Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I have tried Catharine’s cake twice now and both time it rose beautifully and then sunk. I used only half the quantities to make a 9″ round cake. What is going on?.

I SWEAR by Wright’s toffee cake mix…..its foolproof ,……(Prob why it works for me lol)

They have some lovely recipes too!
http://www.wrightsflour.co.uk/recipes.aspx

Alison64, just seen your answer about adding condensed milk to cake please can you give me more details as to how to do it?

ive not read all the comments but i know mrs jones has a toffee cake recipe on the site.x

Hello Lisajl

Mrs Jones’ recipe wasn’t on the site when this thread was first started but it is now, you can see it here:

Toffee Cake Recipe

Help please! I’ve tried the recipe posted by Catharine above twice now and it’s sunk in the middle both times (see mollyhayes as well).
I kept to Catharine’s recipe, only upping the quantities as I was making a 10″ square cake. I used the cake-o-meter to find that I needed to scale everything up by 1.3 so I used:
600g butter/golden syrup/light brown sugar
910g self-raising flour
9 eggs
7 Tb milk
1tsp salt
The first time I made the cake I could understand why it sunk as I opened the oven door after an hour in order to put on a bit of foil to stop the top from catching (there’s a lot of golden syrup in the recipe!) so, when it sunk, I put it down to the cake not having set properly by that stage.
However, I tried it again today and resolutely kept the oven door shut, looking through the glass door to check the oven temp. wasn’t dipping below 135degrees fan and that the cake was still level. And it was, until 1hr30min into the bake time when the middle started to dip again – not as dramatically as the day before but it will mean I have some wastage again. Does anyone know what’s going on?

Hi cakebydelphine

I had a quick look at cakeometre and this is the calculations it gave me:
594.6 g butter/syrup/sugar
891.3 g s/r flour
7.6 eggs (round up to 8)
6.4 TBS milk ( 6)

I haven’t included salt because the original recipe doesn’t have it. These are minor discrepancies which may or may not have affected the outcome. However, I think the cake sunk because it contains too much sugar/syrup/liquid, weakening it’s structure. Square cakes take a lot longer to set. Some tweaking may be necessary. I would suggest perhaps reducing the syrup by 300g. It’s possible a teaspoon of baking soda instead of the salt could help and reduce the temperature down to 130c fan to allow the batter to warm up in the centre for longer. The bake time will also need to be increased. Heating cores help to distribute the heat more evenly through the batter. I normally use Ateco heating cores which come in a set of four like this:
http://www.thecakedecoratingcompany.co.uk/heating-cores-set-of-4-by-ateco
These can be bought from other online cake decorating stores, prices vary, most expensive is Amazon. Metal royal icing flower nails work just as well as long as you have about four or five strategically placed in the batter. To prevent the sides and corners of the cake burning it helps to double lag the outside of the tin with wet brown paper or use baking strips. These are easy to make at home. To see online tutorials google ‘how to make baking strips’.

Hope some of the above helps, keeping fingers crossed for a more successful bake next time.

Thank you so much for your detailed answer, madeitwithlove, you’ve given me a lot to go on and I’ll definitely have a look at how heating cores work as I have two rarely-used metal flower nails already lol! Still hoping Paul Bradford may reveal the recipe for his toffee cakes as featured in some of his tutorials, though… Catharine’s recipe is pretty good but the overall flavour is more golden syrup than deep toffee…

Hi cakebydelphine

Paul doesn’t have a toffee cake recipe. The toffee cakes which he uses have been baked off for him or it’s possible he has used a cake mix?? Guest tutor Mrs Jones’ does have her recipe in the baking section here:

Toffee Cake Recipe

Mrs Jones is happy to advice on how to adapt her recipes if they are to be used for tiers. She can be contacted by email at her site which is linked in the overview of her video tutorial.
Alternatively the Wright’s cake mix has had extremely good feedback from members who have used it. Toffee pieces could be added to the mix to enhance the taste. Wright’s have a recipe section on their site and are happy to help and advise on how to use inclusions in their mixes.
See their web site here: http://www.wrightsflour.co.uk/recipes.aspx

I don’t make toffee cake so really not able to help with how to change the taste of Catharine’s recipe. I think other members have added condensend milk or caramel sauce. There may be more information in the thread if you read through member comments.
Good luck with your next bake. Please give feedback on how things work out if you make any changes so other members can benefit from your experience. x

Thank you, cakebydelphine! Finally something helpful regarding the Toffee Cake on this website. God bless you.

hi…
Where is this cake-o-meter people keep mentioning?

Hello Kathleen

The ready reckoner and the cakeometre can both be found in my blog here:

What Size cake tin to use

Hi, It’s equal quantities of all three, butter,sugar,syrup.

I posted this very quickly on the site and was a bit to succinct, should have added more detail to avoid confusion. I have good success with this and carves well but there is a toffee cake recipe on the lessons pages now which you may prefer.

Hi, It’s equal quantities of all three, butter,sugar,syrup.

I posted this very quickly on the site and was a bit to succinct, should have added more detail to avoid confusion. I have good success with this and carves well but there is a toffee cake recipe on the lessons pages now which you may prefer.

Hi there,
I am looking for Catharines toffee cake recipe but haven’t found it. I am also looking for a good recipe for chocolate & vanilla cupcakes. Can someone please tell me where to look. Thanks

Hello mona qadar

The recipe is in page 1 of this thread, here’s the link:

Toffee cake

Scroll past a few of the first answers and you’ll see Catherine’s post.
Members and Catherine have posted other useful information relating to the recipe. The pages are worth perusing to gain further answers. Page numbers can be found beneath the very first question.

Hope this helps.

Catharine, in your toffee cake recipe, you mention salt but there’s no quantity in the ingredients list, how much do you add? And do you use SR or plain flour? Can’t wait to try this out, it’s for a wedding in October. I used John Whaite’s recipe for Salted Caramel Icing, it’s scrummy.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3028685/john-whaites-chocolate-chiffon-cake-with-salted-ca

Hi Leigh, yes it is self raising flour. The original recipie with 300g of flour says 1 tsp of salt but that seems a lot to me and I would use 1tsp for 600g I think. Sorry I really should have been more careful posting this! You have to be careful not to open oven door too early for larger cakes to prevent dipping, I wrap large tins in newspaper round outside as you would with a fruit cake so it does not cook too much on outside before middle is done.

I also tried Catherine’s recipe it was really good! Thank you!