I did it for the first time, and trying to figure out what went wrong. T00 much liquid? Baking powder lose its 'strength"? Date on the can after using it had April 2003. Called for 2 large eggs. I gave it 2 extra large, thats all I had available. Most of all, I am confused by what type of cups to use for flour, sugar. I have 2 plastic cups and marked 1 cup, and yet one is not exactly like the other in volume. How can that be? Is there a sure way of knowing what a cup of flour, sugar is? I know the glass cup is for liquids. The cake came out with the center moist, almost like a pudding.
It is hard to know without seeing the recipe. My best guess is that there was some error in measurement or the recipe wasn't suited to your particular bread maker. What you were making is consider a "quick bread" which is more like a muffin or cake than yeast bread. To do this right, you would have to have a bread maker with a quick bread or cake setting.
If the cake rose to the right height the leavening was OK. You can test the BP by putting some into hot water. If it foams vigorously, it is fine. BP is inexpensive, so I would get a new can since it is past the use-by date and will only degrade with time. No use of risking expensive ingredients and your time for the price of a can of BP.
When a recipe calls for eggs, it is understood that means large eggs. Of course in a regular oven, you would have simply tested the bread at the recommended time and when you saw that it was not done, you would have left it in the oven longer. I assume that your bread maker has a set cycle time and therefore you didn't have the option of baking it longer. Unless you without an oven, I would recommend that you just make your quick bread in the oven. It takes no special equipment to make quick bread and it doesn't require any special mixing technique. This is a case where less is better.
The surest way of measuring ingredients is to use a scale. If you plan to do more baking, I would recommend that you get a decent set of measuring cups and measuring spoons. As you see, there can be variations from one brand to another. This is another area where using bargain basement equipment will cost you big dollars in the long run. A set of good cups and spoons should last you a lifetime. I like heavy metal cups and spoons. Plastic will eventual discolor and melt.
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