How to set yourself up to fail

[AdaptAndAchieve]

1) use a test recipe which turned out less than perfect last time
2) combine this with testing the bake setting in your air-fryer
3) use that silicone cake mould that you spotted in the shop last week.
4) forget to look for any info on silicone mould use or air fryer cake baking until it's time to put the mixture in

A super fast web search said baking in an air fryer is quicker with the convection effect.
But ... it later occurred to me that I already use a fan oven normally for my baking, so I should probably ignore the faster cooking thing.

And again a super fast web search seemed to say if using a silicon mould the cake would cook quicker.
But a more in depth search today indicated that reducing the temperature by 10 Celsius and cooking a bit longer was more likely to work better. I found 100% conflicting info, but the reduce temperature and cook a bit longer seemed to be more popular (unlike my fast search results on the day I cooked them *sigh*).
I suspect the thickness of the silicon mould also comes into the equation.

Does anyone have any thoughts / experience using an air fryers bake setting for a cake mix / time or temperature adjustment for silicon moulds?

For background info I tend to put fresh fruit in my cakes, so they either need eating fairly quickly, or need to be frozen. Being able to slap 4 small cakes together and bung them in the air fryer would work well for a ready supply of fresh fruit cakes.

This is the handy mould I picked up - with tabs for lifting out of an air fryer basket. This was my first test, cooked in a regular oven.

 

[AdaptAndAchieve]

The less than perfect recipe test is one I am adapting from a french yogurt cake
I have already cracked issues in a butter free and egg free cake which included some yogurt, but I wanted to crack this adaptation of a specific yogurt cake with no egg.
I eat eggs, and cook with eggs, but as regards making 4 small air fryer fruit cakes then not dealing with 1 egg = x amount of flour means total freedom to scale a recipe down.

This is the recipe I am playing with (I converted it to grams with what appears reasonable accuracy) Gâteau au Yaourt (French Yogurt Cake)
It's clearly considered doable as the recipe FAQ section has this info
"How to make a yogurt cake without eggs?
Remove the eggs from the basic recipe and add one more yogurt container."

Being the overthinking type I checked yogurts - the french yogurt is most likely a set yogurt with approx 3.4% fat, but I use a thicker greek style strained yogurt with 5% fat, which means I will need a bit of experimentation in how much yogurt to dilute with how much milk to get the correct thickness.
I think the fat content will be less of an issue as mine would lack the fat in the egg yolk.

The annoying thing is I probably invalidated my second test putting it in the airfryer and leaving it slightly underdone (the top looked done), grrr

 

[badjak]

I'm not a baker, but a remark like "swap 1 egg with 1 yoghurt container" makes me cringe
What size container? Ours are 1 litre, 500 ml, 125 ml, 100 ml, 75 ml
I'm a metric person and definitely when it comes to baking.

Yoghurt cake sounds good by the way

 

[AdaptAndAchieve]

I'm not a baker, but a remark like "swap 1 egg with 1 yoghurt container" makes me cringe
What size container? Ours are 1 litre, 500 ml, 125 ml, 100 ml, 75 ml

It also makes me cringe a bit based on quantities/ratio's, tho as I read it you would remove 3 eggs and add 1 extra pot of yogurt

That specific recipe says they used an 8-inch round cake pan and a 4 oz. (113 g) plain yogurt container ... but even I am NOT going there on trying to convert 3 yogurt pots of flour to grams, so I translated pots to cups (half, one and 1.5 for the various quantities).
This results in the original recipe ........ with a conversion using bakers percentage to base it on 100g flour
122.5g Yogurt ........................................ bakers % = 65g
100-200g Granulated sugar ............. bakers % = 53 to 106g
165g egg (lets say large are 55g) .... bakers % = 88g
108g olive oil ......................................... bakers % = 57g
187.5g flour ........................................... bakers % = 100g

For me, that amount of oil seems high (especially remembering something like butter is 80% fat, and oil is basically 100% fat). I reduced the oil by about 25% (my yogurt includes 5% fat anyhow)
I know from my test that reducing the oil, removing the egg and lobbing an extra 65g of my brand of yogurt in results in a mixture which is far too firm and in dire need to a good amount of milk to loosen it up.
Next test will be a yogurt adjustment that (hopefully) includes enough milk to thin the yogurt sufficiently.

So .. anyone around that knows if temperature/cooking time vary when using silicone cake molds?
Or if the temperature of an air fryer (using bake setting) needs reducing if you are already basing your temperature on a standard fan oven (in uk)

 

[AdaptAndAchieve]

btw, this is a brilliant site for converting almost anything in a cup to grams, ml etc. Saves trying to find a relevant converter