I followed the recipe faithfully. The only area I strayed from was instead of creaming the butter and sugar by hand with a wooden spoon (like I was taught in school) I (mistakenly)thought it would be easier to use the electric whisk. BIG mistake! It all got clogged up in the metal whisks. Won't be doing that again!
To keep this short - I still can't bake. My sponges resembled thick biscuits and were not light and spongy. I do not know what I did wrong. Not sure if it is the recipe or that I just can't bake!
My daughter ate a slice out of charity. Needless to say, with the fresh cream, I couldn't keep the cake long enough to eat all by myself - no-one else wanted any :-(
Oh well. At least I tried. And the finished cake looks good in the photo :-)
No more baking for me for a while - back to main courses...
oh no! And it looks so nice!
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I can think of (after a disaster or two of my own!) is: if they looked fairly airy but were hard, it might have been in the oven for too long (some ovens have slightly dodgy thermostats and cook higher than others - mine is one and I get round it by putting all the mixture in one tin and making a big huge cake to slice in half rather than two separate thin ones)
or
if they were a bit solid and not aerated. I did this once, and it was because I whipped up the butter and sugar till it went pale, as predicted, then added the flour and overmixed it which meant that all the air got squidged back out of it. My sister explained you have to fold in the flour in a figure of 8 pattern and it's tricky to get right.
This is why I make carrot cake! Much more indestructible....Sponge is a bit of an art form.
;oS