Always preheat the oven before starting to make a cake and make sure oven shelves are in the right position. Unless specified otherwise, cook cakes in the centre.

Don’t overload your oven with trays of biscuits as they will cook unevenly. If you put more than one cake in the oven at a time, they will take longer to cook.

Most cakes are cooked when they begin to shrink away from the sides of the cake tin and when the centre of the cake springs back after being pressed lightly with a finger.

Test fruit cakes by inserting a skewer into the centre – it should come out clean.

If a cake cracks on top during baking, the oven was too hot or the cake was placed on too high a shelf.

A cake may sink if too much baking powder was used, the cake was taken out of the oven before it was cooked or the oven door was opened before the cake mixture had time to set. It may also not rise properly if the mixture was overbeaten or if not enough rising agent was used.

Generally, sponge cakes should be left to cool for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Turn them out the right way up and cover with a cake tin. This prevents the moisture evaporating while the cake cools, but doesn’t make it soggy. Leave fruit cakes to cool completely in their tins.

Remove biscuits and cookies from their trays while still warm or they may stick.

Don’t store cakes and biscuits in the same tin as the moisture from the cake will make the biscuits soggy.