/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Hello, /ck/. I have twice now attempted to make cake from scratch, I.E. with flour and eggs and sugar and all that good stuff. And twice now my cakes have turned out all wrong.

The same thing seemed to happen to both. The cake was much flatter and thinner than I expected it to be, and it was very chewy, almost like a more solid jelly-substance. It did not have any air holes like most cakes do - just a solid, flat, chewy something.

What have I been doing wrong? What do I need to do to make it come out correctly?

Picture related. My last attempt was a Castella cake. This is, obviously, not the cake I managed to make.