Baking it right

Baking is a science. The success of your baking experiments depends on how well you follow the recipe. Recipes should be treated like the Bible for baking. Defy it, and you will be left with sunken cakes and hard cookies. But follow it to the T, and you can enjoy yummy homemade sweet treats every day.

Keep all your ingredients ready the night before. Here are some tips on how to bake right:

Invest in some good quality bakeware. Be it a weighing machine, cake pans, muffin tins or the oven, invest in good quality baking tools and implements. This will ease the process. When it comes to mixing bowls, buy plastic or glass ones, as the batter won’t stick to them. But for double boiling, go for glass bowls only. Also make sure the pan in which you bake your dish is proportionate to the quantity of the batter.

A majority of recipes ask for butter, flour and eggs to be at room temperature. This will make the process of mixing all the three ingredients together a lot easier. If you are not using ingredients that are at room temperature, make sure you pair the same temperature ones with each other, i.e. hot with hot and cold with cold.

Measure out your ingredients accurately. If a recipe calls for 100 grams of butter, don’t add 105 or 95 grams, as even a sliver of difference can spell disaster. Similarly, too much of baking powder will cause your cake to rise and burst, and too little will not make it rise. So, keep your measurements in check.

Keep the temperature of the oven consistent throughout the process. Opening the door every now and then to check on your dish can spell doom.

While baking cupcakes and muffins, use ice cream scoops to pour out the batter into the moulds. No matter what you bake, always fill the tin or mould half way through only.

Get as much air as possible into the batter for a light and fluffy cake. So, cream your butter and sugar well.

Don’t start icing your cake when it is still hot. Apply a thin layer of icing after it has cooled, and refrigerate it for a while. Then apply another layer of icing.