Why do some recipes not work?

funkymonkey849

I make a ginger cake from one of my good food '101' books yesterday.

It was a traditional style cake which included treacle, 1/4 pint of milk and 10oz of flour. Once I put it in my round, deep cake tin it was filled almost up to the top and sloppy enough to pour in.

The instructions said 30-35 mins at gas 3 :eek:

Even as I was putting the cake in I was thinking 30 mins I don't think so! I gave it the benefit of the doubt and checked it and it was still completely liquid lol. It ended up staying in for an hour which was my original estimate. Very nice though!

Good food reckon their recipes are tested multiple times, but I can't see how a large and sloppy cake like that could ever cook in 30 mins at gas mark 3! Unless some kind of cake baking miracle. Some recipes just don't seem to work, but they must have somewhere to be published! Ah confused

rosie383

I have had this same problem so many times. I have had it happen with coconut loaf, gingerbread etc. Any cake that goes in like a batter-type consistency always take at least an hour in my oven.

Aarons_mummy

I have had problems with things like this before.

I made muffins the other day and it said 20 minutes, they took over and hour and i had to cover with foil as the top was going brown but the inside was still runny! They came out yummy when they were cooked though and I had them altogether in a casserole dish rather than cases as I didn't have any lol! So actually thinking about it that was my fault!

BitterAndTwisted

I have a recipe for ginger cake which I have made many times and calls for 8oz of flour and goes into a 2lb loaf tin. The instructions say it should be baked on Gas Mark 2 for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, so I think your recipe must have a typo.

Looby_Lou

What size is your cake tin? I notice that the recipe says a 9" tin - most of my recipes use an 8" tin which is why I haven't tried the recipe yet!
I can however recommend http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1462/sticky-stem-ginger-cake-with-lemon-icing

funkymonkey849

Looby_Lou wrote: »

What size is your cake tin? I notice that the recipe says a 9" tin - most of my recipes use an 8" tin which is why I haven't tried the recipe yet!
I can however recommend http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1462/sticky-stem-ginger-cake-with-lemon-icing

Um I can't remember the size of the tin - but I had the right size! The recipe was similar to that recipe but it's in my book and not available on the site so I can't link to it.

My oven is usually not too far off cooking times, and I followed the recipe to the T.

Definately a dodgy recipe.

But it was a fantastic cake after cooking for an hour! Will make a note in my recipe book

foxgloves

I often find errors in recipes. The most common one is when the ingredients list tells you that you need so much of a particular ingredient, then nowhere in the recipe does it tell you what to do with it. I use my common sense as been cooking for years & am confident, but I often think that for new cooks, it's really not helpful. Cookbooks should be proof-read just like any other type of book being published. I'm sure the recipes are all tested out, but if there are then mistakes in the book, it means wasting ingredients & time.

emiff6

foxgloves wrote: »

Cookbooks should be proof-read just like any other type of book being published. I'm sure the recipes are all tested out, but if there are then mistakes in the book, it means wasting ingredients & time.

I would amend that to: cookbooks should be proof-read by cooks! No good just checking spelling and grammar, ha, ha It needs someone who can say "hmm, that doesn't sound right"

ubamother

My husband loves baking - and trying new techniques - usually very successfully. He has yet to have any success with the Hairy Bikers crumpets. He follows the recipe, we have a wonderful cast iron skillet etc. My mother is an amazing cake and biscuit baker - can't make bread - not even the birds would eat it! I know that different flours can absorb amazingly different amounts of liquid, which can be dealt with in breadmaking quite easily, but can ruin a cake. I'm guessing that even if you stick to one brand of flour, the wheat harvested will have been affected by weather etc. I, like others above, find that if the batter is liquid enough to pour easily it takes a good hour and more.