What went wrong?

I hope you are not reading this section because things have gone wrong! It’s really here to try to prevent that happening, or at least to reassure you.

Ovens
Regrettably ovens vary, so that cooking times given in recipes can only be approximate. In fact I have cooked the same cake in the same oven and on each occasion the cooking time varied slightly. If, however, you find there’s a great deal of difference in your oven from the cooking time given in any recipe, it might be worth having it checked. Also it’s most important that ovens with cakes in them should be left alone. I know it’s hard. You’ll feel cut off, want to know what’s happening – but my advice is to put a kitchen timer on and go away, because it’s that crafty peep that will send cold air rushing in, and the cake might sink. Why spend all that time and trouble and then spoil it in a matter of seconds? So never open the oven door until the cake is at least three-quarters cooked according to the time given. Also, remember that if you have a fan oven, you can reduce the cooking times of all cake recipes by up to one-third. And, in fan ovens, it doesn’t make any difference about shelf positions as the temperature is uniform throughout. Another tip is that fan ovens are hotter, so reduce the temperature by about 10 degrees.

Over-anxiety
It is always tempting to take a peep in the oven to see how your creation is getting on. As I mentioned before, impatient cooks are inviting disaster.

Fruit sinking
This is usually a fault in the recipe. It means the mixture is too slack (too liquid) to hold the fruit. Fruit cakes need a larger proportion of flour in order to hold the fruit evenly. Glace cherries and other sugar-coated fruit should be rinsed and dried (and chopped if large) before adding to a cake mixture. Both the size of the fruit and sugar coating can cause sinking.

Over-browning
Sometimes the top of a cake becomes brown before the centre is cooked. To prevent this, check the cake three-quarters of the way through the cooking time and, if necessary, fit a protective circle of double greaseproof paper (with a hole about the size of a 50p piece in the centre) over the top of the cake.

But above all, don’t be daunted. Always remember the good things that go into a home-made cake, and even if the finished product does happen to have sunk a bit, it will still taste delicious.