My Kitchen Cook & Bake 23cm Loose-Based Sandwich Tin

As a semi professional baker I have found all these tins to be of excellent quality time and time again. I have most of the sizes and they produce perfect results every time.

On receiving the tins I was very impressed with the quality however on using them three times i was finding my cakes were just not rising. After a few tweeks and a couple more goes, they are absolutely fine now. To get a decent hight for my cake i found that these tins needed a 12oz mixture (12oz caster sugar, 12oz self raising flour, 12 oz butter and 6 eggs) and to be cooked on a lower heat for longer. Now i've got that sorted my cakes are now fine. As i said the quality is great and as long as the tins are greased well i had absoluely no problem removing the cakes.

Positives a) Should last a lifetime, heavy very good quality tins. Negatives. a) They leak a little bit despite being lined and greased. b) cake does not rise as much as I had hoped and it does shrink away from the sides of the tin a little bit. A comment from someone else might have put me back on track though by suggesting using 6 eggs /12 oz everything else. I will try this next time. c) Today a piece of one of the cakes has stuck to the side of the tin even though tin was well greased and base was lined d) Tins are heavy and difficult to empty the cakes out of.

These tins are well made however I think they are too heavy. I have made several sponges which come out okay, but I find them hard to remove from the tins, even with the loose bases. I also think that they are slightly higher so the edges of my cake come away from the side of the tin and they seem to be flatter. I adjust this by using the sponge that comes out slighter flatter as the bottom of the cake and by the time I have put jam in the middle it helps to make the cake look a higher. Overall I have to say I am disappointed with these tins as my last tins were excellent.