I can't bake cakes, so why do I keep trying?

I use exactly the same recipe as Springy Chicken with the same oven temperature and the cakes turn out fine.

Beat 8oz butter in your mixer until soft (30 seconds in microwave to soften)
Use the very soft butter to grease two sandwich tins liberally)
Add 8oz sugar and beat into butter until pale
Add 4 (5 if small) beaten eggs and mix in
Fold in 8oz SR flour

You can add some lemon juice or coffee flavour made with a small amount of water with a spoonful of instant coffee for flavoured cakes. or just some vanilla - or nothing!

Bake in a preheated oven on 160-170 degrees for 25 minutes. Don't open the oven door while cooking. Test with a knife to ensure cakes are cooked all the way through. Remove and turn out to cool.

Butter icing:-
3oz butter
6oz icing sugar
lemon juice or more coffee mix to taste
Mix until smooth

Add jam and half of the butter icing to affix the cakes and the rest on top.

You can put all the ingredients together and beat them in a mixer but you get a better rise with the creaming in method.

HildaJenni - I think you chose a difficult cake to make. I'm quite good at most cakes, but not those based on fruit or veg. They tend to have too much water and end up very heavy.
I'm also no good at pastry, but my favourite baking is bread variations.

Recipes are a bit of a black art! I have a Be-Ro recipe for banana bread and every time I made it, if I followed the recipe, it would invariably be undercooked in the middle, or sad and stodgy. So I have now halved the amount of banana and hey presto, perfect(ish)! Talking of recipes my GS’s year are having a charity bake sale and he has been nominated by the “project manager” - a bossy girl who the boys are all terrified of - to produce some biscuits to a recipe that she has handed to him. DD showed it to me last night and it has three ingredients on it, no method except an instruction to “make them thick” and they have to be iced. The amount is supposed to make 128 biscuits. I laughed out loud! I copied the recipe onto my phone and tried it out this morning. Basically it is a shortbread recipe but there is no way it will make 128 biscuits. I tried it this morning and got thirteen out of half the amount of ingredients indicated. I think all children think you can do magic . And of course, we can!

Gransnet has lovely never failed easy chocolate cake and other yummy cakes too. I would bake/practice baking without the pressure of presenting it to my visitors. Don’t give up and follow the recipe precisely. Good luck!

My mother always said I had a very light hand for pastry. I've never made a bad pie! My pastry gets compliments, particularly mince pie pastry. I've often been asked for the recipe.

Plain flour in bowl, two eggs mixed in, milk and mix together with a fork or one of those little hand whisks, until consistency of thick cream (sorry so vague but very hard to describe!)
It's always the first thing I do and last thing I cook so it has loads of time to ferment, don't worry of a bit lumpy.
I tend to do one big one rather than in muffin tin but that's me being lazy re washing up!
Oil covers bottom of dish and heated up until really hot, if oven by now turned up for roasties with meat out then perfect to cook both together, so once pots nearly done I pour mix into hot oil and put on lower shelf under pots, it goes quite fast in about 15 mins.
I think the key is two or more eggs and leaving mixture to stand not in fridge for as long as poss. Oven temp is prob 200 but my oven useless so inaccurate readings, when it takes your eyebrows off basically

That one in pic was just for my husband and I really reduced the ingredients but kept two eggs and it still went mad!

Im not good at cakes either. My most succesful ones have been lemon drizzle cake and rock cakes (the latter from a Bero book) . Fruit cakes are generally ok too but any sort of sponge doesn't really work -comes out flat and sad. Also not much success with scones. I doubled the quantity for scones and cut them much thicker and it was a great improvement. But DH will only eat them if really fresh so I don't generally bother -any left over after first day are wasted.

Hi * pollyperkins*. Scones freeze beautifully, then when defrosted just need a short warm through in the oven.

