Baking Tips

Some tips to make baking easier, fun and more yummy ^_^. Will be added on to as more tips are discovered/thought of.

Baking Tips----------------------------------------------

General

• If you don't have time to soften your butter by leaving it in the kitchen, put it in the microwave on the defrost setting until soft enough. Watch the butter closely as it can start melting very quickly! I wouldn't suggest putting the butter in at regular microwave power as it can melt on the bottom but still be hard on the top.
• Try to make a recipe correctly the first time before messing with it to your liking. That way if it comes out weird, it was because of the recipe, not because of something you did and you know whether you can use that recipe again or not.
• Tasting your batter/frosting, at least from my experience, is ok. I know scientists say this isn't good for you and I would still keep in mind that you are eating something with raw eggs in it, but you can taste the batter to make sure that everything tastes ok. If the batter doesn't taste very good uncooked, don't expect too much when it comes out of the oven lol.
• If you're going to be baking a lot, make sure to keep ingredients you use a lot on hand. Ones I tend to use a lot for baking and frosting are butter (salted and unsalted), flour, eggs, sugar, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, baking powder and baking soda.
• When measuring flour, pour the flour into the measuring cup and then scrape the excess off with a butter knife or something. If you just dip your measuring cup in the bag and get the flour out, you're compacting it and will get more flour than you actually need, causing whatever you're making to become more dense.
• If you don't have buttermilk, you can make your own! You just need regular milk and either white vinegar or lemon juice (something with a fairly high acid content). You can look online for more specific ratios of milk to acid, but in a red velvet cupcake recipe I used (Carrot Top Mom's Sprinkles Red Velvet Cupcakes actually :)), it said 1/2 cup milk to 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Let it sit for a minute or two before using.
• When mixing, be sure to thoroughly scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl. A lot of times ingredients will remain unmixed on the bottom and when you're scraping/pouring into the cake pan or other container, you'll get a huge umixed glob of flour or something.
• If you have a dark pan, be sure to lower your oven temperature by 25 degrees. Dark colors absorb more heat, so whatever you're baking will get a lot more heat from the pan than from a regular light one.
  

Cakes and Cupcakes

• Don't over stir or over beat your batter or the cake/cupcakes will turn out tough! Follow the recipe on how much to beat or stir the batter.
  
• When checking for cake or cupcake doneness, check multiple areas. One spot toward the edge might be done enough but the center might still need more cooking.
• Please, if doing cupcakes, line the pan with cupcake paper/holders. These keep your cupcakes moist when they're done and waiting to be eaten. If not, they can dry very easily!
• Try not to overfill your pans or cupcake cups. This can alter the baking time and is capable of creating a mess in the oven if whatever is baking decides to overflow.
  

Frosting and Decorating

• When making frosting, make sure to cream the butter a lot (at least 1-2 minutes on medium speed) until fluffy and almost white. I don't know why but I think it makes the frosting creamier and the sugar incorporates better.
• If you want to do the fancy little swirls like on the lemony cupcakes in the first post, you need a piping bag and some piping tips. I got a set in Blacksburg at Kroger for $3-4 and it works fine. You can do the ziploc piping method to frost where you cut a corner off and use that to frost, but if you want fancy designs you still need piping tips. Check some stores around you for them. (helpful pics coming soon)
  
• When making frosting, keep in mind the consistency. Stiff consistencies work well when doing designs that need to hold their shape well. A slightly looser consistency can be used to do designs on the edges of cakes or nice swirls and stuff on cupcakes. A really loose frosting can be used to cover a cake. You can search up Wilton cake decorating or cake decorating in general for better info on this :).
• Keep in mind buttercream frosting has butter in it obviously! So be careful if you have a kind of loose frosting on top of cupcakes that will be in 90 degree or so weather.
• Don't frost your cake/cupcakes until they are completely cool, otherwise the frosting will melt and slide off.
• Don't add Jell-O or any gelatin to a frosting unless specifically called for. I made this mistake thinking it would just dissolve but the frosting actually kinda turned into Jell-O o_O!