- Flour taste test
If you can’t remember whether the flour in a storage jar is plain or self-raising, taste it. If it’s salty, it’s self-raising flour, so called because it contains baking powder and salt to make it rise.
- Is your baking powder fresh?
If you’re not sure how long your baking powder has been in the cupboard, you can easily tell whether it’s still OK to use. Scoop 1/2 teaspoon of the powder into a teacup and pour in 60ml hot water. If it bubbles up, it’s fine to use; if it barely fizzes, it’s time to replace it.
- Make dough rise more quickly
Heat makes dough rise more quickly. But if it rises too quickly the flavour will suffer —something that cooks who have tried microwaving dough for a few minutes on Low could probably tell you. Instead, position the bowl or pan over the pilot light of a gas stove or on a medium—hot heating pad.
- Keep hands clean when kneading
When working with dough, don’t flour your hands to stop the mixture from sticking to your skin. Instead, pour a few drops of olive oil into one palm and work it into your hands as you would hand lotion.
- Easy greasing
Save the waxy wrappers of packs of butter and put their buttery residue to good use. Store them in a plastic bag in the fridge. When a recipe calls for a greased pan, bring one or two of the wrappers into service.
- Set cupcakes free
If cupcakes have stuck to the bottom of a metal tin, while the pan is still hot, set it on a wet towel. The condensation in the bottom of the tin will make the little cakes easier to remove.
- Steam for a better loaf
When you’re baking bread, at the same time as you put the loaf tin into the oven, put a second tin containing 6-8 ice cubes on one of the oven racks. The steam that results will help the bread to bake more evenly and give it a crispier crust.
- Lighten up quick breads
If your banana and walnut bread, cinnamon coffee cake or carrot cakes are tasty but heavy, substitute creme fraiche for the milk in the recipes; it should lighten the texture of any quick bread you bake. Experiment to find what gives you the best results: all creme fraiche, equal parts creme fraiche and milk, and so on.
- Butter replacement
If a baking recipe calls for so much butter that you feel your arteries clogging just reading it, substitute a 50:50 mixture of unsweetened pureed apple and buttermilk. Best used in light-coloured or spiced cakes and breads, this substitute imparts a slightly chewier texture — so you may want to replace plain flour with a lighter, special cake flour.
- A honey of a biscuit
Honey will help home-baked biscuits stay softer and fresher for longer. Replace sugar with honey cup for cup, but decrease other liquids in the recipe by 1/4 cup (60ml) per cup of honey.
Credit : Reader’s Digest
Picture Credit : Google