Burnt outside - raw inside - what am I doing wrong?

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I thought dark baking pans take longer to cook/bake... hm, have to go back and check.

Charlie think of summer clothing. You wear light colors to stay cooler. If you put on dark clothes, you feel and are hotter. Those dark clothes hold the heat more than the light clothes. Same thing for dark baking pans. So because they get hotter, you need a lower temperature. If your recipe says bake at 350ºF. you will want to lower it to 325ºF. when you are using dark pans. Next time you are in the grocery store, stop on the box cake aisle. Look at the directions on any of the boxes. They all give a different temp for dark pans. And that goes for your bread pans as well. :angel:
 
Make sure any oven thermometer you buy is good quality. I bought a cheap one. I adjusted for the difference between what the oven said and the thermometer said. Nothing came out right, even recipes I had been using successfully for years. Obviously, I quit using it. Now that I am reminded, I will go put it in the garbage. Total waste of money.
 
I'm not sure this is true. In a small, enclosed space like an oven, I don't think the temperature difference from top to bottom would be enough to matter.


I have seen recipes that tell you to raise or lower the rack in the oven, so it must make some difference. When it doubt, I put the rack in the middle.
 
Get an oven thermometer from a kitchen supplies shop/store or even from a supermarket. They are relatively cheap and sit on or hang from the oven shelf and enable you to know whether your oven thermostat is accurate. It probably isn't as I've never known an oven that was. You can then adjust the temperature for the dish you as cooking.

Oh, yes, and are you allowing the oven to come up to temp before putting the cake in? Not sure about modern electric cookers but with gas cookers it can take 15-20 minutes.
Co-incidentally, I was watching Raymond Blanc on television the other day and as he put a dish in the oven in his restaurant kitchen we could clearly see a little oven thermometer sitting on oven shelf so it's not just us amateurs.
 
I'm not sure this is true. In a small, enclosed space like an oven, I don't think the temperature difference from top to bottom would be enough to matter.
Oh yes it does - unless you have a fan assisted oven. The cookery book that came with the first gas cooker my parents bought when they were married explained this in detail and had instructions for whole dinners to be cooked in the oven at the same time - roasting on the higher shelves and slow cook things like rice pudding on the bottom.

I still use the same book with my modern all singing, all dancing gas range cooker which has a normal oven and a fan assisted one. The principle still works with the normal oven which I use far more than the fan one.

Incidentally, if your only oven is fan assisted you have to set the temperature control lower than if it's a normal oven.
 
:angel:
Co-incidentally, I was watching Raymond Blanc on television the other day and as he put a dish in the oven in his restaurant kitchen we could clearly see a little oven thermometer sitting on oven shelf so it's not just us amateurs.

So does ATK. Way in the back on the left hand side looking in.
 
After reading this thread, I looked for the instruction manual for the oven I bought about a year ago. It has a regular bake setting and also a convection setting. I have been using the regular setting since I have no experience with convection. It seems that anything I bake would be done on the outside, but not in the middle. Cookies around the outside edge of the cookie sheet would be done before the ones in the middle. Finally I tried the convection setting, and the baked good are turning out much better. I did not adjust any temperature settings, but I always check my baked goods before the time specified in the recipe. I had no problem. Today I read through the instruction manual and it said if you use the convection setting to bake, just enter the temperature suggested in the recipe, and the oven will automatically adjust when using the convection setting. I don't know if all convection ovens do this but maybe not, because a friend said when she used the convection setting her cookies burned.

I never use dark baking pans. I use shiny metal... or glass, which requires a temp setting 25 degrees lower than the recipe calls for. For cookies, I use air-bake cookie sheets. They are double layer with an air space in the middle. Cookies never get dark on the bottom. I strongly recommend these to anyone who bakes a lot of cookies. I just bought a set in Target, for my DIL, who's cookies are always burned. LOL
 
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