Baking Tips

BAKING TIPS

Red Velvet (or plain chocolate) cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Ensure that your butter and cream cheese are both at room temperature (or soft if you have a cold kitchen) or else they will not combine smoothly. Use a small palette knife dipped in very hot water (and dried) to smooth and give a good finish.

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream icing

Use melted chocolate for this as if you use cocoa or even drinking chocolate it may give a slightly ‘uncooked’ taste. Use a large icing bag with star nozzle to ice the cake- this covers a multitude of sins and the icing tastes delicious too. Top with pretty sprinkles.

Spices

The most common spices for baking are often used in combination with one another. Use the form of
spice—whole, grated, or ground—called for in the recipe.
Cardamom, the ground seed of a tree in the ginger family, has a pungent, gingery taste.
Cinnamon, the most common baking spice, is the dried bark of a tree native to Sri Lanka. It
has a warm, spicy flavor popular in cold weather recipes.
Cloves are the dried unopened buds of an evergreen tree native to the Malucca Islands in Indonesia.
They have a pungent, sweet aroma.
Coriander seeds, from the parsley family, have a distinctive sweet lemony flavor.
Ginger, from the underground stem of a tropical plant, has a sweet spicy flavor.
Though tiny in amount, spices give cupcakes an enormous tastebud boost. They're best when freshly grated or ground.
Nutmeg is an aromatic seed produced by an evergreen tree native to the same Indonesian Islands as the
source of cloves.
Poppy seeds, from the poppy flower, have a sweet nutlike flavor that goes well with
light cake.
Salt in the forms of common table salt, kosher salt, and sea salt can be used interchangeably in recipes. If stored in an airtight container, it will keep indefinitely.
Vanilla bean is the pod of a climbing orchid native to Mexico. Its extract is a standard ingredient in
cupcake recipes, both cake and frosting.
Measure spices by placing them in a measuring spoon and leveling off with a knife or spatula. A dash of a spice means about 1⁄16 teaspoon.
Store spices in airtight containers in a cool, dark place, away from moisture, heat and direct sunlight.
Whole spices stay fresh for about two years, ground spices for about a year.
To check for freshness-open the container of spice—if it has a strong pungent fragrance, it’s fresh.