I would love to share this fruit cake recipe with you all. I am useless at cake making, but this one turns out fantastically every time. A male cousin gave me the recipe and it's the best fruit cake ever. 12 ozs mixed fruit, 8 ozs of sugar,6ozs soft marg, 8ozs SR flour, 2 eggs, half tsp of mixed spice, half tsps. of cinnamon. Topping - 2tps demerara sugar mixed with 1tsp of cinnamon. Boil fruit for 10- 15 mins. Strain off water whjle hot and stir in the sugar and marg until marg has melted. Add eggs, then flour and spices, stir to conbine. Pour into 8 inch round tin, lined with greaseproof paper. Sprinkle over topping. Bake for 1 hour at 180 degrees, or skewer clean. Could add bit more than suggested quantities. (Best fruit cake ever). enjoy !!

Buy one for now and the practice. Learn to make one cake beautifully.

My Swedish friend makes a lovely apple cake that involves no creaming - melt the butter or marge, just mix the whole lot up - eggs, butter, sugar, flour, with a bit of baking powder added, pour half into tin, add apples, pour other half on top, whack in the oven, bingo.
That's the sort of recipe you want. I would give you hers, except that I've lost it!

But here's an old recipe for Never Fail Sponge which is similar.
2 eggs, 1 tbsp milk, 4 oz sugar, 4 oz SR flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 2 oz butter.
Preheat oven to 190C (ordinary oven, not fan)
Grease and line 2 x 7 inch round tins. Melt the butter. Beat eggs and milk together, add sugar. Mix in flour, sifted with baking powder, stir in melted butter.
Divide between tins and bake for 12-15 mins, until tops are golden and springy to touch.
Cool in tins for 5 mins before turning out.
Sandwich tog. with whatever you like - jam, fruit and cream, butter icing, etc.

I have in the past adjusted this to 3 eggs, 6 oz sugar and flour, 3 oz butter, extra BP and milk, 8 inch tins, since IMO it's too much faff for a measly 7 inch cake!

I used to bake when the DC were at home but, apart from at Christmas, I seldom do now. My results are, shall we say, inconsistent. DD is a great baker so I just put an order in with her if people are coming. DM was the same so maybe it’s just skipped a generation. I’d love to be able to make good scones.

Baggs Agree about the c++p recipe
Made a carrot cake using, as per recipe, veg oil.
The birds loved it.

It's not you, it's the oven Hildajenni
I used to bake great cakes and light pastry but since I had a fan oven they've been hopeless.

Fruit cakes when the fruit has been soaked in alcohol seem to be OK, but everything else is a disaster.

You can google what was wrong with it to see what mistakes you made. If you enjoy trying to bake, then carry on. Imagine how you'll feel when things go well.
My cooking is hit and miss. I tend to stick to rock cakes for baking.
I have cooked things that the dog wouldn't eat.

I learnt to bake with DM when I was a child. I could always make better pastry than she could despite having warm hands

We used to enter in Village WI Show, DM would bake some of the entries & I baked the others, we then would put in 2 entries in her name & 2 in mine. We always had a chuckle at the Judges comments

I do miss baking now I'm widowed, no-one but me to eat it, I don't even make Yorkshires now, always made good ones but then again I come from Yorkshire

I understand entirely, it's touch and go with me as well! One time the cake will be fine and the next time it will be cardboard..I can't understand it! I tend to make desserts etc from foods that don't require baking..they seem to work!

Is some of this down to fan ovens? And baking things too long. Perhaps this would make a good tv series.., .Mary Berry sorts us out!

Mary Berry all in one method cakes are foolproof . I have yet to have a disaster with her aio Victoria sandwich or aio chocolate cake. Even my kids have tried them always a good result. Scones are my nemesis

I expect you hope that one day it'll work! Do you have a fan oven? These can make cakes overcooked as the temperature needs to be lower. However, your visitors come to see you so don't worry about the cake situation.

Betty Crocker is your friend - the cake mixes are excellent, easy to mix and have member let me down. They do a carrot cake mix too!

Oh that Yorkshire pudding! I am GREEEEN with envy - mine are like hard plastic discs and believe me I have tried every tip, followed every bit of advice, and come to the conclusion that some of us are bakers and some of us are buyers - I buy cakes, and fresh Yorkshires from Waitrose. It saves such a lot of grief. (My mother turned out puddings like that, and successful cakes and pastry, and never measured or weighed anything. )

"Oh that Yorkshire pudding! I am GREEEEN with envy"
Metoo - another thing I can't make.

loopyloo I love that idea!