Self-raising flour help please.......

hello, I don't know why but my most recent cupcakes I have been baking are all sinking in the middle??? I am using all the same ingredients and my oven is in good working order, the cupcakes still taste yummy but my stomach sinks when after getting the cakes out of the oven within 3 minutes they have a small dip in the middle.
I use self raising flour from a catering wholesaler, their own brand, I have noticed that they also sell Allisons and McDougalls, can anyone recommend one of these or even suggest what I maybe doing wrong?
Thanks

Hello pidge10 and welcome to CU !

Do you always make the same recipe for your cupcakes, or are there variations?
And it seems you always use the same flour, so perhaps there is a deterioration.

I'll put in a link with a similar subject , even though in this case it refers to bread making flour.

I'm no expert, but maybe this brings you a bit nearer to the solution of your problem.

You could also type your recipe in here, and exactly how you make it.

Kind regards,
Angelika

Help needed with roasting beef.

My dear wife is a great cook. However, for some reason she seems to roast beef to the point of dryness and toughness.
As a result, I can't eat it cold. How do I get the beef to have that nice pink colour in the middle, so that when it's cold too, it is soft and delicious.

I should add she buys what she calls Hip-bone, or H-bone and always cuts the joints into 1lb portions, presumably because she believes we can't eat the whole thing in one. She also cooks the meat very slowly, which I think cooks it right through; how I don't really like it. Could this have something to do with the meat drying up?

I could never tell her I don't like her beef, but maybe if I knew how, I could cook it myself?
Then if she likes it, she could ask me how I did it? (One can hope of course!)

I can cook most other things. btw...

hello wobblycogs,

best you buy a meat thermometer. Put it into the thickest part of your meat and when it shows 50°C, switch off the heat of your oven and leave the roast in the oven, door closed, until the thermometer shows 57°C. Then the roast will be nicely pink in the middle.

Hip bone is not ideal, best is sirloin or rib roast. And you achieve better results with larger pieces, at least 1kg, better 2. No problem to freeze the cooked roast.

regards,
heidi

Jeepers! 57degrees. The health inspector would freak out. When I cooked for the elderly meat had to have a core temperature of at least 72 for maximum safety. We pot roasted beef in large pieces with stock and herbs to stop them from drying out. It was always tasty tender and succulent. But if you are cooking conventionally, very small pieces, they will dry unless medium rare.

Pot roast method also works well with small cuts as you can go past the tough stage of overcooked and go to very tender again, for those who like a thorough cooked meat.

Pidge 10, use a good flour and measure ingredients. Leave to get just a little browner. Leave cup cakes to cool in the tin for a while as residue heat might keep them up. You will get there. When I got married I could not even turn oven on. x

@nannabren: your method is on the safe side when anxious about health. But the roast will never ever be pink in the middle and that is what wobblycogs asked for.

usually meat is well controlled and can be eaten even raw - think of carpaccio or beefsteak tartare.

regards
heidi