Baking Tips and Ideas

Baking your own food just tastes better! Some basic baking equipment, and a few tips will make the task much easier.

Ever go to the store to get cake or cookie decorations and they don’t have what you want? Grab a box of food coloring, pour some sugar into a jar, add a few drops of food coloring, and you have control of the color you want and the intensity. When chopping dates, raisins, or figs, run them under cool tap water, this prevents them from gumming up. For easier pie serving, after crimping the edges of the pie crust gently pull the crust away from the edge of the pie pan. When it is baked, it will leave a little gap to slide the pie server into. Ever go to use your brown sugar, and it’s all hard and dry? Add an apple to a sealed container; the sugar will be moist and soft. For lighter, fluffier bread, do not preheat the oven before putting it in the oven.

Want to bake a fantastic cake? Leave that boxed stuff on the shelf. The internet is full of recipes. Once you find that recipe, make sure you have all the equipment, and ingredients, and read through the recipe. Making a chocolate cake? Dust the cake pans with cocoa; this prevents the look of that ugly white flour all over the sides. Pre-measure all your ingredients first, that way when mixing, you just pour them in as needed. If the recipe calls for milk, try using buttermilk instead for a better texture. To make a light fluffy cake, separate your eggs, mixing the yolks in first. Then beat the whites fluffy, and fold into your cake. Make sure the cake is well cooled prior to frosting.