bake it for 1 hour in a preheated oven at gas mark 4. When I cook other things such as roast dinners, chicken nuggets etc they are fine so I don't think its the oven. My SR has a sell by date of end of Aug so maybe it could be that - I was trying to use it up.

As for methods - I've tried several now.
1)The all in one food mixer method,
2)melt butter and sugar together and beat it and mix in rest of ingredients,
3)Whisk eggs and then add to ingredients

Arrghh - none of them seem to be working despite following my recipes to the letter

I followed Nigellas banana bread recipe - even that didn't rise .....

[gingerbear]

You need new flour I think.

[gossifer]

firefox - i know when i bake bread if the flour is old it doesn't work, so i'd assume that it would be the same for other baking???

[tortoiseshell]

What temperature is gas mark 4? I normally cook them for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees. An hour seems quite a long time to me.

[mancmum]

use more baking powder -- if that is old it can go off...

[EnidfromtheVILLAGE]

buy some decent heavyweight tins - they make a big difference