Please help me, my cakes are normally fine but lately they have been turning out damp.I made one for a 2year old and when it got out of the oven ,not only did it shrink a lot,when it was cut it looked like it was damp at the bottom part of it,despite baking it at 200 for over an hour.was it too much water or baking powder?,its so upsetting.|Thanks.

Why are you baking at so low a temp? I bake at 325, so you may want to up your temp. It sounds like your cake is not either done or it has been sitting in the pan cooling too long.

How long do you let your cakes cool in the pan before flipping them out onto a cooling rack?? I normally cool 8-15 minutes, depending on the cake size. If you are leaving them out much longer than that the steam from the cake is going to condensate on the outside of your cake.

Is it 200 c or f?? If it is f then that is pretty low baking temp.

Thanks for the quick response, i bake at 200c, and allow cakes to cool in the pan for 10 minutes or shorter for smaller cakes.

You also didnt say what size or depth the cake was. If it is a big cake you might need a heating core/flower nail for hte center to bake more evenly. ARe the outsides of the cake over cooked?

I have made a couple of recipes where the cake shrinks quite a bit. Is this a different recipe or the same as when you had good results?

It was a 9" pan wih 2" deep,exactly the same recipe with when i had good results.I normally use a flower nail for bigger cakes or 2 flower nails as the case may be,thanks a lot

Have you checked your oven temp with a guage to make sure something has not went wrong with it? How about the expiration date on the baking powder?

You are cooking at a high temp too for a cake 200C is 398F which is too high. Just a thought you might want to cook at 175C