Hi all,

I'm following the Guinness Cake recipe from http://www.escapecrate.co.uk/?p=414 but have substituted the plain flour and bicarbonate of soda with self raising flour.

When I bake the cake the taste is really good, but the texture is wrong: around the outer edges it rises and has air in it, which is what I want; but in the middle it becomes very dense and solid with virtually no air.

What am I doing wrong? Is it necessary to add some bicarbonate of soda to the SR flour and/or modify the cooking temperature/time?

Please help... many thanks for any ideas!

why have you done the substitution?
it might be that lowering the oven temp slightly will help, and using a heating core/ flower nail, which will help it to cook more evenly.
xx

The substitution was just to make use of what I had to hand - I thought it would work the same... is it likely to cause problems?

I'll have to get hold of a heating core and give that a try too. Is somewhere like John Lewis likely to have them? (as you can tell I'm fairly new to this...)

Thanks for the advice.

i cant think that ive seen them in john lewis, or even to buy online, but i guess you can. you can just use a flower nail, i think lakeland has them, or online again.
substitutions can work, but sometimes its not quite perfect, and it can be tricky sometimes to balance the quantities perfectly. but it might just be that you need to refine to actual baking, rather than the recipe.
you might want to add your location to your profile info, cause then the info you get in any answers is likely to be more useful.
xx