I need to know what I can do to stop my chocolate mud cakes from sinking in the middle. I use the Planet Cake recipe which I love in terms of taste and texture and it's soo easy to make but everytime I end up with a sunken centre. Round cakes are worse than square.
It's quite a runny (liquid) batter before baking and it's baked for 1hr40min at 160C. I don't open my oven during baking.

Any ideas?

Hello, maybe an good idea!! Let it cool off in the oven, in wintertime thats the only thing wat works for me. I turn off the oven en let it stand for about 15-20 minutes with the door open (not totally) before i take it out. I

That's a good idea but they are sunken even before the cooking time is complete.

I'm not much help, I had a recipe that kept doing that. I ditched the recipe and found a new one. Sorry! Maybe someone else can help us both.

I baked that same recipe just last weekand it turned out fine, but I did change one thing and that was, I added the castor sugar to the butter and choc mix on the stove and melted them altogether and baked it in an 8" tin. HTH

Hi Emma,

Try putting your flower nail upside down in the middle on the tin. Place the round part under the tin lining and then stick the point through the lining and up into the middle of the tin.

Pour your batter over it and remove it when you are cooling the cake.

It helps the centre rise evenly with the rest of the cake - the nail acts as a heat rod for distributing heat through the middle of the cake. Some mud cakes to have a very runny consitency and take a lot longer to cook then normal cakes. You would also try having the temp at say 170 for the first 20 minutes and then turning it back down. The heat also raises the middle of the cake.

One last thing.... sorry..... if you over mix cake mixtures, they don't turn out as well.

Hope this helps,

My chocolate WASC does this also. White WASC is fine.

I was just reading Bakewise, a baking science book... one reason for sinking cakes is over-leavening...too much baking powder or soda. Try using just a tiny bit less maybe. Also, too much sugar can cause a cake to sink. You could try playing with those ratios.

Also, over beating the mixture can make it sink and also using too low of an oven temperature can make it sink. Since you know the recipe comes from a really good source, and it works for them, is it possible that you are either mixing it too long or that your oven is not 100% accurate on temperature?

Thanks everyone for your repliles; some really good advice there. It's interesting though, I put the same question on the Planet Cake forums and the first response said I probably wasn't mixing it enough! Go figure!

I definitely think I'm going to put the sugar in with the wet ingredients so that it has more of a chance to fully dissolve. And I think I'll try the flower nail even in my smaller sizes.

Will let you know how it goes next time I make it.

Thanks again everyone.
Emma

Emma - the response on the PC forum (yes it was ME... and us cakers are EVERYWHERE LOL ) was about your "crust" .... another problem you were seeking help with.

I suggested that the crust is often due to undissolved sugar (and seeing that it is only added with the dry ingredients - I suggested that you need to ENSURE that it is dissolved properly - this doesn't mean OVERMIXED)

When you are trying to figure out what is going wrong, you need to realise that it could be a combination of problems - it is finding that balance that makes a good baker and a good cake.

Quality of chocolate makes a difference as well