Do you like to bake? I use these baking hacks on the regular…
Today, I’m sharing some baking tips and hacks I use in making baked goods. These have helped make baking easier or have helped me achieve more consistent results in my baking. So, keep reading to be in the know!
Grease your measuring cups…
Have you ever struggled with scraping that laaast bit of molasses or honey out of your measuring cup? Well, this may be the hack for you:
Before measuring your molasses or honey (or other sticky, liquid sweetener) into a measuring cup, grease the measuring cup with a light layer of oil or melted butter (for oil, a light oil like vegetable oil works great, so it doesn’t disrupt the flavours of the sweetener). Then, measure your liquid sweetener in the measuring cup. You’ll see that as you pour the sweetener into your mixing bowl, almost all of the sweetener will slide out of the measuring cup, leaving minimal cleanup and very little (if any) residual sweetener to scrape off.
I’ve used this hack when baking with molasses, honey, agave nectar, and maple syrup, so it works great with sweeteners with different viscosity levels.
Freeze your butter…
If you’ve ever made a pie before, you’ll know that one of THEE most important parts of making the crust is that the butter needs to stay COLD. Not lukewarm and definitely not room temperature; but cold and solid. However, if you’ve ever made pie crust by hand, you’ll notice while you crumble the butter into the flour with your fingers, the heat from your hands will warm the butter…which is what we want to avoid.
This is where frozen butter comes in.
As I was preparing to make a pie one day, I came across the tip to place my butter in the freezer before using it. Well, I tried it and I tell you that I have never not frozen my butter since. What I do is measure the amount of butter I’ll be using for my pie crust and place the butter in the freezer while I gather my ingredients and utensils. I usually will freeze the butter for at least an hour, or I will place it in the freezer the day before I plan to make the pie crust. The butter doesn’t actually get frozen (like ice would), but it becomes super, super cold.
I then proceed to grate the butter- yes, exactly as if I were grating cheese- into the flour. I like this technique because I don’t have to break the butter up too much with my fingers (again, preventing too much warming of the butter). If you prefer to cube your butter for pie, you could cut the butter into cubes before placing in the freezer. I generally stick with grating the butter, but I would think that freezing cubes of butter would still be beneficial because you would skip handing the butter too much with your hands while cutting it into cubes after it’s been chilled.
Freezing butter has changed the pie crust game for me, so I hope it benefits you too!
Turn on your oven…
Yes, turning on your oven for making baked goods is kinda, sorta important. However, I’m talking about turning on your oven not just for the baking process, but for the proofing process for bread (or other yeasted dough requiring proofing).
If you’ve made bread before, you’ll probably know that yeast loves a warm environment, and we need the yeast to to be happy so that our dough will rise. However, sometimes the kitchen may be cold, or your home may be cooler than usual. So, when I’m making bread, one thing I like to do is turn on my oven and allow the heat of the oven to create a warmer atmosphere in my kitchen. I will then just place the dough in its bowl on the countertops closest to the oven. For me, this just ensures that the yeast is optimally activated for the dough to rise, and become wonderfully bouncy and elastic.
PS: You don’t need to leave your oven on for the entire time of proving. I will just leave my oven on for about 30 - 45 minutes, just to increase the kitchen’s ambient temperature, and then I will turn the oven off. Sometimes, I will open the oven door after the oven is turned off, just to release more heat into the air.
Do you plan to use any of these baking “hacks”? Leave a comment and let me know!
Also, if you do try them, leave a comment letting me know how they worked out for you, too!
Peace and Blessings,