Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone can explain to me how you know how full you should fill your tin. If it was a square 10inch tin, 3in height, what would you do?
For example if it was 4in, 8in or 12in would you always fill half way?
Most recipes i have followed are for 7/8in sponge and never come out deep, so yesterday i tried to do a deep 10in and multiplied my madeira recipe up, it used 8 eggs and equivalent flour, buter, sugar etc. it came out ok but would you say that is too much?
And do people make a deeper sponge or more layers to create depth in a cake?

Sorry for all the questions and i hope this makes sense

Thank you for your time

Ian

Hi Ian,

I always fill my tins three-quarters full. 8 eggs for a 10 inch sponge doesn’t sound too many at all, my 10 inch sponge recipe uses 9 eggs. To turn an 8 inch round cake recipe into a 10 inch recipe, you need 50% more ingredients. I never bake in individual layers, just in one tin, but that’s just down to individual choice.

A good way to get height is to bake for longer at 20 degrees lower than normal (e.g. if you normally bake at 160 turn it down to 140), wrap your tin with newspaper, and pop an empty oven tray above your cake to deflect some of the heat. This stops the cake cooking too quickly round the edges which gives it longer to rise, it also discourages the cake from forming a dome (whenever I have a a domed cake I find the edges to be quite shallow).

Lastly, make sure your liner for the tin gives you a collar of at least an inch above the tin height, to support the cake as it rises.

I hope that’s helpful, do let me know how you get on!

JC x