Baking the Right Way

Bake the Right Way: Baking seems like a relatively easy task. After all, you only have to buy a box of cake mix, blend in some extra ingredients, put the batter in a pan and throw it in the oven for a couple minutes then, voilà; you have a cake, right? Wrong. Baking is not something to be done by just any mother making a treat for their child’s school bake sale. It is an exact science that if done wrong, could potentially produce a burnt, tasteless, ugly, disastrous excuse for a cake that is as hard as a rock. Baking requires patience, particularity, and precision. Refrain from making the biggest, most common mistake of the baking world: using a boxed cake mix. Yes, it is a much quicker, mindless way to make a cake, but the cake never tastes quite as good when it’s from a box. Bakers around the world don’t take anyone or the food seriously if a pre-made mix is used in a recipe. These professionals do this rightfully so; having Betty Crocker’s help in the kitchen is considered cheating in the culinary world. The best way to go when making a cake is using a family recipe; using Grandma’s old recipes is as good as it gets. Or, if a family recipe isn’t available, grab a cookbook from a well-known chef and follow their instructions for preparation. Preparation is a vital part of baking. If something goes wrong here, you absolutely cannot fix it without starting over. When baking, unless you are Martha Stewart or someone alike, you must, and I repeat, must follow exact instructions. Putting in however much you want of whatever ingredients you want is just setting yourself up for immediate failure. Something like putting in slightly too much flour into the batter will make your cake as hard as a rock and dry like a desert. If too little flour is added, the cake you are making will fall to be flat and mushy. Messing up a family recipe is like a slap in the face to Grandma. So do yourself and your family’s reputation a favor and learn how to correctly measure