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Hi
I have just taken my fruit cake out of the oven and noticed what looked like melted butter on the oven tray the cake was sitting on. The cake is a large round rich fruit cake and I have baked this recipe many times before but never noticed any butter leakage. I fully double lined the cake tin and was very careful to mix all the fruit etc into the cake batter mixture so I am hoping there’s not a problem with the cake. It was baked in a loose bottomed 11inch round cake tin for just over 51/2 hrs. I baked the cake a bit longer at around 10 degrees lesser temp, given my oven is fan assisted. Any help/reassurance would be great thanks very much. xx

Hi bellescakes

As you’ve baked this cake many times before, I doubt it is to do with the temperature of your ingredients. Sometimes when eggs and butter are not to room temperature, the butter doesn’t get mixed in properly and stays in little lumps. When the batter begins to heat up, the butter which hasn’t been incorporated into the other ingredients tends to leak out. I think a more likely explanation here is to do with the length of time the cake has been baking rather than the above. You did the right thing to bake it for a little longer as your oven is fan assisted. How much butter leaked out? If it was just enough to coat the tray you have nothing to worry about. If the tray was swimming in butter I’d be concerned the cake will be a little dry. Let the cake cool right down then check it for appearance and texture. xx

Hi madeitwithlove
Thanks very much for you help. I was very careful to cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly although I wonder if I may have overdone that part of the process. Additionally all of the ingredients were at room temperature too, so hopefully it will be ok.The baking tray wasn’t swimming in butter but there was certainly enough grease there to cause a bit of alarm. However, looking at the cake it seems to have turned out well as it only has the slightest hint of tiny crack on top. In fact the cake looks really pretty flat on top which is no doubt due to the slight well I make in it prior to baking. Then of course there’s the colour of the cake, being quite dark I always worry that it might be burned. It didn’t smell burnt though and I did smell the inside of the cake tin for any burnt smell but couldn’t detect any. In future I will wrap newspaper around the sides of the tin, rather than brown paper, and rest it on newspaper which is what I’d intended until I realised that my husband had put out the newspapers for recycling!!! Arrgh, you see it’s all his fault. Lol. xx

That’s it, blame the hubby! hehe, that’s what I do 🙂 I don’t wrap my fruit cakes, only double line the inside and bake on low heat for longer. I love the smell of the fruit baking. I’m going to try my next fruit cake in my steam oven as an experiment. We bake all our bread in it and use it as a vegetable steamer and sous vide.

You’ve taken all the correct measures and it sounds very much like all is fine. 🙂 X