Why Does My Chocolate Olive Oil Cake Overflow From The Tin?

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake (from NIGELLISSIMA) is a cake that can be made either with regular flour or gluten-free with ground almonds (almond meal). It is a single layer cake, but is slightly deeper than the single layer on a Victoria sponge. The gluten-free version will sink back a little as it cools. Measure the bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) carefully using a proper ½ teaspoon (2.5ml) measuring spoon and using a level measure. Too much leavening could cause the cake to rise up and overflow in the oven. And if you are making the regular flour version, make sure you are using plain (all-purpose) flour.

The cake should be baked in a springform pan. These pans tend to be deeper than normal sandwich tins (cake pans), so if you are using a UK loose-bottomed sandwich tin it may be slightly too shallow. Springform pans have a depth of approximately 7cm (2¾ inches), so if yours is much shallower than that then the cake may overflow during baking and a deeper pan is needed.