The Fresh Loaf

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honey cake disaster

Patf's picture
Patf

honey cake disaster

Yesterday I made a honeycake from a recipe I've made several times before. But while baking it boiled up, overflowed the cake tin and ended up like a giant brandy snap. Luckily I had stood the cake tin inside a larger flat tin.

Here's the recipe:

Mix together 200g flour, 150g sugar,spice, ginger.

Mix 250g honey, 4fl oz oil, 2 eggs. Add fluids to dry ingredients and beat well. It's a very runny batter.

Dissolve a teasp. of baking soda in a little orange juice and add to the mixture.

Pour into tin and bake in a very low oven for about 1hr 15mins.

I wonder what I did wrong? I MIGHT have put in too much soda, and it was an extremely hot day (42°) so that could have affected it?

Don't know whether to try the same again or a different recipe.

Hoping someone can advise  Pat.

 

EvaB's picture
EvaB

If it boiled up as you say, then I would say the oven temp wasn't low or slow, but brought the sugary stuff to a high heat and caused it to boil over. Did you pre heat the oven? I can't put anything into an unheated oven as the oven element (in my case gas burner) is on top and would over heat anything under it.

I would get an oven thermometer and preheat my oven, and check it, when I checked mine, the oven was 25 degrees colder than the temp listed on the dial. As soon as I compensated for the lower temp it bakes much better.

If you have an electric oven, sometimes just before the elements fail they go haywire and get strange and overheat one time and underheat the next.

The only way to tell is a thermometer and then try the recipe again. If you've used it before then I would say its an oven problem not the recipe.

jbaudo's picture
jbaudo

I am not saying for sure that you made the same mistake as me but the results sound very similar.  I made cupcakes once and accidentally measured the sugar in twice (my kids and husband were being very distracting) and the cupcakes boiled over the pan, fell in the middle and formed a hard crust around the edges.  The inside part was still a little bit goey  (I ate some of that and threw away the rest away) but this was probably due to the fact that I noticed something was wrong and took them out of the oven before the timer went off.  We all have our off days, you probably just measured something wrong (especially if you have made this cake before and it came out fine)  I say you should try it again and just be extra careful.  Maybe you could use a tried an true recipe with lots of good reviews.  Food network have loads of reviews for their recipes, maybe you could look there.

Patf's picture
Patf

for the suggestions.

It could certainly be something to do with the oven, as it's a french one, gas, with the burners in the base and notoriously awkward to use.

But I think also I must have measured something wrong.

I wanted to give the mess to the hens, but husband says it's fine, we'll eat it!