Sweet tooth, sweet life!
Cooking requires skills and it can be tricky but baking is always fun to do, plus, it’s a treat to yourself. we often hear talks about midnight cravings, of mysterious, bleary-eyed feasts with a bottle of milk in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other. This never happened to us but it’s not impossible either.
When you love cakes and muffins and craving them at midnight but there’s no bakery nearby or opened at the current time so your inner baker insists on trying to bake something. If you are a baking beginner then I got some tips for you in my pocket to share, take out your notes!
Dig into research
Always know what you’re doing before you enter the kitchen. Get to know a bit about the key ingredients, whether it be muffins, cupcakes, cakes or cookies, you should know the chemistry between the ingredients, what makes them different from each other in recipes. Read the footnote to learn about the given diction in the recipes, to help in understanding the process of baking a cake. This activity will build your confidence in baking and you will feel like you achieved something at the end.
Room temperature is the KEY
Speaking of temperature, if a recipe calls for room temperature eggs or any dairy ingredients such as milk or yogurt, make sure you follow the procedure. Recipes don’t just do that for fun, room temperature ingredients immix much easier into the batter, which creates a uniform texture and makes it easier for you. Think of rock hard butter– it’s not so easy to cream that into a soft consistency, is it? The same goes for eggs. They add much more volume to the batter at room temperature. So yes, temperature is an important thing to keep in mind before you start!
Get, set, start!
Now that you have done the examining and selecting the recipe you want to make, now it’s finally time to take action! Make a list of all the ingredients you need to buy and make sure you have all of them and you are following the method with the same ingredients. Got all of them? Read the recipe again, it will help you know the how, why, where, and when of what you are about to do. It will take you 1-5 minutes and could save you from wasting your ingredients (and money!) on a failed dessert because it’s heartbreaking, trust me.
Learn how to measure
Everything is science and so is baking. Excellent baking requires proven techniques, precise ratios and successful recipes that have been tested for taste. Unlike cooking, you cant just bake something by throwing some ingredients together and mess it up, and bam, you are done. One of the most crucial and important parts of baking is measuring ingredients properly. Problems are common if they are incorrect though, you might just ruin your whole cake by a single measurement error. Measure the dry ones by using measuring cups or spoons designed for dry ingredients. Certain baking utensils are available in-store to level it off, especially with flour. For the liquid ones, I would always recommend a clear liquid measuring cup.
Don’t forget to preheat the oven!
You now know how the oven’s temperature can ruin a recipe and it will lead to de-motivation. But what can completely throw off the oven temperature is constantly opening and closing that oven to peek at your baking goodies. I mean, I get it. It’s tempting to keep the oven door ajar to see your cake rising, the cookies baking, and the cupcakes puffing up! But doing so can let cool air in, which greatly interrupts your baked good from cooking. Or worse, affects how your baked good is rising. If you want to test it for texture with a toothpick, do it quickly and put it back in!
Make it a reliable experience for yourself by using Dawlance built-in oven.
Frosting
Practice and patience is the key when it comes to decorate your cake or cupcakes. You want to find what’s comfortable for you and which technique gives you the best results. It helps to have a somewhat full bag, and then hold about a quarter of it in your palm so you can control the pressure and movement. Let the back end of the bag rest on your wrist. Now that you are done with baking, frosting comes next. Cool down your cake so it doesn’t fall apart when you are applying a frosting mixture. Make sure there’s soft pressure from your hands, now we don’t want to ruin our goodies, do we? You can also blend your cheese cream or any frosting material by using DAWLANCE hand blender.
I hope these tips helped you in some way possible and if this baking for the first time and tips made you feel like you should become a professional baker, I got a perfect solution for that too. If you are from Karachi, join Dessert MasterClass with Chef Zain and enhance your skills to perfection in our hands-on workshop. There are baking courses for beginners too so don’t hesitate and don’t miss out on the chance of learning in an amazing environment!
At the end, don’t forget to share your goodies because as the saying goes, ‘Sharing is caring’.
