Please help me - my cakes never EVER rise and I'm fed up!

[runner2]

I used to bake victoria sponges in 2 small sandwich tins and they always came out evenly baked, lovely light texture and flavour...and woefully flat. So today, following my mum's advice, I bought a 20cm/8" diameter deeper, loose-bottomed tin and did the 6oz marg, 6oz caster ugar, 6oz s.r. flour, 3 egg recipe. Baked it for 43 mins at 160 in my Neff fan oven, by which time it was nicely browned on top, shrinking from sides of the tin, skewer came out clean. Couldn't believe it when I took it out the tin - sponge is about an inch deep! Gutted. Please tell me what I'm doing wrong! The only thing I can think of is that the "medium" size eggs I use for baking are pretty small - would that have an impact on the rise?

For an 8 inch victoria sandwich I do a 8,8,8,6 mix x2 tins. I add the milk just before I put it in the tins, and it should be sort of loose mixture. Not running off a spoon, but it should drop off the spoon in a big dollop after 2-3 secs. Sometimes I add 125ml of nat yoghurt, though that makes a moister but denser cake.

45 mins for what you describe is far too long, considering I recently baked a 12,12,12,6 mixture in a 10in tin (x2 for a wedding cake) and it took 45 mins at 150 fan.

The size of your eggs could be a problem too. Over all I think your mix wasn't loose enough and your oven temp isn't accurate. I assume you know about not slamming the oven door or opening it before 2/3s of the cooking time has passed?

Sorry, that should read 8,8,8,4. Confused myself as I was thinking about the wedding cake.

Just reading this before I start a day's baking and I feel like the centipede who fell over when it was asked how it walked!

I think I'll start with the carrot cakes- they never go wrong......well, they haven't yet