Today is the 4th of July, so Happy Independence Day for the US! This made me think about baking for holidays. Some holidays are more obviously suited for baking, while others might not be. I think most of us can agree that Christmas tends to be a big baking time, but something like Labor Day…
I think making cookies is a ton of fun. They are one of my favorite things to bake. I make a giant platter of various kinds for Christmas gifts for friends and family. But I don’t have the time or energy to make and bake all the different types of cookies in a single day….
If you’ve ever read a baking recipe, you’ll notice that there are often several types of sugar listed. What are they? How are they different from each other? Do I really have to use those different kinds of sugar? Let’s discuss. Granulated (White) Sugar This is what most of us think about when you hear…
Have you ever seen a recipe that calls for sifting the dry ingredients together? Maybe you’ve wondered if it’s really necessary. Spoiler alert: most of the time it’s a good idea, so don’t skimp on it. But why do we sift them? There are a couple of reasons. The first reason is to add air…
You’re ready to bake a delicious dessert. You gather up all your ingredients, and suddenly there stuff everywhere and you don’t know what you have put in already. Sound familiar? Let’s fix it for you. Mise en place is a fancy French term that simply means to get everything ready before you start. So how…
Sometimes, you don’t have all the ingredients you need on hold to make something. And you don’t have the time/energy/money to go run to the store to get it. So what do you do? Substitutions! Not everything can be substituted. And sometimes I do the substitutions because it’s easier than having a bunch of a…
Did you know you can make your own butter at home? Without a butter churn? And you don’t have to visit ye olden days to do it? But really, how many of us have actually thought about making our own butter? I know before I learned this, I had visions of Laura Ingalls and the…
So far, all of the baking topics we have talked about are pretty universal. However, if you happen to live at a higher elevation, you might notice that your baked goods come out a little weird if you follow the recipe exactly as written. That’s because you have to start making adjustments as you go…
We’ve talked a lot about how, but not a lot about with what. And that’s been kind of intentional. There are so many different tools out there these days to make baking easier. Do you need all of them? Nope! But some of them are nice to have and fun to play with. Let’s take…
In many baking recipes, you add the dry ingredients last, and instructions will generally say “just until combined” or something similar. Why is that? There are several reasons you don’t want to overmix your batter or dough. Let’s look at a few of them. Gluten Development When making bread, developing gluten is a good thing!…
