Less than successful cake baking

JenIttels

Hullo wise Money-saving-old-style-ers,

I've baked a few cakes in my past. So has my boyfriend. However since he moved into his new flat and got a new oven all our attempts (of which there's only been a handful admittedly) to bake cakes have not been great.

The first one was his mother's recipe and took about 40mins to cook instead of the 20mins in the recipe. It was very stodgy and thinner than it ought to have been.

Then the second one, a recipe from a magazine, turned out to be almost biscuit-like and fried round the edges. I assumed it was due to the butter that i'd used on the cake tin as i'd forgotten to buy grease proof paper so i baked another which also turned out very biscuit like but not fried!

JenIttels

---double posting due to upload limits---

The most recent one, using my mother's 20 year old recipe, also took far too long to cook. When it finally looked done (after much checking and comments along the lines of 'it needs another 5 mins') it turned out the outside of the thing was very overcooked whereas the inside was actually cake-like!

What on earth are we doing wrong? :mad: We're starting to assume that it's the new gas oven that he bought despite it being able to cook other meals just fine. Is there a thermometer we can get to check the oven thermostat (i.e. effectively baking the thermometer)?

Is there anything else we could be doing wrong? We realised on the last cake that we may not have been mixing the cake mixture for long enough so we made sure that we mixed it for about 5minutes until it turned white and increased in volume.

These are just standard sponges, for goodness sakes. It's getting embarrassing and very expensive

Any advise gratefully recieved!

newleaf

You can buy an oven thermometer at any kitchenware shop or department in a store. Were you using an electric oven before? I had a lot of difficulty switching from a gas oven to an electric, at first I was burning everything. Gas ovens are cooler towards the bottom and hotter at the top. It can take ages to get used to a new oven. Hope you work it out soon.

snowball2

Im a regular cake baker and have had a similar experiance.

I bougt a new electric cooker about 12 months ago (fan assisted) exactly the same as my old one (which was very old!) but everything now cooks differently.

Cooking far too quickly on the outside and still raw in the middle when tested.

things I have done -

Reduced the temp by 10 degrees & moved the shelf down a rung.

I think it's trial & error till you find the right combo!

It is very annoying!

caffeinehit

Could you make up some mixture and cook individual buns in various parts of the oven and at varying temperatures until you find the right combination, to save on mixture? Then just add about 10 min to the cooking time for a cake.