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PS
12
0
asked July 17th 2013

How do I use a hemisphere pan for Paul’s chocolate cake recipe?

Am planning on making a boob cake for my husbands 40th based (having seen Paul’s Basque Cake tutorial). To make it simpler as I am a complete beginner, I’m just going to do 2 domes and decorate. Have bought a 6″ Wilton hemisphere pan and hope to make 2 of Paul’s chocolate cakes for icing. So far I’ve figured a 3 egg mix will do for both cakes. Does anyone have any idea about cooking times and cautions for a fan oven using hemisphere pans? I’m worried about uneven cooking and have no idea how to scale the timings down.

2
accepted

Hi prasima

A hemisphere cake will bake more quickly and more evenly than a round cake with the same tin diameter. The temperature should be kept to that given in the tutorial, so for fan oven that would 130c or 135c depending on how quick your oven is. Timing MIGHT be as little as 50 minutes. So if you work around the 50 min mark and keep an eye on the bake. Here http://www.cakeflix.com/questions/two-hours-too-long-chocolate-cake you see an answer for 8″ round cakes which took 1 hr 20 mins, that temperature converted to celsius would be about 138. A bit of an experiment perhaps? The recipe has been difficult for some members and very successful for others. It has been suggested that reducing the sugar on the whole recipe by 100g helps alleviate some of the crusting and sinking experienced. I hope this helps a little.

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Thanks Andy, that’s very helpful and yes, it was very much an experiment so I considered myself very lucky that it came out well. It’s just out the oven and thought it might be useful to share the experience for any other first timers as I was nervous about starting. I made 2 x6″ ball cakes using Wilton hemisphere pans from Lakeland (£6.99 each). As per web advice, greased these well with butter and cut a disc of greaseproof paper 10″ in diameter (for a 6″ tin) with slits cut almost down to the centre and used this to line the tin with the strips overlapping a bit (used spots of butter to stop these flopping forwards into the cake).
Kept Pauls recipe as is with no reduction in sugar (a 3 egg mix, ie half the recipe on the website, did both cakes) and baked this in a fan oven at 120 degrees C on the middle shelf for 75 mins (it wasn’t ready at 60 mins). I know your temperatures are all for a conventional oven and my oven is a bit hotter from experience hence the 120 degrees C. Didn’t have a cake ring so sat the tin in a small glass pyrex bowl and stuff balls of greaseproof paper down the sides to keep it steady. The top was crisp and very slightly indented but this didn’t matter as I turned it over and the other side was perfect (apart from the slight indentations from the greaseproof paper but that’s down to my amateur technique and I think can be corrected with buttercream and icing and maybe wedges cut out of the greaseproof paper rather than just slots). It wasn’t burnt – I did try a strip of foil over the top at the start but gave up as the fan oven lived up to it’s name and blew it off, not sure how to correct this. The cake came out very easily from the tin once it had cooled. It was moist, fudgy and delicious. I usually cut out sugar in recipes but thought the amount here in terms of taste was just right. I may try a couple of tablespoons less next time just to see if the top is not as crisp.
Anyway that’s my tuppence for what it’s worth, just in case it helps anyone else.

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Hi PS

Thank you for feeding back, this will be very helpful information for other members, it’s great you had a good result. Oooo by the way you morphed me into Andy! xx

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