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12″ Madeira Cake disaster – URGENT HELP REQUIRED :-)
Hi all,
Your help would be very much appreciated!
I’ve an order for a wedding cake, for this weekend!
The bottom tier is a 12″ Square chocolate.
Having always been very successful with round cakes of this size. I never thought I’d encounter so much trouble!
I’ve tried it twice now and both times its burnt – AARRGGHH :-(((
The first time I followed a recipe but altered the flour, by adding some SF Flour and reducing the amount of Plain. I protected the tin by wrapping with homemade bake-even strips, covered the top with foil and reduced the cooking time by 20-25minutes! This still burnt on the back above the gas flame.
The second time, I have just removed the burnt offerings from the oven again! This time I used my bottom oven as its normally a slightly cooler oven, reduced the time even more to 1hr 50 and turned the tin after 1hr 10 minutes.
Is this tin too large for my oven????
Where am I going wrong?
Someone please help
Hi all,
Your help would be very much appreciated!
I’ve an order for a wedding cake, for this weekend!
The bottom tier is a 12″ Square chocolate.
Having always been very successful with round cakes of this size. I never thought I’d encounter so much trouble!
I’ve tried it twice now and both times its burnt – AARRGGHH :-(((
The first time I followed a recipe but altered the flour, by adding some SF Flour and reducing the amount of Plain. I protected the tin by wrapping with homemade bake-even strips, covered the top with foil and reduced the cooking time by 20-25minutes! This still burnt on the back above the gas flame.
The second time, I have just removed the burnt offerings from the oven again! This time I used my bottom oven as its normally a slightly cooler oven, reduced the time even more to 1hr 50 and turned the tin after 1hr 10 minutes.
Is this tin too large for my oven????
Where am I going wrong?
Someone please help
Hi Dawn
I’m not familar with baking in a gas oven and since you’ve not mentioned the temperature I’m not able to compare what it is in electric. It’s hard to advise because the cake ingredients are also unknown and why there was a need to tweek the recipe. Are you using melted chocolate or cocoa powder? Normally I would bake a 12″ madeira cake at 130c electric fan oven or 150c non fan oven. That would translate gas mark 2. Bake slowly for longer. A square cake tin holds a lot more batter than a round so the middle takes so much longer to warm up. If the temperature is too high the sides will burn and the middle will remain raw. The baking strip will only help with keeping the cake flat/less doming. However using heating cores will help distribute the heat more evenly in the batter. If you’ve got some metal royal icing flower nails, three of those placed upturned in the batter will act as HC. I use Ateco heating cores but time is limited for you to order some if you don’t have them already. It might be better for you to make two shallow cakes rather than the one deep cake. The corners of the tin need to be double or triple lagged on the inside as these burn very quickly. The baking strips will help with insulating the outside but it may be worth lagging the tin with brown paper as well.
Please let me know if any of this helps.
Hi Madeitwithlove
Yes, it appears I missed quite a lot of the info, sorry!
I used 14″ round recipe found on ‘cakesbakesandcookies’
I only adjusted because I’m not a huge fan of madeira, but due to the size wanted something a little more stable for the bottom tier. (But I followed the recipe exactly on the second go!)
I cooked it at the temp stated which was 180c (Gas4). Sounds like this is way too high.
The corners actually came out less burnt than the middle of the back side.
I’m going to my mum in laws tonight to use her electric fan assisted oven, hopefully that will do it, although i’m loosing faith. It has to be baked tonight so that I can get ganaching all 5 tiers tomorrow. I’ll try it at the 130 in her oven then. Thanks ever so much, your a stalwart xx
That given temperature I would say is way too high for such a huge deep cake.
Well done you for having access to another oven! I’ve had a look at that recipe and it should be fine at 130c fan. Just protect the cake by lagging the tin. I usually check it when the dome shows a crack but very quickly so not to lose any heat from the oven.
I bake in a gas oven in my caravan, that’s the extent of my gas experience. I did have a brand new gas oven when we moved, it leaked all over the place. I called the emergency gas people out and they condemned it right there and then! It wasn’t the fitting at fault, it was actually the oven. The manufacturer was recalling that model because it was blowing up!! Lucky escape for me! Good luck with your cake and decorating, stressful time!