The Number One Tip For Perfect Cake Times

I am one of life’s jury riggers. If something has instructions I am unlikely to read them before plunging into the fray. This generally leads to some pretty odd looking flat pack furniture so I have tried to reign in my ‘freestyle’ proclivities so that we can have tables that work with the physics in this universe.

There is one area that I still constantly ignore or add to instructions however and that is in the kitchen. I have rarely found a recipe that works the way it suggests and this is nowhere more apparent than with cake cooking recommendations.

Just ignore them. By all means do check your cake with a knife in the middle to see whether it is cooked through but there is no need to rigidly stick to the cooking time prescribed by the recipe.

The number one best tip for getting cooking times right with cake is this:

Are you ready?

‘ just to wait until the kitchen smells like cake’.

Yes, that is the indicator that you are looking for. Your kitchen filling with that delicious, mouth watering aroma that sets your mouth watering and your children asking how long until they can get a taste. Much better than any timer in the world!

And don’t be afraid to change up a recipe a bit. The people writing these are not the last word on what needs to go in to make it work. I very often alter ingredients, add an egg here or substitute almond milk there. The worst that could happen is that you end up with an extremely tasty mess.

The Bakewell tart was discovered by mistake. Champagne was discovered by mistake. Who knows. You may be onto the next big thing!