Baking Issues - Why won't it rise?

Me too. Staff are always bringing in homemade stuff for their birthdays. My friend who is very into baking brings stuff for me to try all the time. (Mary Berry devotee)  Luckily we're close enough to be brutally honest; she doesn't like the fluffiness of american cakes and I don't like the stodge.   

I actually don't mind the stodge if it's a moist stodge. It's the cakes that crumble when you cut them that disappoint me.

Let's have a bakeoff! What'cha doing in October? 

 

I actually don't mind the stodge if it's a moist stodge. It's the cakes that crumble when you cut them that disappoint me.

Yes! That's it exactly! The cakes I make are deliciously moist, but they're not that silly airy kind that people eat in the US. I want cake not air, dammit! 

Yes! That's it exactly! The cakes I make are deliciously moist, but they're not that silly airy kind that people eat in the US. I want cake not air, dammit! 

STODGE LOVER, STODGE LOVER!!!  (note the caps for emphasis.....)  Now you yell back: AIR LOVER, AIR LOVER!!!

Let's meet halfway and have some pie.....

OK, this may have come up and I just didn't check because I don't bake very often. But, when I bake banana nut bread (nearly the only thing I ever bake) why doesn't the loaf rise to normal size? I follow the recipe from the Joy of Cooking, I set the right temperature (I believe) at 165 C. The bread still tastes good, but it's a little dense and not as big and fluffy as it should be. It essentially only rises halfway, instead of rising to the top of the loaf pan. What am I doing wrong?

Try adding a little extra flour. Sometimes I weigh it out properly (I think I posted the conversions in one of the threads Mrs R linked) and sometimes I just measure it 'badly'--that is, forget all the spooning gently and levelling properly, and just scoop generously.

I had a nice, moist lemon drizzle cake someone brought into work. Maybe it depends on the type of cake. Though, to be fair, I love anything lemon, so I probably shoveled it in too fast to notice what it was really like. 

Lemon drizzle cake is one of the few cakes I like here.  I rate National Trust tearooms based on the availability and tastiness of their lemon drizzle cake. 

I tried the strong bread flour in making chocolate chip cookies, and they were soft and delicious, even the next day, with crisp edges. Still, they were very flat.  I think I will do what Elynor suggested next time and add a bit extra flour and see what happens. The batter was very moist, more so than usual, but I used this recipe and just subbed the strong bread flour and added a 1/2 tsp of baking powder by mistake (read the recipe wrong and added that instead of baking soda, but then added the baking soda once I realised what I did and continued as normal.)

http://southernfood.about.com/od/chocchipcookies/r/r90510f.htm

Also, they seriously could've used more chocolate. I used the Cadbury chocolate chunks for baking and they didn't get all gooey like I would've liked.  I wrote down everything I did as experiment one and figured I could just change something each time and compare notes until I get it right.