This tip week is about baking tips, some of them hot from the press for me at least!
If you follow my blog, you will remember that last weekend was the local school fete, the Halloween School fete. The set up put in place was amaaaaazing and the fete was pretty cool. Not that I saw a lot of it by any means, I spent most of the time at the food stall which name was ” The Yummy Mummies Cafe”. 🙂
By the way, I did not bake everything, though a lot of it, and I had a great team of helpers for preparation and service.
Anyway, this Tip Week is bringing to you 5 key tips for your baking. I will not overdo it because you would not remember all of them (I wouldn’t!).
Tip 1 : Getting a bright yellow lemon Curd
We had lemon curd tiramisu pots on our school fete menu. Yum! I get my eggs, some beautiful lemon supplied by the local grocer, sugar a
nd butter and I start cooking. My first batch was pale yellow, it would have scared the crowds away! What to do?
I discovered that the egg yolks is the key element which provides the colour! I changed eggs and got a beautiful bright yellow lemon curd. This is the reason why some recipes remove part of the egg white: it keep the yellow colour more intense.
Tip 2: Use corn flour when rolling fondant
This tip is so useful! Seriously, make your life easy when rolling fondant. You only need a little bit of corn flour, no mess really and so much easier. For the 40 or so ghosts I manage to roll the fondant quite thin (2mm), from there it was just a matter of placing it on top of the lollypop balls.
Also, to attach two pieces of fondant together, use a drop of water!
Tip 3: Some items don’t bake well together
I could have prevented this one, my focus was unfortunately elsewhere.
Baking a cake at the same time as brioches does not work! Simply because the brioche asks for a humid environment, when the cake doesn’t. Our cake ended up looking somewhat like the face of the moon. We ate it here, it was still beautiful, but not presentable.
Tip 4: Line or butter and flour your tin?
Lately, I had been lining with baking paper a lot of my tins, at least the base. I always used not to do so but to generously butter all sides and flour over it. I have had a few catastrophes, I guess, this is why I lined the tin. Some recipes will clearly ask you to line the tin, do it!
Otherwise, it depends on your tin. By the way, we are speaking metal cake tins here. If you tin is old with uneven surface, lining is definitely safer! New tins, feel free to butter and flour, it works perfectly well.
I had 2 set of muffin trays for my brioches, the old one kept sticking while brioches in the new one would just pop out on their own! However, it is not easy to line muffin trays, so I just made sure there was a serious butter&flour coating and I managed.
Tip 5: Testing your cake for doneness
There are a few ways here. The safest way is to use a cake tester. It is a thick and long needle tool which can be inserted in the middle of the cake and should come out dry. Insert through a crack if there are any, it won’t leave a trace. Don’t have a cake tester? Use a kebab stick? Use the thinner one in the pack if possible.
Another way to check, is to place your hand over the middle of the cake and gently wobble the top. If the cake wobbles, it needs more cooking. If the cake does not move, it is likely to be done. Now, for bigger cakes, there is a risk that the very middle may still need more time, for those, I recommend the cake tester.
