Calamitous Cake Collapse... why?!

[MrsMotMot]

DH tried to make me a cake, a recipe we'd used before- but although they rose beautifully, they collapsed utterly and ended up like a dense horrible fudge texture inside. He tried it again but same thing.

Hypotheses:

1. Very old dodgy non-fan, non-windowed oven that requires a heavy bang to the door to keep it shut/on. Often more than one bang is required! The temp, however, is usually reliable.

1. The kitchen is very very cold (8 degrees!) so could it have been the sudden huge drop in temp that made them deflate?

1. Used a magimix- overmixing? although the recipe does say to use a magimix.

Hope someone knows, it was terribly disappointing to cut the beautifully iced second cake to discover it was inedible!

Hmm could it be something to do with the gas pressure being down because of high demand - a bit vague and probably non-scientific I know but I feel my oven hasn't been as hot as normal the last day or two. Mind you you don't say yours is gas, so I could be barking right up the wrong tree

I have a fan oven and a slightly leaky door (needs a new seal) and I find one of those small free-standing oven thermometers (about £4) is one of the best investments I ever made in improving baking consistency, the temps seems to vary wildly if I leave the oven to its own regulating!

What a shame about the cake and poor old DH's nice gesture being spoiled

Thanks Apples- it's an electric oven, bit of a dinosaur really so I think I'll just blame it! We have one of those thermometers and I agree, they are fab.

TBH I don't really need a whole cake. Or even a slice.

Could be oven temperature, could be kitchen temperature, could be age of flour. One thing is for certain though, no cake should ever be wasted. Re-heat and serve with custard (this could also be pasted into the thread on "putting on weight").

Didn't know that about age of flour, although wouldn't be the issue in this case.

The cake was really really inedibly fudgy- not even good for custard- the birds enjoyed it though!

So annoying... still gutted...