Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

• Meringues - bubbles of sugar and soft mixture

  why do my meringues ooze caramel? Have i not combined the sugar and egg whites enough? or is it something else? Rosequartz

  I have been making the Christmas Pavlova recipe in Nigellas Domestic Goddess book for years and the majority of the time it turns out fantastically. However, there are occasions where the uncooked mix is much looser than usual and I end up with a much flatter meringue. Any ideas why this happens? Jive-Monster

  Posted by Rosequartz. Answered on 22nd Feb 2011 at 12.00

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• Ratatouille

  Ever so often my husband surprises me with a ratatouille. I have begged him to stop because it tastes as if the vegetables have bled to death, but he wont'. So...how do we keep the flavours in?

  Posted by WildCherry. Answered on 21st Feb 2011 at 12.00

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• Sinking loaf cakes

  In Nigella's latest book, Kitchen, the loaf cakes on pages 136 296 and 308 have clearly sunk in the middle. Surely that cannot be how you expect them to be served? Is this simply a bad batch and there was no time to recook before taking photos or are these cakes really meant to be sunk in the middle? I have never seen any seed cake or loaf cake which had sunk in the middle in any other cookbook. 

  I've now attempted the chocolate orange loaf cake from "Kitchen" twice now and on both occasions the cake has sunk spectacularly on taking out of the oven. I've followed the quantities and recipe exactly and normally have no problem with my cake baking. Can you let me know what is going wrong? Cazl

  Posted by herogirl. Answered on 20th Feb 2011 at 12.00

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