Re: Beautiful Cakes by GS’ers
Did you add baking soda or baking powder? Or did you use self-rising flour? If the cake was hard, you may have forgotten the baking soda. Self-rising flour already has baking soda in it, but regular flour does not, and you have to add it in.
Another possibility is that you did not have enough liquid in your batter.
Yes, it does sound like your oven is on the hot side. I also have a hot oven, so I set it to just below the line for the temp the recipe calls for.
Also, cakes become hard when you over-mix the batter. Flour should be the last ingredient that you add in the batter. Make sure you mix it with a wooden spoon or spatula (not a whisk!), and gently mix it with as few turns of the batter as possible until all of the flour is incorporated. Once you can’t see any more flour, stop mixing! If you continue mixing the batter at this point, your cake will become hard.
Don’t worry, everyone has failed in the kitchen! Baking involves exact math. It’s not like cooking, where you can roughly measure 1 cup from a drinking glass and pour it in. Make sure you are following the recipe’s exact measurements. If it says 1 cup, it means 1 leveled cup from a measuring cup. 1 teaspoon means that you must use a measuring teaspoon and flatten the powder to drop off the excess.
Hope that helps!