youtube pinterest twitter facebook instagram vimeo whatsapp Bookmark Entries BURGER NEW Chevron Down Chevron Left Chevron Right Basket Speech Comment Search Video Play Icon Premium Nigella Lawson Vegan Vegetarian Member Speech Recipe Email Bookmark Comment Camera Scales Quantity List Reorder Remove Open book
Menu Signed In
More answers

Why Does My Chocolate Olive Oil Cake Overflow From The Tin?

Asked by Nadia13. Answered on 29th January 2022

Full question

Help! Every time I cook the Chocolate Olive Oil Cake it’s delicious but it spills over the top of the cake tin as it bakes! But in the book it doesn’t look like it should be in a big cake tin. Is that my basic fail? Get a deeper tin?

Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
Photo by Petrina Tinslay
Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
By Nigella
  • 14
  • 2

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake (from NIGELLISSIMA) is a cake that can be made either with regular flour or gluten-free with ground almonds (almond meal). It is a single layer cake, but is slightly deeper than the single layer on a Victoria sponge. The gluten-free version will sink back a little as it cools. Measure the bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) carefully using a proper ½ teaspoon (2.5ml) measuring spoon and using a level measure. Too much leavening could cause the cake to rise up and overflow in the oven. And if you are making the regular flour version, make sure you are using plain (all-purpose) flour.

The cake should be baked in a springform pan. These pans tend to be deeper than normal sandwich tins (cake pans), so if you are using a UK loose-bottomed sandwich tin it may be slightly too shallow. Springform pans have a depth of approximately 7cm (2¾ inches), so if yours is much shallower than that then the cake may overflow during baking and a deeper pan is needed.

Tell us what you think