Trying to bake a sponge cake....

[BustleInYourHedgerow]

That is light and fluffy and not greasy and heavy with a giant frakkin' hole in the middle. My second attempt was slightly better than my first. (Bit less greasy, bit less heavy, smaller hole in the middle.)

I am a good cook, I just never bake things. And when I cook, I generally just feck things in the mix and taste as I go along. Can't do that with baking so I think that's why I generally avoid it

DS's first birthday the end of July and I'm determined to make a nice cake for it.

Oh, I'm using Nigella's recipe, which is supposedly fool proof...and I have an electric fan oven, so I think I'm messing up the time and the temperature maybe? Or am I mixing the mixture too much?

That was a bit long winded...can anybody who hasn't fallen asleep reading this please tell me where they think I might be going wrong?

TIA

Can you turn the fan on your oven off? Cakes do much better in a conventional oven as the heat is less fierce.

What's the recipe/method? I should be able to diagnose better with more details!

Usual reasons for sinking in the middle are:

Opening the oven door during baking
Too much raising agent (over rises then sinks) or poor quality self raising flour (doesn't rise in the first place).
Proportion of ingredients is wrong

Are you using digital scales or weighing Very Carefully on normal scales?

Weighed a bit meh the first time.
Weighed Very Carefully the second. I did open the oven door the first time but not the second.

Will check about the fan, I hadn't thought about that!

Recipe + method: www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=14067

my foolproof method for sponge-

weigh you r eggs - use say 5 medium for 2 layers of 8" diameter round cake

weigh out weight of eggs in marg, sugar and sr flour

cream marg and sugar, beat in eggs and tsp vanilla extract

fold in flour and 1 tsp baking powder

into 2 lined tins, 20-25 mins 190 degrees fan oven

Agree the oven is a likely culprit and that it is better with the fan off. Some ovens are way off on the accuracy of their settings too, I use a little oven thermometer on the shelf rather than go by the dial for baking.

Are you using the right size tins?
Also are you measuring your baking powder with a proper measure or a spoon from the cutlery drawer. If you haven't got a proper measure a child's medicine spoon is what you need, eg Calpol, scoop it up and use the back of a knife to level it.

I think there's too much baking powder in that recipe (because obviously I know better than Nigella ). SR flour and BP together, especially if it's a fresh bag of flour will make it rise beautifully while it's baking but then collapse as it cools.

I experimented with a lot of sponge recipes when I was trying to find the Perfect One to use in my business cakes and the creaming method definitely produces a better cake.

This is my tried-and-tested-and-approved-of-by-paying-customers recipe:

Get the right number of eggs and weigh them with their shells on. Then use the same weight of stork/sr flour and caster sugar. So if the eggs are 245g you'd use 245g of all the other ingredients.

Beat the stork until it's soft then add the caster sugar and beat it for 5 minutes so it's very light and fluffy. You really need a hand mixer or food processor with beater for this unless you've got very good arm muscles. Don't skimp on the beating, it's how you get lots of air in the mix.

While it's beating lightly beat the eggs together with a fork and add a tsp of vanilla essence and a tbsp of milk.

Once the marg/sugar mix is beaten add the egg mixture a bit at a time with a spoonful of flour. Beat well after each addition.

Once you've added all the egg mixture stir in the remainder of the flour plus a couple of extra heaped tablespoonfuls using a metal spoon. You want to be fairly gentle with this bit so you don;t batter all the air out of the mixture.

Put it in the greased and lined tins

Bake at 160 degrees for around 40 mins - it should have risen, be smooth on the top and a light golden colour.

If you stick a skewer in the middle it should come out clean and if you listen to it there should be a few bubbling noises - if it's bubbling furiously, give it another 5-10 mins.

Olihan, is there a way of working out the quantity of ingredients?

Im wanting to make a rectangle cake, 12" x 10", how do I know how many eggs, flour etc I need?

Any help much appreciated and sorry for the hijack

I use the Nigella recipe every time and love the result!

You do need to add the milk as her batter is quite sloppy. Def use the little bit of cornflour in the recipe (if you want a rich chocolate cake, replace this with cocoa powder - yummy!).

I turn the oven down by 10 degrees. I find this cake is quite eggy and moist, possibly a little dense which I much prefer to a drier, crumbly sponge so if you're aiming for the latter, it might be best to try a different recipe.

Olihan, your cakes are gorgeous!!

I make sponge in the same way - weighing the eggs. Found the recipe in a very old cook book of my Grandmothers and it works every time. Agree with Olihan that beating is the important bit. I tend to use butter but might try Stork after the professional recommendation

Quick mini hijack - how do you do the lettering Olihan? I tend to do mine by hand and it's not always as neat as I'd like. I try to do a special, home cooked cake for the children every year (although this years was on a costco cake as I had a 3 month old baby and no time!) and I think it's always the lettering that lets it down.

