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Post by lillielangtry on May 21, 2015 4:05:03 GMT -5
Bear with me here, I know banana bread is super easy, but I've never made it before. I followed the recipe and left it in the oven for as long it said. I brought it out and it was nicely risen and golden brown, so great.
I've just tried to turn it out of the tin and it was completely raw in the middle and just collapsed everywhere! I've shoved it back in the oven to see if I can salvage something, because it doesn't matter what it looks like and I can't eat it as it is...
Shame though, it was smelling great.
Comfort me with tales of your baking woes?!
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 21, 2015 6:02:55 GMT -5
Not mine, but one of the staff at LC's school.
She accidently sprayed the muffin tin with WD40 instead of cooking oil before putting the mixture in and popping it in the oven. I have no idea how she couldn't tell from the smell before putting it into the oven, but she certainly realised once the muffins started cooking!
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Post by mei on May 21, 2015 6:36:55 GMT -5
my banana bread is getting better each time I make it, so practice makes perfect, maybe?
my last disaster were kiwifruit muffins. followed everything in the recipe, left them in for longer than required (according to the recipe), but still very uncooked inside. not good at all.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 21, 2015 6:49:59 GMT -5
One trick with banana bread is to make sure the recipe specifies just how much banana you need. Some will only say 3 bananas, which can be pretty meaningless. Having a quantity like 1/2 cup of mashed banana is much easier.
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Post by lillielangtry on May 21, 2015 8:13:23 GMT -5
One trick with banana bread is to make sure the recipe specifies just how much banana you need. Some will only say 3 bananas, which can be pretty meaningless. Having a quantity like 1/2 cup of mashed banana is much easier. Um, this was the case, it just stated the number of bananas. I weighed all other ingredients. Maybe that was an issue. Anyway, I cooked it for another ten minutes and it now looks hilarious - like a banana bread explosion - but the good news is, it tastes quite good! Thankfully it was just for eating at home. So it won't go to waste and I'll know for next time. p.s. The WD40 is funny, but ooooh how annoying when you found you couldn't eat the cake! |
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Post by wombatrois on May 21, 2015 8:58:15 GMT -5
I find most recipes say to cook the cake for much less time than it actually takes in my oven. Often the cakes have been cooked in commercial ovens and they are totally different to domestic ovens.
I either cook for longer or turn up the heat by 10 degrees.
Do you use a skewer to test lillie?
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Post by lillielangtry on May 21, 2015 9:05:09 GMT -5
Usually yes, but in this case no - lesson learned!
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paddox
Eating Figjam
Posts: 791
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Post by paddox on May 21, 2015 13:34:32 GMT -5
Haaha erkat, that's funny.
I've just done two days of baking with my class - smartie cookies, chocolate chip cookies and fairy cakes. I feel shattered! Mainly, they've all turned out well, cooking with thirty kids is always a bit of a lottery!
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Post by princessofpenguins on May 21, 2015 14:06:53 GMT -5
I can´t bake brioche.
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Post by sprite on May 24, 2015 5:50:43 GMT -5
i tried a muffin recipe that specifically called for cooked oatmeal. disaster. never baked. and not like, 'moist and dense' but just raw dough, even after 45 minutes. blech.
it's the only time i've ever crossed out a recipe in a book.
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Post by owlet on May 24, 2015 7:34:09 GMT -5
I need a UK recipe for a foolproof pizza base.
Years ago i had a great recipe in Finland, but I can't get it to rise properly here. I think it's a combination of a slight difference in the coarseness of plain flour and in dry yeast and in humidity or something.
Doesn't help I'm crap at baking,so it really need to be difficult to get it wrong..
My baking disasters include burnt on the outside,raw on the inside (despite following all instructions to the t), fluffy cakes with the consistency of cement and just the plain 'not particularly nice'.
I can make a few things but expanding my repertoire seems increasingly difficult.
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Post by sprite on May 24, 2015 9:41:02 GMT -5
moving countries does weird things to food, doesn't? a friend makes amazing potato pancakes in slovakia. when she makes them in the uk, they are just mush with crispy bits.
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Post by lillielangtry on May 24, 2015 9:53:49 GMT -5
That's disappointing sprite, but there are so many different varieties of potato, it wouldn't surprise me if that was important.
