Crumbly Chocolate Guinness Cake

Asked by Angela.khoo. Answered on 2nd November 2015

Full question

I tried the Choculate Guinness Cake recipe and it turn out brownie like and crumbly. Not sure if the eggs I used are slightly smaller than those in the recip. I baked the cake for 1 hour, will this cause it to overbake? How do you test for doneness to ensure the cake is perfect, especially when ovens are all slightly different?

Our answer

Nigella's Guinness Chocolate Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) should be a slightly damp and moist cake. It should not be dry and crumbly and this would be a sign that the cake may be over baked. As ovens do differ the recipe suggests a baking time of 45 minutes to 1 hour so normally you would check the cake first after the shorter cooking time (ie 45 minutes). The cake should be firm to the touch in the surface. To test the cake, insert a metal or wooden skewer into the centre of the cake. When you take the skewer out it should be clean, with possibly a couple of damp crumbs on it. If there is raw or uncooked batter on the skewer then bake the cake for an extra 5 to 10 minutes and check again. Also Nigella's recipes give temperatures for conventional ovens so you will need to adjust the oven temperature for fan or convection ovens. Your oven handbook should contain guidance on how to adjust the temperature.

In the UK large eggs weigh 63g to 73g (still in their shells). Descriptions vary across the world and for the US this is extra large size. If in doubt then you could weigh your eggs to see if they correspond to this size. If your eggs are on the small size then you may need to use an extra egg yolk.