Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
‘Paul’s moist chocolate cake’ My feed back
Recently Paul posted his chocolate cake recipe for us all to try. Many members have had various difficulties baking it up. The most predominant ‘failing’ is that the cake sinks in the middle. We’ve all at some point answered with feed back and suggestions as to why this may be happening, sooo with great trepidation I baked ‘The Cake’ this morning. My cake was scaled down to 8″ square, using my hubby’s conversion chart, which is posted on the site under ‘ingrediants’ (spelled this way to find in search). I baked in a dark heavy duty tin, greased and floured fairly generously then lined with parchment paper, exactly as shown on the cake tutorial. I have a fan assisted oven which I set at 135c. Once the mixture was in the tin I reduced the heat to 130c and baked for a complete two hours. After an hour, through the oven glass door, I could see that the cake had risen but, had also become wrinkly, like elephant skin,towards the middle. I realised this was the prelude to the ‘sink’! However, I just continued baking for a further hour, then opened the oven part way to check the cake for doneness, which it was, thoroughly. The cake had sunk slightly, and formed a hard crust only around the outer rim which resembled ginger snap biscuits. After the cake had cooled completely I turned it out, to find a beautiful deep, moist cake with no hint of the dip present on the other side. This evening at 10.30 we cut the cake ‘proof of the pudding’ style and have enjoyed a very pleasant dessert. Prior to turning the cake out,and quite soon after removing it from the oven, I prematurely posted under ‘Paul’s chocolate cake, timing’ (in search), that I had doubts whether this cake would hold up to carving and stacking. Having cut, inspected for structure and sampled it, I can conclude that it definitely will to both.
I hope this feed back will help members who may want to attempt baking the cake again. Finally, Jayess has posted many times to try and solve the concundrum of ‘the chocolate cake sinking in the middle’. She has raised a salient point about the amount of sugar used in the recipe which may, or may not be a contributory factor to some of the problems experienced, although on tasting, sweetness is not excessive, and baking science is some thing I understand not! Happy baking folks x
Hi Just thought I would add to this discussion I use this recipe all the time and sometimes it sinks and sometimes it dose not no rhyme or reason to why ?? however having read ever bodies advise,today I reduced the sugar by 200 grammes then worried that it wouldn,t taste so nice ..but…success no sinking and tastes just the same It is one of the very few chocolate cakes that my husband likes ?? so thank you very much for a great recipe and wonderful website with so much good advise from lovely people best wishes Liz H
Hi Liz
Thank you so much for adding your results to this thread. Your comment will be an excellent reference point for members who may still be having a few problems. I also bake this recipe quite often, we love it with a dollop of creme fraise. Hope you’ve enjoyed your cake! x
I baked the cake yesterday evening for 2 hours at 150 degs but its not moist and springy like Paul’s! It has a crusty top which I wasn’t expecting!
One observation – my chocolate sauce ended up thicker and not runny like Paul’s! I melted mine on the stove only up until the butter had melted and I stirred regularly – and I used my mixer on the min speed to mix. The cake is for a boys party on Sunday (a tank cake), should I start again or will the cake be ok when carving? It is in the fridge at present. Please help!
Hello cookiesandcream
Are you able to cut a small slice for tasting? The crust is quite normal for this cake because it has a high content of sugar and very little flour. The way in which you mixed the ingredients may have resulted in the thickness of the sauce. The sugar must be allowed to melt as much as possible along with the butter. It can be done slowly so the mixture does not stick and burn. Do you also have white crusty speckles on the crust? If you do, this is a sure indication that the sugar was insuffciently melted. It will also make the texture of the cake grainy, sandy, dull and dry, kind of like a sea sponge!
Taste a small slice. If the texture isn’t hard or sandy the cake will fine. This recipe for me does not produce a springy cake. Mine turns out all shiny, dense and very moist with some sugary crust and a very little sinking. I cool it completely in the cake tin in which it was baked and then wrap it in cling film and store in an airtight tin. The cling usually softens the crust in the next day or two. If the crust remains brittle I slice it off, crumble it up and use in the ganache if filling the cake for additional texture.
The baked cake measures approx 2.5″ sometimes a little less. Once it is ganached and iced it ends up a good 3″ tall as a straightforward filled cake. Carving it will obviously give different height levels.
For better results please read the answer given by Liz Hemmingway. It is just above my answer right here on this page. There are many other helpful member hints and tips in this thread which have worked for members who have previously had a few problems with the recipe. You haven’t done anything wrong, these types of recipes have their own little idiosyncrasies which can be ironed out with a little tweeking.
