Tips & Suggestions
- Unless otherwise specified by a recipe, always bring cold ingredients to room temperature before adding to a recipe.
- A great exception to the rule above: when making pie crust, keep cold ingredients as cold as possible. I’ve even chilled dry ingredients and the bowls I mix in, to keep everything extra cold.
- A general rule of thumb: use unsalted butter if a recipe says to add salt; use salted if it does not
- Rotate pans halfway through the baking process for even heat distribution. (Otherwise, don’t open the oven door to let any heat escape.)
- Vanilla is an ingredient you don’t want to scrimp on. Although pure bourbon vanilla is waaayy more expensive than some of its counterparts, the difference in flavor is totally worth it.
- Need freshly squeezed juice? Roll the fruit across your counter before you squeeze it; you’ll get juice out of the fruit this way.
- When adding cocoa powder to a recipe: use natural cocoa if the recipe calls for baking soda; use dutch-processed if it calls for baking powder.
