Douglas And Kaldi

The No 1 rule before baking is to make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature before you start (even eggs). If you get caught out, milk can be warmed and butter can be softened - very carefully! - in the microwave

1. No self raising flour in the house!! Not to worry… create self-raising flour from plain flour by adding a half teaspoon of baking powder and a half teaspoon of baking soda (also known as bread soda) to 150g/6 oz plain flour. Note: if you have no plain flour in the house you need to go shopping!!

2. For extra fluffy egg whites, always add a tiny bit of baking powder or something acidic when beating. Either rub the bowl with a wedge of lemon or add a couple of drops of lemon juice if you don’t want to use baking powder.

3. Add a pinch of salt when beating whole eggs: The salt will make the whites runnier and easier to mix with the yolks.

4. Add a bit of acid (a couple of drops of lemon juice or a pinch of cream of Tartar) when melting sugar. This prevents crystallization.

5. When making shortcrust pastry, add a squeeze of lemon juice or a tiny amount of vinegar to prevent the pastry from shrinking.

6. My mother always uses water that is around (or at) room temperature when she is baking something that uses yeast. In fact, her advice in regard to baking is: ALWAYS use ingredients at room temperature. The only exception being butter for short crust or flaky pastry. Use that as cold as possible. Her advice for short crust and flaky pastry is: If you don’t feel entirely confident, chill all your ingredients. Even the flour!

7. If you don’t have a cake stand, or need an extra one or two for special occasions, place blue-tac on an upturned handle-less cup and press a large matching plate firmly on top. For a more permanent solution hot glue the cup to the plate. Three plates in various sizes can be stacked with cups blue-tac’d inbetween to present smaller cakes, petit fours and sweets.

8. If you’re having trouble finding gold buttons for cupcakes you can make them yourself by lightly spraying some M&M’s with vodka! then immediately transferring them to a plastic bag with some gold luster dust (usually found at cake decorating stores or online) until they’re nicely coated, and finally drying them on a piece of wax or greaseproof paper.
If you want to make them child-friendly, probably best to omit the vodka and use lemon, vanilla or almond essence.

9. When making the Rice Crispies squares it is a lot easier to use neutral veggie oil (e.g. sunflower) instead of gloves when putting the warm stuff into whatever form is used. Just rub your hands with oil like you would with hand cream. This way the warm mass won’t stick to your fingers. In fact this works nicely when handling any sticky dough as well.

10. When adding golden syrup to mixtures, heating the spoon in a mug of boiling water makes the golden syrup fall neatly off the spoon.

11. If you love chewy cookies, as we do, add one tablespoon of corn syrup and one tablespoon of water to any cookie batter. Your cookies will always come out soft, chewy and delicious.

12. In cooking a tablespoon is not a serving implement but a precise measurement. If it helps, think of a tablespoon as 3 teaspoons.

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