We’ve told you before, baking is science! Or, as Insider puts it:
Baking is not easy. When it comes to making the perfect, cake, scone, or cupcake, measurements matter and you cannot rely on your taste palate as you do with cooking.
They’ve got a roundup of advice from some celebrity chefs. Some of these tips we’ve known, and a couple were even new to us! We’ve broken them down into interesting tips and new ideas.
Tips
Use room temperature dairy products for better baking, and stick with extra large eggs. And pay attention to the small details.
Ina Garten, better known as the Barefoot Contessa, likes to replace regular table salt with kosher salt in all her recipes.
Always beat eggwhites and sift dry ingredients. Both actions add air, and leave your baked goods fluffier. And be sure to follow the recipes instructions for combining ingredients.
In a video with Martha Stewart, Nelson beat the butter, sugar, and eggs first when making the perfect cupcake. Then, she added the dry ingredients, switching to mixing — rather than beating — the batter.
Ideas
For something new, try an idea from The Great British Bake Off‘s Paul Hollywood.
Hollywood’s tip for flaky restaurant-quality bread is to mix rye flour and beer and then pour that mixture over your raw loaf of bread before baking.
We love this advice… forget the $7 icing smoother and cake scraper.
On OraTv, Duff Goldman, owner at Charm City Cakes and “Ace of Cakes” star, says you can get a plastic paint scraper at most hardwood stores for $1.
And there’s one more idea we’re dying to try.
Valerie Gordon of LA’s Valerie Confections bakes her brownies over the grill. You’ll need an outdoor grill and a cast iron skillet, but she swears by the puffy and smokey brownies this method creates.
We’ll let you know how they turn out!
