Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi. If I’m baking an 8 inch round and an 8 inch square cake both 3 inch deep can I bake both together in oven or am I better to bake them separately. Also can I just put them in fridge overnight instead of freezer. Thanks Mary

Hi Mary

In the tutorial for the moist chocolate cake, Paul bakes all his cakes together for 2 hours. He warns us not to be tempted to open the oven door before time up to prevent the cakes from sinking. The recipe is draught sensitive.

As the square cake holds a lot more batter, it would naturally take longer to bake. However, you could bake it on the middle shelf and bake the round on the bottom, on the nonfan mode, both for the same time.

Personally, I would bake them separately to avoid any disappointment. I know it’s using the oven twice, but it’s best to be safe than sorry.

Hope this helps. 🙂

EDIT:

Refrigerating the cake overnight will be fine, it does firm up quite a bit.

I baked the 8 inch round with no problems, it rose and didn’t sink on cooling. However my 8 inch square one did. It pulled away from sides and sunk after I took it out of oven. Cooked for 2 hours and 20 minutes at 130 fan. Trying it again as I need it to make a heart shaped cake for Saturday. Fingers crossed it will be ok when done.

It sank too! The only difference is that the square tin is dark and the round one is from silver wood (Delia Smiths).
I followed the recipe to the letter, so can’t understand it.
I needed to cut the cake in half and sandwich it with cream. But it has sank in middle and has shrunk a bit from edges. What do you think happened?

Hi Mary

There are lots of member hints and tips in the following link:

‘Paul’s moist chocolate cake’ My feed back

The recipe is sometimes challenging but I’ve never really had any major problems with it. I can suggest reducing the sugar by 100 grams or adding a little extra flour to form more gluten. A little more gluten will help strengthen the structure of the cake which should stop it from collapsing. Try using the nonfan setting if you are using an electric oven. Delicate cakes very often fare better on the conventional setting as the fan option can be quite harsh. You will need to adjust the temperature to 150c if not using the fan.

Another suggestion to try is, to place a tray on the shelf above the one on which your cake is being baked.

I prefer to bake this recipe in a heavier gauge light-coloured pan. I also own the Delia pan but have never attempted to make this recipe in it.

If you have time, please take a peek at that link, I think you might find it useful. Let me know how you get on. Fingers crossed it’ll come out good next time. Don’t throw away the sunken cake, it can be made up into cake pops and covered in chocolate to make truffles. There is a truffles tutorial on the site by Paul.

🙂