Cake in a tin in an air fryer
Fresh — the short answer
160°C (320°F) for 20–25 min
- For
- 500g in total, about 40mm at the thickest point, At room temperature
- In
- Basket air fryer, one item on its own
- Preheat
- Yes, before the food goes in
- Check
- A skewer into the centre comes out clean
- Safety
- Plug an air fryer directly into a wall socket. Do not run one from an extension lead. Full rule below.
Twenty to twenty-five minutes at 160°C, in a tin, agreed across four manufacturers.
Fresh
The quick answer
160°C (320°F) for 20–25 min
Four manufacturers publish 160°C for cake and three of them give 20–25 minutes. Depth of batter is what moves the answer within the range.
- Assuming
- 500g in total, about 40mm at the thickest point, At room temperature
- In
- Basket air fryer
- Loaded
- One item on its own
- Preheat
- Yes, before the food goes in
- Result
- Just cooked
Preparation
Use a baking tin that fits with air space around it. Every chart consulted says to use a tin, and the reason is that the tin shields the batter from direct airflow — a cake baked loose in a drawer is a different and much worse thing.
How to load the basket
One item on its own. Fastest and most even, but small quantities in a large chamber can dry out before they brown.
How to tell it is done
- A skewer into the centre comes out clean
- The top springs back under a fingertip
- The edges have just begun to pull away from the tin
Change the result
Each of these moves the outcome in a known direction, and most cost you something. The trade is stated so you can decide whether you want it.
- A flatter top
- Cover the tin loosely for the first two-thirds. Whether you may use foil for that depends on your appliance — check the aluminium foil page before assuming.Trade-off: Less colour on top, and one manufacturer prohibits foil in its machines outright.
In a different appliance
Basket air fryer: 160°C for 20–25 min
A published 300g of batter in a tin. Depth in the tin moves the answer more than weight does.
Basket air fryer: 160°C for 25 min
A single published preset default of twenty-five minutes at 160°C, with no quantity stated.
Basket air fryer: 160°C for 20–25 min
Depth of batter in the tin. Two manufacturers publish 20-25 minutes and 25 minutes respectively for around 300g of batter; a deeper tin takes longer and a shallow one less.
Basket air fryer: 160°C for 50–60 min
Batter weight and depth in the tin, for a published 800g using the baking accessory.
Where these figures came from — fresh
- Applies to
- Specific to this type of appliance
- Why this rating
- The strongest cross-manufacturer agreement in the catalogue: four documents from two companies across four models and two architectures, all at 160°C, and all specifying a tin. That agreement is what justifies presenting this at the architecture level rather than per model.
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-13
What this does not cover
- Applies to drawer architectures, which is what these sources cover.
- The two companies involved appear to share a hardware platform for some models, so the four sources are not fully independent. That is recorded rather than treated as four separate confirmations.
Sources (4)
Tower T17067 4L Digital Air Fryer — Safety and Instruction Manual (PDF)
RKW Ltd (Tower Housewares) — Manufacturer manual (United Kingdom)
Relied on for: Cake, 400g, 20–25 minutes at 160°C, use a baking tin.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk
Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 947/6769. The document carries no revision code.
Tower T17088 9L Dual Basket Vortx Air Fryer — Safety and Instruction Manual (PDF)
RKW Ltd (Tower Housewares) — Manufacturer manual (United Kingdom)
Relied on for: Cake, 20–25 minutes at 160°C, use a baking tin; and a Cake preset defaulting to 25 minutes at 160°C.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk
Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 409/6137.
Cookworks 9L Dual Air Fryer KDF-5577DTW — Instruction Manual (PDF)
Argos Limited (Cookworks) — Manufacturer manual (United Kingdom)
Relied on for: A Cakes preset defaulting to 25 minutes at 160°C.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk
Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 148/6630. Cookworks is Argos's own brand; the manual names the manufacturer only by model number KDF-5577DTW.
Tower T17038 Xpress 11L 5-in-1 Air Fryer Oven with Rotisserie — Instruction Manual (PDF)
RKW Ltd (Tower Housewares) — Manufacturer manual (United Kingdom)
Relied on for: Cake, 800g, 20–25 minutes at 160°C, use a baking tin.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk
Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 363/6653.
Leftover (reheating)
No time or temperature for this, and not by accident
Cake in a tin is sold and cooked leftover (reheating), so the question is a real one. AirfryerHQ holds no published figure for it: not one of the manufacturer manuals read for this catalogue gives a chart row for this food in this state.
