5 Best Tips to Bake Like a Pro

Baking is one of the most relaxing and fulfilling activities anyone can engage in when spending time at home. There are hundreds of recipes available that you can follow to get mouthwatering desserts, and if you’re more about following your instincts the possibilities to bake are endless. But we might be getting ahead of ourselves. If you’re taking your first steps into the cooking game, let us share with you some valuable tips so your desserts will look like they were baked by a complete professional.

1. Cut Cookies Easier

Baking cookies is a delight, but it can be considered a little trickier than baking cakes and other goods. Without a doubt, the worst part of baking cookies can be trying to cut them without the shape being disfigured or completely shredded when trying to remove the cutter. If this keeps happening to you, try to dip your cookie cutter in some flour before cutting your dough. This will make it ten times easier to cut through the dough without resistance and without the batter sticking to the cutter.

 

 2. Use Tiny Pieces of Butter

Some recipes are more complicated than others and call for very specific steps that might make you feel like you’re not ready to make them yet. For example, certain pie crusts and biscuits will only be flaky and fluffy if you make sure to distribute the butter evenly in the dough, preferably in small pieces. When this happens and you don’t know how to do so, don’t panic. Take a box grater and start grating your stick of butter into a small, cold bowl (otherwise it can start to melt earlier than you need it too). Then just take the grated butter and spread it all over your recipes. 

 

3. When you Don’t have Powdered Sugar

One of the worst nightmares of an amateur or professional baker is to start working on a new, delicious recipe, and halfway through the work discover that you don’t have enough powdered sugar to finish. While sometimes you can run to the store and get a new pack in a matter of minutes, other times it’s just too late or you can’t leave your batter sitting for too long or it’ll spoil. If you ever find yourself in this situation, just add 1 cup of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to a food processor or a small bowl to blend it. Mix and blend until you start seeing the desired texture, the one that’s most similar to powdered sugar.

 

 4. Mess-Free Cake Decor

The most fun part of baking can be decorating it. The possibilities are infinite and you can use many ingredients and techniques to get your cake all pretty. But we know decorating can also be a step that gets your kitchen all messy, with drips of frosting all over the place and even on the walls. To make your cake decor a little cleaner, use a standard cooling rack and place it straight over your kitchen sink. Then place your cake on top and decorate without stressing about the mess. Everything that falls off will be washed away later.

 

 5. Add Moisture to Your Cakes

This last tip might sound unbelievable, but many baking experts have actually confirmed it. Sometimes you follow a recipe and, while it tastes good, it feels like it could use a little more moisture, but you’re not sure how to fix this. When this happens, scoop one or two tablespoons of mayonnaise on your cake batter. Since mayo is basically eggs and oil, it’s normal that it amps up the moisture. Don’t worry because the mayonnaise flavor will not be detected in your cake!