Baking Hacks Part 1

Whether you are a baking buff or a burner of even the most basic of biscuits, everyone loves a little extra help in the kitchen when they are baking. SAHM has searched high and low for the best baking hacks to make life just that little bit easier when you are whipping up anything from a simple Fruit Salad Cake to a more elaborate Salted Caramel Macadamia Cheesecake!

Room temp eggs

How annoying is it when you get half way through a recipe and it calls for eggs at room temperature and yours are still in the fridge? Just sit them in a bowl of warm (not super hot) water for 5-10 minutes and they should be perfect.

Don’t own a rolling pin, but need to roll something?

We’ve all got a wine bottle around somewhere. Just cover your dough in plastic wrap and roll it out using a wine bottle and the plastic wrap means you don’t even need to worry about the label sticking.

Make packet cake into fabulous cake.

Just add 1 extra egg than the instructions suggest, use melted butter instead of oil and full cream milk instead of water and it will be the best ‘homemade’ packet cake you ever made.

Need your bananas to be overripe instantly?

Lay them on an oven tray lined with baking paper, skins on and bake for 30-40mins at 150 and you’re ready to bake that banana bread. Snip the end off with scissors and squeeze the flesh out for easy use.

Never quite happy with the texture of your cookies or cake?

The secret to perfect cookie texture is to chill the dough for a minimum of an hour, but ideally overnight and when taking freshly baked cookies from the oven, ‘drop’ the tray onto the stovetop to force the cookies to settle. For cakes a sharp ‘drop’ on the bench before going in the oven will get all the bubbles out and make for a beautiful fluffy cake.

Brown sugar like concrete?

Sick of digging at your brown sugar with a spoon till it bends? To keep brown sugar as soft as the day you bought it just put a piece of bread in the container with the sugar. The sugar stays soft and the bread doesn’t go mouldy or yuk.

Your food processor is king. 

Turn almonds into almond meal, hazelnuts into hazelnut meal, oats into oat flour, you will find it cheaper and healthier than the packaged varieties of these things.

Want perfect shaped balls?

When shaping something sticky by hand like meatballs, muesli bars, tim tam balls, etc always wet your hands first to stop the mixture sticking and resulting in perfectly shaped balls every time.

Not great with a piping bag?

Try a fat plastic syringe with icing inside, much easier to control and create intricate designs with ease.

Cookies losing that lovely chewy texture once stored?

Try slipping a wedge of apple into the container, the cookies will absorb some of the moisture form the apple keeping them moist and chewy much longer.

Looking for a super simple, but stylish cupcake decoration?

Grab a small piece of lace, lay it over the top of the cupcake and sprinkle icing sugar through a sieve on to the lace. The beautiful design will be left behind on the cupcake.

Run out of food colouring?

You can use jelly crystals to colour icing instead.

Need a different baking pan for your pastry than what you’ve got?

Make false sides for any tray or pan with alfoil to make it smaller or give it a different shape, this works great for pastry but is no good for cake.

What are your go-to baking hacks? Keep an eye out for our second part of our Baking Hacks series to make your like in the kitchen simpler!