I am by no means an expert baker but I can generally follow a recipe and bake a nice basic cake, so I was surprised to have a real disaster!
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Post by owlet on May 24, 2015 9:55:41 GMT -5
Apart from the obvious differences like ingredients and differences in max oven temperatures etc, i'm convinced differences in ambient humidity and room temperatures also have an effect on how food turns out.
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Post by wombatrois on May 25, 2015 18:59:44 GMT -5
Agree. We sometimes have almost disasters with our pizza dough even though we make it using the same flour, yeast, etc (and I can't really help with a recipe b/c my basic one, even cutting in half, makes 12 or 13 .... Plus it's a secret so I'd have to kill you after revealing it!).
But we don't knead it - we let the yeast do all the work over about 12 - 18 hours.
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Post by princessofpenguins on May 29, 2015 15:57:10 GMT -5
Baking is to a very high degree an exact science. Everything must be right. Annoying...
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Post by ruthincanada on Jun 7, 2015 20:39:29 GMT -5
I like Wolfgang Puck's pizza recipe.
I once made Rhubarb crumble for our Korean friend and her sweet boyfriend. He would always bring us beer and doughnuts because someone said Canadians love both. Anyhow, I was distracted when making it and didn't put sugar in the bottom. He started eating it and the look on his face was amazing...half horror, half disgust. Fleeting though; he steeled himself and looked like he thought it was great! I took a bite...and just about spit it out. All the while he was choking it down, saying, "This is very interesting!" It was really embarrassing.
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Post by romily on Jun 10, 2015 4:40:58 GMT -5
I made my favourite cake recently and it seems the baking powder has gone off - didn't know it can happen, but I put enough in and the cake did rise initially, but then collapsed and was way too dense compared to normally. You could eat it, but it was not pleasant at all, which was really annoying.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jun 14, 2015 5:37:29 GMT -5
I made my favourite cake recently and it seems the baking powder has gone off - didn't know it can happen, but I put enough in and the cake did rise initially, but then collapsed and was way too dense compared to normally. You could eat it, but it was not pleasant at all, which was really annoying. Hm, I have got an older packet of baking powder in the cupboard and assumed it would be fine, but would be annoying to waste a cake for that reason - maybe I will replace it after all! |
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Post by romily on Jun 15, 2015 9:22:08 GMT -5
I didn't know it can go off - but I used eh right amount so that's my explanation!
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Post by riverhorse on Jun 15, 2015 14:28:20 GMT -5
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Post by romily on Jun 16, 2015 5:54:34 GMT -5
Interesting! I bought some of the little paper sachets again (they had them at Lidls!) like the ones you get in germany, because I think they might last longer than the big tubs (exposed to air). It's also much easier as most of my german baking recipes ask for a sachet of baking powder, not grams or teaspoons or what!
This thread really put me in a baking mood...
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Post by lillielangtry on Jun 16, 2015 10:30:49 GMT -5
Interesting! I bought some of the little paper sachets again (they had them at Lidls!) like the ones you get in germany, because I think they might last longer than the big tubs (exposed to air). It's also much easier as most of my german baking recipes ask for a sachet of baking powder, not grams or teaspoons or what! This thread really put me in a baking mood... Funny, I do the opposite - I go to the English shop to buy a whole tub*, because I find using English recipes with the little packets awkward! If I'm cooking from a German recipe of course the sachets are fine. *It's still made by Dr Oetker! |
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Post by Phar Lap on Jun 17, 2015 3:00:43 GMT -5
In a previous house we had gas oven and cakes came out just as they should. Fast forward to current home - electric oven. Food cooks quicker on the right hand side. Always. Both ovens are/were fan forced.
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Post by txgirl on Jul 15, 2015 4:56:27 GMT -5
I made brownies for my hosts today. I've used this recipe twice. The first time, the brownies were really hard, to the point that someone hurt their finger trying to get a slice. The recipe didn't call for baking powder, but apparently it was needed.
So, today I figured it would go better. I had baking soda, that's about the same. Anyway, that's not where it all went wrong. For whatever reason, I read a quarter teaspoon of salt and thought a quarter tablespoon of salt. Not only that, all I could find was coarse sea salt.... while it was a little easier to slice, every once in a while, you bite into a chunk of salt. My poor hosts.
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