Additional moisture can be put into the cake by brushing the layers with a little chocolate simple syrup. The chocolate syrup can be made as follows:
40g good quality cocoa powder ( use less if you don’t want a strong taste)
40ml/g sugar
90ml/g water
Bring all the ingredients to a boil for a minute or two, cool it down, add a little vanilla bean extract or a flavour of your choice. Brush the layers of the cake to add moisture. This makes approximately 180ml of syrup which will keep for at least a month in the fridge stored in a sterilised jar or bottle.
Paul has a tank tutorial just in case you were not aware. It can be found here:
Hope some of this information helps. Please do read some of the great comments, hints and tips left by site members in this thread. Let me know how it turns out for you. x
Hello madewithlove,
So sorry I hadn’t realised that you had replied to my question! I assumed that I would receive an email if there were any responses. Thank you so much for the time you took to answer my question.
I followed your advice and cut a bit of the cake just now and the middle looks quite dense like a mud cake. Yes the top did have elephant crust which I have removed and trimmed all the sides, I think I will go ahead and use this cake anyway. Your suggestion to use the syrup is brilliant and that’s exactly what I will do. As I am making this cake for an 8 year olds birthday I think I will use chocolate buttercream rather than ganache to crumb coat – the ganache might be too strong?
I spent yesterday evening watching Paul’s tank tutorial, and gosh I doubt my tank will look like that! He is so talented!
Wish me luck!
Hi cookieandcream
I thought that about Paul’s tank cake tutorial but I managed it! I think you’ll do fine if you tried it. I don’t know which tank guide you will be using but before Paul made his tutorial I used this guide:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Tank-Cake/
Good luck with it. Looking forward to hearing how you get on. x
That’s great Kathleen, thanks for posting. The temperature is for conventioal oven, if a fan oven is being use the temperature should be reduced by approx between 10 – 20 degrees so 150c will be 130 c fan oven.
If you have the oven manufacturere’s handbook it will have temperature guides for your own specific model.
H….. I made the chocolate cake today. I am so excited! It is the best tasting cake I have ever ever tasted. I went with 130C which translated to 266 degrees in my old American oven. It took about 2 hours and 40 minutes to bake. I was starting to worry some, but it wasn’t burning so I tried to be patient. Also, I only used one pan, a 10″ by 3″ pan papered about 2 inches above the lip on the sides and of course I papered the bottom. Again, I just want to say it has an amazing flavor; simply amazing! I will definitely be baking this one again and again. Thanks for the recipe!!
Hi Kathleen
Thank you for you great feed back and for your vigilant account of temperature and timing. It’s all these little details which help other members so much. Hope you’ve enjoyed eating the cake and use the recipe as your go to chocolate cake always. xx
Hi Kathleen
As you will have read in this thread, members have made up this recipe to 10″ square/ round. The whole recipe is set for one 10″ square cake. To scale the recipe up please use either my ready reckoner or the cakeometre tools in the following blog:
If you take the additional precaution of some of the very useful hints and tips offered by other members, there is a good possibility that you can successfully scale the recipe up further. Please bear in mind that some recipes don’t scale up as well. There have been no other comments here to suggest that anyone has baked this up bigger than up to 10″ cake or either shape.
I’ve never had a problem. I always use his recipe. I follow the instructions to the letter and never open the door until time is up as it’s very fragile whilst baking. I regularly check my oven is heating to the temp on oven dial by using a separate thermometer. Yes it does get a very thin sugary crust but this is easily removed and reveals a beautiful moist chocolatey cake.
Hi elainebatty
Thanks for your great feed back! It’s very encouraging 🙂
(I noticed you comment had posted three times so I’ve deleted two of the duplicates )
Hello burhan786
Cakes can be baked in microwaves. There are lots of suitable recipes online which you can experiment with in your own microwave. Take a peek here:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=microwave+cake+recipes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=oaVnV4KvEfLS8Ae6zoHYAQ
Hi liz hemingway
Thank you for sharing this information, it will come in useful for other members. I too saw similar advice but didn’t try it out as I’ve never had problems with the recipe. I have however used this method for a long time with some delicate foaming type recipes It is quite surprising that I do get good results in my fan oven, normally very moist chocolate recipes don’t like fan ovens. Placing the baking pan into a larger one acts as more insulation and helps the sides to bake without burning at the same time as the center. A great result for you! 🙂
I made this cake and decided to put it in the freezer to see how it held up and primarily because when I took the big one out the tin is was almost falling apart.
I followed the instructions and all my other cake recipies are fine – just this one.
The smaller one was better not still the same problem.
It looked exactly like the picture with a crack in the top however when I came to cut it there wasn’t just a round crack in the top but the crack extended to the sides. I tried to cut it into two but the top layer just fell apart however the bottom layer was perfectly fine.
Devastated because of the amount of ingredients you put into such a size of cake.
Any hints and tips would be appreciated and yes mine did have a crust on top too which looked slightly burnt.
