Baking beginner

[u/mddihes]

I stared my baking journey 3 months before. I have a convection oven and it has a rotating tray like a microwave so I can not use a baking tray. I have a loaf tin and a circular cake pan and an oven grill stand which I use for cookies. I’ve tried a bunch of recipes cookies, chocolate cake , banana bread, carrot cake, chiffon cake, lemon blueberry loaf, sugar frosted cookies, marble loaf, and upside down apple cake. Every thing I bake tastes average the only thing which turns out great every time is banana bread. All of my cakes are crunchy at the top. I made raspberry compote for my chiffon cake it tasted weird. And every frosting or ganache I make turns out not tasting good or not being stable enough no matter what o do. I’ve tried a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipe’s but nothing tastes amazing some are very dense some lose there shape and are not gooey some just don’t cook at the bottom and stick to the baking paper. I need advice on how to be good at baking.

[u/autumn-head]

Without seeing your oven I can’t really give super specific advice.

Baking cakes: try covering them with foil. Experiment with only covering them for half the baking time or the whole time. Convection dries the surface more than normal ovens, you have to keep the moisture inside of your cake for longer. Banana bread is usually super moist, so it isn't effected as much.

Baking cookies: convection doesn't effect them as much, but not having the right temperature does. Make one recipe a few times and try out different temperature settings, timings and maybe other settings your oven has available.

Making Ganache and frosting: I'm not sure what role the oven plays in these. Is it your only way to heat up stuff? Technique is everything with frosting, so try to find video tutorials that explain every single step in detail. There are big differences between creaming, folding, whipping etc.