Cake – how to get the salty taste out of your cupcake

Quite often that look can be from having the temp too high on the oven. A convection oven should always be at least 25 (and some people will say up to 50) degrees cooler than a 'normal' oven. If you haven't tried it yet, knock down the temp of the oven. We used to call this 'lava tops', because basically the outside is baking and setting quickly, and then the insides pop out of the gelatinous surface, and they go in a funny direction (often the way the fan blows). I'm not saying that is the problem for sure, but if it were me, it would be the first thing I tried to eradicate the problem.

Firstly, it strikes me as odd that your recipe has no raising agent - no baking powder, no bicarbonate/baking soda, no self-raising flour. Unless you're whipping a lot of air into the batter, the cakes will barely rise, and you will end up with 'cookies'.

I would add 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and see if that helps.

As for the temperature of your oven, I wouldn't go so far as to halve the temperature and double the time. The idea is that you need enough heat for the cakes to rise at a decent rate then form a crust on the outside. 100 degrees will do little but slowly dry the cakes out.

Domestic ovens are rarely well calibrated, so your oven may be running hotter than the dial indicates. Invest in an oven thermometer to make sure you are setting the temperature correctly: I have had an oven run 40 degrees hotter than the dial said before now!

If you haven't got the time to get a thermometer, try setting the oven about 20 degrees cooler on the dial, to around 180 degrees.