1 hour ago, lemniscate said:I might have been over-thinking the jam ingredient thing.
I've been wondering about the same thing. After all, there is a science to baking cakes. Everything depends on specific proportions, the type of leavening agent for specific ingredients, and the size of the pan for support of the cake.
The problem then is, which element do you reduce with the addition of the jam. Do you reduce the sugar element because jam has sugar? Jam has moisture. Which moisture element do you reduce? How will that jam affect the leavening agent? All of these have to be taken into consideration and I'm sure that a good food scientist could tell at a glance what to do. Unfortunately, I could only do it by trial and error.
I can usually tell by looking at a recipe if it is totally out of proportion and it seemed to me that that grapefruit cake had too much moisture. And I almost always read the comments to see if people have had problems. But by reading the comments on that cake, there were people that seemed to have made it and liked it. Maybe their idea of a good cake is just completely different than mine.
