Baking - recipe followed to the letter, what am I doing wrong?

[mummoi]

Hi everyone. I'm really at the end of my tether with this one so any advice would be really helpful. I baked a very simple victoria sponge yesterday with my kids. We followed the recipe completely. When the timer sounded I looked into the oven it had risen beautifully and was a lovely brown colour. Took it out, pierced it with a skewer and it came out clean. Left it to cool in the tin, looked 5 mins later and it was flat as a pancake. Cut into it later and it just looked solid & uncooked, and tasted horrible. Same happened last week with an easy bake chocolate cake recipe we tried - both from BBC recipes website. Help please, what am I doing so very wrong???

I use an electric hand mixer and whizz the ingredients, butter/marg together then eggs and flour and milk together. However I do make sure the same quantity goes into each tin by weighing them.
My recipe is
175g butter or marg, I use Stork at room temperature
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs beaten
175g SR flour (I use sponge flour) sifted with 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1tbsp milk (optional)

I sympathise, my cakes were always awful and I blamed the oven
A friend who bakes lovely things a lot told me to use Stork instead of butter and now mine are much, much better. It doesn't affect the flavour.

Rising then falling sounds like overbeating or opening the door at the wrong time during cooking to me.

I prefer Mary Berry's all-in-one approach to the traditional method of creaming butter and sugar then folding in flour.

Obviously don't open the oven door at all for the first 20 minutes.

One tip that might also be worth trying is "dropping" your cake by banging the tins on the worktop before baking. The theory is that it breaks up any large air bubbles and avoids the excessive rise that is destined to fail.

Enjoy your experiments

@PanamaPattie I will use this recipe in future, thank you!

I only used the food processor for combining everything and then I folded in the flour by hand with a metal spoon so thought it would be okay.

I'll definitely take all these tips into account when we next bake. Its just so sad when the kids spend ages doing it all and can't even eat it!! But we won't give up. Once I can get out to the shops we'll have another go. Thanks everyone xx

You shouldn’t have to do it by hand. I tend to use Delia Smith’s all in one recipe. It never goes wrong.

And yes, we split into 2 tins to bake

Is your baking powder still in date ?

Panama Pattie's recipe is the traditional one that never fails.
I use stork baking instead of butter though.
No need to use baking powder -horrible.

Couple of other things to consider. The temperature of your oven? Is it accurate?
If your oven is getting on a bit it could be a dodgy thermostat.

You can use Stork if you prefer as it will give a lighter texture but I prefer the gorgeous denser texture of a rich butter cake.

I do Panama's recipe but imagine how many fried eggs would fill my tins first.

So my small tins use 4 eggs (2 each) and my larger ones 6. Then add the same quantities of flour, sugar & butter/marg.

It's probably sacrilege to admit this, but the I can't believe it's not butter type spreads - I use Supermarket versions - make bloody good cakes.

.... just thought I’d better mention @mummoi - weigh the eggs in their shells.

Also make sure you are using the size of tins recommended in the recipe as different sized or shaped tins change the cooking time

I would I do total all in one method OR cream the sugar and butter by hand/proper mixer and so on.
Sounds like you’re doing a hybrid?

All in one and butter should make a perfectly nice cake, you really shouldn’t have to use marge or cream by hand.

I have an electric cooker with a horrendously strong fan - so what happens is stuff goes brown before it's cooked through. It is also hotter than most ovens imv.
Do you have a top oven without a fan. Try that and see if it works better. Opening the door before it's done can make a sponge sink, so you'll have to leave it it's full time and keep fingers crossed.

I use cheap supermarket baking butter, my recipe is...

225g butter
225g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
4 eggs

All in together at the same time, medium eggs. I don't use any baking powder, always come out great in both a fan and non fan oven (I bake for a living, this recipe has never let me down)

I usually bake using flora buttery or vitalite because I am dairy free. But as I am trying to stay away from too much temptation, I bought butter. But next time I'll get stork, thanks for the tip.

@Pinkyyy thank you - I would definitely have weighed them out of the shells! I don't think I'm cut out for this baking lark

Kids want to try baking bread next, that should be interesting!!!

Thanks again for all your help and tips xx

@TroysMammy sponge flour? I never heard of it before, I'll have to take a look, thanks

You say you used a food processor - they are not as good at incorporating air as a food mixer such as a kenwood or kitchenaid. However i always do the all-in-one method for an ordinary sponge.

McDougalls supreme sponge self raising flour. Sainsburys used yo do their own brand at one time too.

Even if it was flat I'm not sure why it wouldn't taste nice. Was everything in date?

Hand mixer may be better than FP.

I tend to cream fat and sugar first

Yes, everything was in date. It looked quite solid/dense when we cut into it, so was probably undercooked despite it looking like it was okay

I think you took it out too soon, or your oven temperature is off. I’m a massively haphazard baker, but I can knock out a decent Vicky sponge pretty reliably.

We've made two lots of cakes this week and they were perfect: 250 grams of butter, caster sugar and SR flour, 4 large eggs. My tips

cream butter and sugar for five mins (until pale and fluffy)
Add beaten egg really slowly, whisking as you go
fold in flour with metal spoon