We are not going to produce one by adjusting the fresh figure above. A time arrived at that way would appear on this page looking exactly like a time somebody measured, and you would have no way to tell the difference.
What still governs, figure or no figure
These rules come from national food-safety authorities and apply whether or not anybody has published a cooking time. They are the part of this question we can answer.
Requirement — Food safety (microbiological)
Cool cooked food and get it into the fridge within one to two hours, keep the fridge between 0 and 5°C, and eat leftovers within 48 hours.
How to tell, without a thermometer
- There is no sensory test for this rule, and that is the point: food held too long at the wrong temperature does not necessarily look, smell or taste different
If it has not got there: Throw it away. This is the one rule in this catalogue where the remedy is not 'cook it longer', because cooking does not reverse it.
Important: Cooked rice is the sharpest case: Bacillus cereus toxins form at room temperature and survive reheating. Rice left out for more than an hour goes in the bin.
Requirement — Food safety (microbiological)
Reheat leftovers until steaming hot all the way through, and only reheat them once.
Target: 70°C in the thickest part, or an equivalent from the table below.
How to tell, without a thermometer
- Steam rising from the centre, not just the edges
- The middle is hot to the touch, tested after removing it from the appliance
If it has not got there: Keep going, and break dense food up or spread it out so the heat can reach the middle. If it will not heat through evenly, a microwave to get the centre hot followed by the air fryer to crisp the surface is a better tool for the job than the air fryer alone.
Important: Cooked rice and pasta left at room temperature can develop Bacillus cereus toxins that reheating does not destroy. If cooked rice has been out of the fridge for more than an hour, discard it rather than reheating it.
| Temperature | Held for | Measured at |
|---|---|---|
| 70°C | 2 min | the centre of the food |
| 75°C | 30 sec | the centre of the food |
What we do hold for cake in a tin: fresh. Those are a different question, not a starting point for this one.
What usually goes wrong
A domed, cracked top over an underbaked middle. The element is close and the air is fast, so the surface sets before the batter has finished rising and the cake pushes up through its own crust. 160°C is already a concession to this; a loose foil cover for the first half is the other one, and it runs straight into the question of whether foil belongs in your machine.
Running the appliance safely
These apply to every food and every air fryer, so they are here once rather than repeated under each state above. They come from Electrical Safety First, from UK product-safety notices and from the manufacturers’ own manuals.
- Plug an air fryer directly into a wall socket. Do not run one from an extension lead.
- An unusual smell, an unusual noise, or scorch marks on the plug mean stop using it and contact the manufacturer.
- Do not overfill. Food touching the heating element is a fire risk, not a cooking problem.
- White smoke from fatty food is usually normal. Black smoke means unplug it immediately.
- Do not leave an air fryer running unattended.
- Leave clear space above and around the appliance, and never cover the air intake or the outlet.
- Aim for a golden yellow colour or lighter on starchy foods such as chips and roast potatoes, rather than a darker brown.
- Buy from a reputable retailer rather than a third-party marketplace seller.
- Clean the drawer, the plate and the element after use. Accumulated grease is what smokes, and then what burns.
- Register the appliance with its manufacturer. It is how a recall reaches you.
- Do not rely on the appliance's own thermal protection. A UK recall was issued because it did not operate.
Each links to its own page, with what it means in practice, what to do if it has already happened, and the source it comes from. Every safety rule AirfryerHQ holds.
Why cakes and bakes behaves this way
A cake batter is a liquid that has to set into a foam, and moving air is hostile to that in two ways: it dries and sets the top surface before the middle has risen, and it can physically disturb a wet batter. Both are why the published temperature is thirty to forty degrees below what the same appliance uses for chips, and why the manuals insist on a tin — the tin shields the batter from direct airflow and turns the appliance into a small convection oven. A cake baked directly in a drawer is not a cake baked slightly worse; it is a different and much less successful thing.
Where to go from here
The pages that answer the questions this one tends to raise.
- Using a thermometer, and where to put itThe times above are for a piece that is not the one you are holding. This measures yours — and it is the single change that fixes most dry cake in a tin.
- How food actually gets crispyWhy patting it dry, spacing it out and a little oil are all the same instruction — so you can apply it when a page runs out.
- Reheating leftoversA different question governed by a different rule — steaming hot throughout, and only once.
- Why published timings differIf another chart says something else, this is usually why — and which one to believe.
Easily confused with
- Muffins — A different cooking problem with a different answer.