Saturday, 14 April 2012

Baking Tips by Mbakes

I may not be an expert baker, or have any practical qualifications that render me a 'chef de parte', all I have is an a level in food technology which I just about scraped a decent grade in! But what I have been doing for 10 ish years is consecutively mixing up the same ingredients for the same ish recipe to produce a sponge of pretty much the same calibre each time. Over the years the sponges have improved but there are obviously still some major flops that creep up from behind every now and (all the time) again.

Here is a round up of some baking related tips, tricks and general 'you should knows' that I've gathered over the years.
  • For moist and 'flat topped' bakes always use Stork margarine.
  • When pouring cake batter into tins, as an extra precaution - flour your tins as well as grease them!
  • A good branded flour actually does mean what it says on the packet - there's no need to sift! It would have been milled plenty of times.
  • Taste and Smile (Tate & Lyle) is notably less sweeter than Silverspoon.
  • You should always cream the butter and sugar for much longer than when you're mixing the batter with the flour included, if you mix the latter for longer the gluten will toughen.
  • Always fill muffin/cupcake cases two thirds full.
  • Oven thermometers give an accurate measure of when your oven really has reached 180 degrees.
  • All purpose flour is a self raising flour substitute, I find that using foreign brands usually gives scope for a better sponge.
Do you have any baking tips that you follow every time you bake? Leave a comment below and I'll add them to the list followed by a credit to your blog :)


Mbakes x

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