I added some pics so you can see what I mean

Al, yours are beautiful too - they're royal iced by the looks of it, aren't they? I'd love to be better at RI, but I'm patently crap .

I cheat and use sugarpaste cutters for the lettering - like these. I'd love to be able to pipe the writing but I'm just shocking at it!

I think the writing on yours is beautiful and doesn't let them down in the slightest.

I get my quantities from my cake bible. It has quantities for every size from 5" up to 14" in fruit and sponge, plus variations on the recipes for gluten/egg/dairy/diabetic free cakes. It also gives you a guide to how much sugarpaste and /or marzipan you need to cover different sizes of cake and lots of different decorating techniques. I swear by it!

I've lent it to someone at the moment but from memory, a 6" round cake is 4 eggs, 7" is 6 eggs, 8" is 7 eggs, 9" is 8" eggs, 10" is 10 eggs, 11" is 11 eggs and 12" is 13 eggs. I bake in a deep tin and those quantities give you a 2.5" deep cake.

Square cakes need 1" up from the round size so a 6" square needs the same quantities as a 7" round.

The stork/butter dilemma is just personal preference, I think. Butter gives a richer flavour but stork gives a lighter cake.

Mrs Sawyer, I tend to work out the circumference then divide by 4 to work out the equivalent size and use the number of eggs for that size.

So yours is 44" which is equivalent to an 11" square so you'd need to weigh 11 eggs (shells ON) then use that weight for the flour, sugar and butter.

Hope that makes sense.

Bustle, have you had any more success with Nigella's recipe today?

Only the Christening cake was Royal Iced, the 1st birthday cakes are butter icing and the Costco ones are whatever Costco use.

For the lettering on the Christening cake, I printed out the names, pin pricked them onto the set icing and then iced over the pin pricks like a dot to dot. Ended up also brushing over the letters with a tiny wet paint brush to cover up the overlaps and create smooth letters. The others are all done with writing icing.

Will have a look at the cutters. Thank you

Olihan's method is spot on. When it's my birthday and take cakes in to work they never last long at all. I think my colleagues have my birthday on their calendars just for the cakes

There are just two things I do slightly differently. When I add the flour, I do it through a seive. I turn my cakes through 180 degrees half way through the cooking which of course means opening the (fan) oven, but have never had a problem with them sinking.

If you want to make it a chocolate cake, add a tablespoonful (or two) of cocoa powder when you are adding the flour, again though a seive.

I've got a KitchenAid Artisan mixer (bit like a Kenwood Chef with attitude) which makes short work of doing the beating.

did I not say to use a sieve? You do! You need to use a sieve.....

If I check mine at the end of the cooking time and they need longer then I turn them but I'm too paranoid to open the door halfway through!

I have a Kenwood Chef. DH wouldn't cough up for a KitchenAid the tight git. I covet them though. I may blow the profits from my next wedding cakes on one - what colour is yours?

Haven't got worktop space for it to be out on show so didn't go for any of the bright colours. Have the dark gunmetal grey one.

I've got a cream one to match my cream kitchen. DH bought it as a surprise for my 30th

It's not an Artisan though, just a basic one

Which attachment do you use for the beating? I've been using the ball whisk but with varying results.

A cream KitchenAid that is ^

The Kenwood has a fab attachment called a flexi K beater which has rubber 'wings' that scrape the side of the bowl down as it beats. Tis very good. Still want a KitchenAid though .

Brill, thanks Olihan, much appreciated.

Olihan - do you use the soft Stork in the tub or the one in the foil pack?

Lilymaid, the one in the tub.

Olihan, Thanks so much. I read the instructions for my oven and I can't turn the fan off but I realised that I could use the top oven Working all weekend but I will attempt again on Monday and let you know the results Thank God hungry monster 19 year old DB is staying otherwise I would be getting quite big with all this baking!
Thanks Mrs Sawyer and cjb

Mrs dinky- good idea about the calpol spoon, will try it, thanks!

Olihan- just looked at your pics- I'm in awe of your cakes!

Another easy recipe is Deilas sponge - 110g of SR flour, same of sugar and marg, 1 teasp baking powder and 2 eggs, and a couple of drops of vanilla/or a couple of spoons cocoa if you want chocolate. I tend to make small buns with this - but I think it works with bigger ones too, but the recipe halves well and makes about half a dozen buns which is ideal when you don't want to make many.
Mix with hand mixer and bake for about 13/14 mins (small buns) at 180'C.
I made this into a full size cake with chocolate frosting for DSD's birthday and it was nice - not the prettiest cake but quite she liked it.