Lost my baking mojo

[RafaFan]

I'm a poor cook, but used to be able to throw some pretty decent baking together. Highlight of my baking career was being asked to make a cake for my parents ruby wedding party years ago! Anyway since having kids and moving to another country where flour is different, my baking has gone downhill. Reached a low point this morning! Using my mum's formerly 100% reliable fruitcake recipe, which I've made 100s of times, I produced this unappealing, flat, lumpy monstrosity. Also made hockey puck Yorkshires yesterday. Kids and husband loyally eat my efforts at least. Not really asking for tips, just commiserations...

Are you using a raising agent?

How about baking a cheesecake? As no flour needed. Or flap jacks?

What's different about the flour where you are?...I've never heard of that, there must be some way to use it to get better results.

Sure your oven is working OK?
Might not be at the temperature you think it is?

Are you using Self Raising flour in the USA by any chance? If so - it has salt added to it and is weird! It doesn’t react the way you’d expect!

If that’s the case you can just use Plain (All purpose) flour and add 1tsp baking powder per 100g. Since living in the US I haven’t gone back to using Self Raising at all - I haven’t bought it in over 10 years.

If that’s not the issue, maybe share what the difference is and maybe someone can help. I know how hard it is to move to another country and have to navigate well known recipes using unfamiliar ingredients.

Anyway you said you didn't want tips so I am so very sorry for your loss of baking success. 🙃

I'm a good cook but such a bad baker. And my grandad was a baker which makes it worse! Nothing rises properly, ever. The problem is I enjoy baking and love eating freshly baked goods so relentless optimism swells within me and I keep trying again only to be crushed once more....! I feel your pain.

In the UK there is plain flour and bread flour. Where I am there is All-Purpose flour which can be used to for bread (with good results) or cakes (supposedly, but I get poor results). There is also "cake and pastry" flour, which comes in small, expensive bags. It is just flour, no raising agents or anything, just from a different type of wheat I think. This is what I used for the fruit cake and my flat Yorkshires. Added baking powder, which I believe is the same as in the UK, as per the recipe.

That is a very good point. We bought all the appliances when we moved here 11 years ago, and the fridge just died. Maybe the oven is on the way out too!

I’m in Italy and the flour is completely different.
It’s used for pasta, pizza and brittle oil-based pastry or boring slab biscuits but the comforting “grandma taught me” home baking of scones, buns and apple pies doesn’t seem to be a thing. The best you can hope for home made is jam tart or a generic sponge cake “buccellato”. And pastry shop cakes are sooo expensive (like €50 for a cream sponge sandwich birthday cake).
Even home bread baking isn’t popular, probably because there’s a variety of delicious bread available in every village. Why make it yourself?

Well, I wasn’t having that with my family. Thursday was known as bun day and we’d spend the afternoon baking versions close to my childhood sweet stuff with the ingredients available. Little packets of baking powder brought the flour up to SR style, shortbread works fine if you add salt to Italian butter and plenty of failures happened along the way (purple yoghurt makes a gray cake!).
I also tried local cakes and now make a mean focaccia and “torta della nonna”, so maybe you could check out more regional bakes?
But hope springs eternal and I’m always on the lookout for baking goods. I recently bought some cream of tartar. I’ve forgotten what it’s for but intend to find out…