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I have a pretty basic gas oven and it's not good at regulating and distibuting heat, baking fruit cake and the only way I've figured out to stop the bottom burning is to regularly switch a cold baking tray under it while baking.
Anyone got any suggestions?
Get a better oven, or just buy fruit cake from the shop?
Get a big square pizza stone and put it on a the bottom shelf of the oven. Mine leaves about an inch gap all round, and it does need to be well fitting like that, a small round one wasn't anywhere near as effective. Warm the oven up to about 10C higher than the recipe suggests, then bake as normal by lowering the temperature.
Takes a good 10-15 minutes longer to warm up initially but gives a very even heat as the burner is off for most of the time, and if it's a long bake like bread pudding taking 90-120min then the stone insulates the cake from the direct heat when it is on.
When my mum used to make Christmas Cake, which has to be in the oven for a long time, she would wrap the tin in newspaper to stop the edges from being burned. Also her tins had a loose base that had a double skin with an air-gap which probably had a similar insulating effect.
Maybe have a look at some different recipes to see if you can find some better baking method, but stick with your same ingredients.
(I'm no bloody expert here, but she was).
Have you got any large Le Creuset style cast iron casserole dishes?
If you let one of those come up to temperature and then put your fruit loaf tin inside, it will help with the heat distribution. I've done bread this way so don't see why it wouldn't work for fruit cake.
Thanks for advice, will look into pizza stone idea and see if I can find a double skinned base cake tin.
The oven is very basic, no switching on or off during baking! Hoping to get an electric fan oven eventually but need to try and get a tradesman to come to do some work first! 🙄
Anyway the cake seems to have come out OK, subject to taste test! 🫰
The oven is very basic, no switching on or off during baking!
So no temperature control at all? That's either VERY basic or broken.
Can regulate the flame but it doesn't cut in and out as it reaches temperature.