The sweetest things

• Easy creaming

This important step in many a cake recipe —creaming the butter and sugar — can be a tedious and lengthy task. If the butter is cold, you can speed up the creaming process by warming the sugar a little on the stovetop. Or soften the butter by warming it briefly in the microwave oven on a very low setting.

• One-egg replacement

If you are baking a cake that calls for one more egg than you have available, you can substitute 1 teaspoon cornflour.

• Or go fruity

Replace one egg in a cake or sweet bread recipe with one small mashed banana or 120ml pureed apple. For lovely moist chocolate cake, try substituting mashed prunes.

• Spaghetti cake tester

If you don’t have a wire cake tester, use an uncooked strand of spaghetti instead. Gently push the spaghetti into the centre of the cake and pull it out. If your spaghetti comes out clean, the cake is done.

• Improvised cake decorator

Use a washed plastic mustard or tomato sauce squirt bottle as a cake decorating tool. Fill it with icing, then simply pipe scallops, flowers and other designs onto cakes with ease. Or use it to make squiggles of pesto or cream on top of soups or chocolate on desserts.

• Pie bubbling over?

If a pie starts bubbling over as it is baking, cover the spills with salt. You’ll prevent the spill from burning and avoid the terrible scorched smell. Best of all, the treated overflow will bake into a dry, light crust that you can wipe off easily when the oven has cooled.

• Make piecrust flakier

Flaky piecrusts are the talented baker’s hallmark. You can improve the flakiness by replacing 1 tablespoon iced water in a crust recipe with 1 tablespoon chilled lemon juice or white vinegar.

• Fruit piecrusts too soggy?

To keep the juice in fruit from seeping into the crust of a baking pie, crumble up something to absorb it. A layer of plain, crisp flatbread will absorb the juice and introduce a savoury note to the pie, while biscotti or amaretti cookies will keep it tasting sweet.

• Slice meringue with ease

Your knife will glide through a meringue-topped pie if you butter it on both sides before slicing. It’s a 10-second solution, if that.

• Thrifty chocolates

If you’re a chocoholic, have extra freezer space and love saving money, buy chocolate Easter bunnies and Santas after the holidays when prices are low. Store them in the freezer and shave off chocolate curls to use in cooking. Or melt to create new chocolate shapes. Or, if you prefer, just thaw a Santa or bunny and gobble it up whenever you need a chocolate fix.

• Have coffee over ice

To make a coffee granita, pour cooled, freshly brewed black coffee into several small containers such as clean yogurt pots, to freeze. When frozen, remove the pots and then put the frozen coffee into a food processor. Process on Low until crystals form. Spoon the crystals into the cups and freeze again for about half an hour before serving.

Or add milk and sugar to your coffee before freezing. Good toppings for granita include whipped cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon.