Hi everyone:
I made a new recipe for cherry coke cupcakes and they baked into a very dense cake, almost like there was no leavening - I already checked all my expiration dates. I got the recipe from cocobeanandme blog. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. The flavor is good - but the texture is very dense. Here is the recipe

Cupcakes
1 1/2 Cups flour
3/4 Cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 Cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 Tbs cocoa powder
3/4 Cup Coca-Cola
1/4 cup marachino cherry syrup
24 marachino cherries

Cola Icing
1 cup Icing sugar
2 tbsp cola

Preheat the oven to 350 F.In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk, and vanilla in a second bowl. In a saucepan, boil the Coca-Cola, and cherry syrup gently for five minutes. Melt in the butter and cocoa powder. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the liquid ingredients, beating until everything is blended.
Pour into the cupcake pans and push a cherry into the center of each cupcake. Bake for 15 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
When cool drizzle over the Cola Icing and let dry. Top with cherry buttercream and a cherry.

I baked them at 325 instead of 350, but that shouldn't have caused the problem. This is adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe. I did double the ingredients. Any suggestions? Do you think it was because I doubled it? It wasn't a super sweet recipe despite all the sugar. TIA
Penny

I think the problem IS your temperature........If you bake at a lower temp they usually won't rise as much making them dense.


Whenever testing a new recipe I ALWAYS follow the instructions EXACTLY before tweaking, even with the temp. If you still have some batter, I'd try baking at 350 like it calls for and see if there is a difference. Sounds like a delicious recipe

Thanks, I'll try again. The flavor is good. I baked them in ice cream cones for fun.

What kind of flour did you use and did you sift it?

I use AP flour, just bought a new bag.

Doubling the recipe could have contributed to the problem. One of the problems with doubling, when amount of ingredients is not determined by weight is that things might not be doubled exactly. Given that good recipes are in a finely tuned balance, it is easy to upset that balance by trying to double everything (which due to measuring may not end up doubled).

I would also ask do you know they are not supposed to be dense? You say they baked very dense but indicate this is not the way they are supposed to be. I would ask how do you know what their density is supposed to be? I did a search for the recipe to see if I could find Lawson's recipe and I could not find anything discussing what the texture of these are supposed to be.

However I did see a picture of one out of the wrapper cut in half and to be honest it looks like it is very dense. It does not look like it rose very much. Thus there may be nothing wrong with the way they turned out--they do not look like they have a light and airy texture.

Thanks Cakeprof, I will not double the recipe next time, and also will bake at the temp suggested. I've just gotten used to using 325 for everything. The density looked like when I used expired baking soda once. I will be making them in a few weeks for a picnic, so we'll see what happens!