Are you spending more time at home these days? Are you looking for a new hobby that can keep your family happy and even earn you extra cash? Are you ready to learn how to bake?
Baking is a creative hobby that stimulates your senses and nourishes your soul. And the other folks in your home will appreciate the wonderful smells and tastes you can share with them.
Here are some of our favorite cake baking tips for beginners.
- Measure
Cooking isn’t an exact science. Many of us make our favorite soups and sauces by adding extra spoonfuls or dashes or this or that depending on our tastes and the brands we happen to be using.
Baking, however, is a bit more precise. If you add too much liquid or skimp on the flour, you could end up with cakes and cookies that spread, sink, or overflow.
Baking a cake isn’t like making a stir-fry. Do yourself a favor and follow measurements in the recipe exactly, especially as a beginner baker.
- Use Quality Equipment
If you’re going to bake often, invest in some equipment you’re happy using. Invest in some glass baking dishes with lids that you can easily cover so your treats stay fresh for days. You’ll also want some sturdy muffin tins and cooling racks.
Your baking buddies online can give you some suggestions for brands to use, such as the best parchment paper or their favorite baking spray. Once you start developing your skills, you’ll be able to join the club of experienced recommenders!
- Resist the Urge to Open the Oven
It’s tempting to open the oven several times to see how your cake is doing. Yet this could let in the cold air and cause your oven to lose some of its hot, moist air.
Opening the oven could cause your cake to lose some lift, making it denser. In the worst cases, it could even collapse.
Do yourself and your cake a favor and wait until your cake is almost done to open the oven door. Turning on the oven light is a simple way to keep an eye on your confection without hurting it.
- Packing and Leveling
Remember that you shouldn’t pack flour. Just fill your measuring cup and level it off. If you pack flour, you can end up adding too much and really change the texture of your baked goods.
Brown sugar, however, should always be packed tightly into your measuring cups. Granulated, white sugar can get carefully added to your measuring cups before it’s leveled off.
- Try Some Butter
Folks have different tricks for helping cakes to pop easily out of pans. Anything from sprays to sugar gets used for loosening them up.
If you’re looking for an easy way to get your cakes free from their baking pans, try melting a couple of teaspoons of butter and pouring it over the bottom and sides of your pan until it’s evenly coated. Next, place your pan in the freezer for a few minutes.
Finally, pour the batter into your pan and bake it. You’ll never have to wrestle with sticky cakes again!
- Use Whole Ingredients
Low-fat substitutions like skim milk and margarine work great when you’re making yourself a snack or buttering toast. When you’re baking, however, it’s important to use full-fat ingredients for maximum flavor.
You can obviously make appropriate adjustments when you’ve got someone with an allergy eating your goods. But if you’re looking for your cake, cookies, or muffins to really taste special, treat yourself and your guests to the real stuff.
- Don’t Overmix or Undermix
Don’t keep mixing your ingredients once all of your ingredients are nicely blended. Overmixing will work the gluten in your batter too hard, and the texture of your baked goods will be chewier.
If you undermix the batter, you’ll end up seeing swirls of different ingredients in your cakes or cookies. With a little experience, you’ll learn when your ingredients are properly folded in, and when you need to stop mixing.
- Preheat the Oven
Lots of recipes start out by telling you to preheat the oven. And lots of beginner bakers forget to do it.
Preheating the oven ensures that your cakes are cooked at the right temperature from the start. If you neglect to do this while baking, your leavening agents, such as baking soda, yeast, and eggs, won’t rise properly. This could lead to misshapen cakes, cookies, and snacks.
Before you start baking, set your oven to the right temperature and turn it on. You’ll need at least ten minutes before it’s ready for your cake.
- Room Temperature Advantage
When you’re working with dairy ingredients, such as milk, eggs, or butter, you’ll have better luck if you get them to room temperature before you bake. This is one of our favorite secret baking tips for beginners.
Room temperature ingredients will emulsify better in your batter. This can create a more uniform texture in the finished product.
Before baking, leave your milk in a pitcher and your eggs on the counter for a few minutes. The resulting perfectly baked treats will be the reward for your extra effort!
Our Favorite Cake Baking Tips
Baking is a relaxing and invigorating hobby. By following a few cake baking tips, you could quickly learn to create tasty confections your whole family will enjoy. And you could have folks asking you for baking advice before you know it.
Don’t stop getting smart about your lifestyle now. For more great advice, read our blog today.
