Cake baking question [View All]

[housewolf]

After a long dry spell of little baking, I've been inspired to bake a cake several times recently. I'm using recipes that I've used before, and they just aren't turing out too well.

So I wanted to see if anyone here has some suggestions.

The first thing to note is that moved several months ago and I learned the hard way that the oven in this house is kinda flakey. I have an oven thermometer in it and it indicates registers about 25 degrees lower than the oven's temperature display reads, so I set the oven 25 degrees higher to compensate. (But how do I know if my oven thermometer is accurate???)

The cakes (a genoise, a yellow butter cake & a chocolate butter cake) come out kinda crumbly and a bit coarse. The flavor is great, the color is good, but the texture isn't quite what I want. I keep thinking the problem is the oven... or maybe I've just lost my touch!

Any ideas?