Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hello,
I have been having trouble with baking tall cakes. For example, Mrs Jones vanilla cake. I have baked this ine before in a 10 inch tin (as shown in tutorial) with no probelm. Is it possible I am putting too much batter in the tin? Or could it be something else?
To make the most of my time and resources I am using one PME tin, 6inch diameter and 4 inch tall. I use the calculator to convert the 10 inch into a 6 inch. Oven temperature at 160. And baked for about an hour or a bit longer.
The last few times a attempted to do this my vanilla cake came out with a hole in the middle (a big hole). This doesn’t happen when I bake Paul’s chocolate cake.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you in advance.

Cristina

Hi Cristina

In the tutorial, Mrs Jones divides the batter between two deep tins to make a tall cake. If you are using all the batter in one tin, it is possible the cake hasn’t baked sufficiently in the centre because of the depth of the batter which has caused it to collapse. I suggest you reduce the temperature down to 150c fan and bake for longer. This will allow the centre of the batter to heat up, bake and rise at the same rate as the sides.

I can’t give you a specific bake time so please do keep an eye and nose on the baking and test for doneness. In my oven, I would be looking at inserting a wooden skewer into the centre of the cake after approximately 1 hr 20 minutes. Depending on how your oven bakes, if the skewer comes out with wet crumbs, bake on for another 10 minutes, if the batter is damp, bake on for a further 5 minutes or until done.

I also recommend using baking belts. These help to distribute the heat evenly into the batter for an even bake.
If you don’t have baking belts, please search on youtube for numerous tutorials on how to make them yourself with towelling and foil.

Hope this helps.