In This ArticleView AllIn This Article1. Relying on the Baking Time Instead of a Visual Indicator2. Not Adding Salt to Your Baked Goods3. Using the Wrong-Size Baking Pan4. Not Having Your Butter at the Right Temperature5. Measuring Your Flour Incorrectly6. Using Substitutions That Don’t Work
In This ArticleView All
View All
In This Article
Relying on the Baking Time Instead of a Visual Indicator
Not Adding Salt to Your Baked Goods
Using the Wrong-Size Baking Pan
Not Having Your Butter at the Right Temperature
Measuring Your Flour Incorrectly
Using Substitutions That Don’t Work
For a lot of people, baking is a way to unwind and make something delicious to share with friends and family. But sometimes, even when you think you follow the recipe perfectly, your cake comes out with a giant sunken hole in the middle or your biscuits are flat and dry. What happened?
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When writing a recipe, we always include both timing and a visual indicator to let you know how to tell when your food is ready. And you’ll notice that the visual indicator comes first. For example: “Bake the cake until lightly browned around the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.” What that means is that during our tests, it took 20 to 25 minutes for the cake to be lightly browned around the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake to come out clean. But all ovens work a little differently, so it’s best to rely on the visual indicator instead of just relying on the time.
It might seem counterintuitive to add salt to something sweet, but salt enhances the flavor of food and balances the sweetness. But there is a sweet spot (yes, the pun is on purpose). Too much salt and your baked goods can come out tasting, well, salty. But not enough salt can make your baked goods taste flat. If your recipe doesn’t include salt, start with a pinch (or about 1/16 teaspoon if you want to be more precise) and see if it’s enough.
A well-written recipe will tell you exactly what size baking pan you should be using, such as a 9-inch cake pan or a Bundt pan. If you don’t have that exact type of pan, your baked goods will most likely come out looking different than the recipe intended, though it might be fine, depending on what you’re making.
If you’re making a cake or brownies, it’s likely fine to use a different pan. If you use something larger than the recipe calls for, the batter will be thinner and thus cook faster. Or if you use a smaller pan, it’ll be thicker so it will take longer to bake. Either way, you’ll want to rely on those doneness cues instead of time. However, there are some pans that cannot be substituted, like a popover pan, madeleine pan or a tube pan for your angel food cake—so if you don’t have one of these, ask a friend or neighbor or be sure to pick one up before starting your recipe.
When it’s important, you’ll notice that recipes call for butter to either be softened to room temperature or cold. Softened butter allows for the butter to be incorporated smoothly into the other ingredients, often with sugar, in the process known as creaming. But if you’re making a pie crust or biscuit dough, you want to use cold butter so it stays in small pieces for flaky results.
If you need to soften butter quickly, follow this hack from Nick Malgeri, the famed pastry chef and author of 13 cookbooks. Instead of placing a stick of butter on the counter and waiting an hour, he slices it into tablespoons and lays them flat on a plate at room temperature. You’ll have softened butter in 10 minutes.
We’ve all been there: you start a recipe and you are missing one ingredient. Sometimes you have a substitution that will yield a very similar result, like using yogurt instead of sour cream, or lemon-juice-infused milk for buttermilk. But other times, you don’t have anything close to what the recipe calls for or you try to omit the ingredient altogether. Maybe, just maybe, the recipe will work. But if it doesn’t, it isn’t the recipe’s fault. Be sure to use substitutions only when necessary unless you want the recipe to fail.
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