Tips and fun facts about baking

Dec 3

The freezer is a baker’s best friend. You can freeze cookie dough, slices of bread, seran-wrapped cakes, tubs of frosting, etc.
Invest in good quality vanilla. Vanilla is the ingredient in most baked goods that you may not realize is there in the background…but when it’s missing, the baked good turns out awful. I like Heilala or Nielson Massey.
Use a scale to weigh ingredients (in grams).
Prepare all ingredients needed for a recipe before starting. Plastic deli containers (pint- and quart-sized) and small ramekins are great for this prep.
Your oven may say it’s at a certain temperature, but it could be miscalibrated. Double check your oven’s temperature with an infrared or oven-safe thermometer.

Never bake cookies until you’ve “aged” the dough. Depending on the recipe, I’ll let chocolate chip cookie dough incubate in the fridge for 48-72 hours before baking.
Bring all cold ingredients (butter, eggs) to room temp a few hours ahead of baking. If you forget, you can soften butter in the microwave at low power (50% or less) blasting it for a few seconds at a time. Whole eggs can be placed in warm/room temp water to warm them faster.
For choc. chip cookies, use a mix of chips and wafers - the wafers typically don’t have emulsifiers in them, so they stay liquidy and gooey when baked and cooled. It’s nice to have multiple textures and types of chocolate in this cookie!