Generally, baking is easier to mess up than regular cooking. Baked goods depend more on exact measurements that are necessary for all-important things like bread rising and pastry dough puffing, and it’s easy to switch up measurements or skip a crucial ingredient—we’ve all accidentally made those batches of extremely flat cookies or a cake that never reaches the top of the pan! Because of this, it’s common for beginning bakers to become intimidated in the kitchen, and even advanced bakers are often hesitant to try new methods they aren’t sure will be successful.
But baking shouldn’t be nerve-wracking—it should be fun, and delicious! So stop worrying and start having fun with your baking—following these easy baking tips will increase your kitchen confidence and help you create successful, delectable recipes your friends will be dying to try.
Know Your Substitutions
Don’t have an ingredient your recipe calls for? Don’t worry about it. There are baking substitutions for practically any ingredient you might encounter that will make your recipe taste just as good and sometimes might even make it healthier!
- Applesauce, plain yogurt, bananas, and avocado are all great fat substitutes for most recipes. All of these cut calories but keep the same consistency that butter or shortening provides. Don’t replace fats with these substitutions entirely though—stick to replacing half of the original fat ingredient for best results.
- You can even substitute for chocolate—a major calorie saver. Just use 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or butter in place of 1 oz of unsweetened chocolate.
Never Underestimate the Power of Cooking Spray
Cooking spray is one of those products that we all have in our kitchens, but do you ever use it for anything besides spraying your pans? If you don’t, now is the time to start! Cooking spray is one of the most underused kitchen resources and it can be especially helpful when you’re baking.
- If you’re using parchment paper on your baking tray, spray it with cooking spray on both sides. Spraying the underside will help the sheet stick to the pan so it doesn’t slide around and spraying the top side will help give your cookies or pastries that nice golden brown color.
- Spray your utensils, like mixers, spoons, pastry cutters, and even your fingers, before you use them to prevent dough from sticking. This is especially helpful for cleanup purposes since you won’t have to deal with scraping off excess dough.
- Before you cover up frosted or sticky goodies with tin foil or plastic wrap, spray the covering material so the frosting doesn’t come off when you remove it.
- Spraying your oven racks makes it easier to slide trays and pans out of the oven without risking your baked goods bumping or slipping around.
Be Smart About Your Ingredients
- Always use the most quality ingredients you can get your hands on. The better your ingredients, the better your baked goods will turn out.
- Before you use your ingredients, make sure they’ve been stored at room temperature. They’ll be easier to mix when they’re closer to the same consistency—hard butter is especially difficult to deal with.
Cake-Specific Tips
- For moister, less crumbly cakes, add a teaspoon of vinegar to baking soda before adding it into your cake mix.
- Cake frosting always looks more beautiful in pictures than on the actual cakes you frost, right? For frosting that looks as good as it does in the cookbooks, frost only a very thin layer on your cake to begin with. Refrigerate for an hour, then go back and frost the rest of the cake—the frosting will be smoother and less crumbly.
- Add a pinch of baking soda to frosting before putting it on a cake or cupcakes to avoid cracking.
Cookie-Specific Tips
- If you want doughier, more cake-like cookies, add slightly more eggs than the recipe calls for. If you want thinner, crispier cookies, make sure to use more sugar than egg.
- One of the most frustrating baking problems is making delicious cookies, only to have them dry out to the point where they are inedible just a few days later. To solve this problem, reduce the amount of flour you use—you can reduce anywhere from 3 tablespoons to 1/4 cup—for gooier, longer-lasting cookies.
Hopefully these cooking tips will help take some stress out of your baking and make you more excited to try new things in the kitchen! After all, the biggest problem that can result from a baking mistake is that there’s more for you to eat—which is not actually a problem at all.
