Luscious Vegan Gingerbread Sinking

Our answer

Nigella's Luscious Vegan Gingerbread (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is a dark, treacly gingerbread that can be a teatime treat or served with poached or roasted fruit as a dessert. As the cake doesn't contain any eggs, the bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is the main leavening agent. Too much bicarbonate of soda can cause the cake to rise up a lot and then sink back, so make sure that you measure this ingredient carefully with a 5ml measuring teaspoon and it should be a level teaspoonful. Make sure also that the bicarbonate of soda is fully dissolved in the warm water before adding it to the cake batter.

You don't want to mix too much air into the gingerbread batter as this can cause air pockets that give a bubbled surface to the gingerbread or collapse on cooling and cause craters. When you add the flour you could switch from a whisk to a wooden spoon or silicone spatula to reduce the amount of air being mixed in and if you get lumps of flour then you can squish them against the side of the saucepan to incorporate them into the batter. We would not encourage allowing too many lumps of flour in the batter as it is a fairly liquid batter and in our experience the lumps of flour don't always dissolve and leave spots of white flour in the baked cake.