Baking sponge cake in a saucepan on an induction hob

In this note I describe an attempt to bake a sponge cake without an oven.

The pan used was a thin-walled (2mm) aluminium saucepan with a stainless steel disc stamped onto its bottom, usable on an induction hob. The hob was set to constant-power mode at 400W because the saucepan was too small to be reliably heated on this hob in constant-temperature mode. This resulted in a bottom temperature of roughly 180°C. The pan was completely covered with a glass lid. The recipe by BBC Food was used intact. The cake was baked in that way for approximately 20 minutes.

This is the result:

It is unsatisfactory, although edible. The bottom 3mm are charred. The rest is somewhat undercooked.

Conclusions

• I will not do the process again without improvement.
• I need a better induction hob. It is very frustrating that it loses the saucepan every time it starts a heating cycle, and also the temperature control via the sensor under the glass ceramic panel is bad anyway; more so when the dissimilar metal pan bottom warps from heating.
• Teflon alone is not enough for removal of the cake in one piece, although it might have partially worked if it wasn’t charred.