Tips for the best-ever homemade cakes and bread

Want to wow friends and family with fresh-from-the-oven bread, cakes and muffins you made yourself? Here are some baking tips to help you whip up a perfect batch, every time.

• If you can't remember whether the flour in your canister is all-purpose or self-rising, taste it. Self-rising flour is salty because it contains baking powder and salt to make it rise.

• Heat makes dough rise more quickly. However, if it rises too quickly, the flavour will suffer, and that's why microwaving dough for a few minutes on low power doesn't work well. Instead, place the bowl or pan over the pilot light of a gas stove or on a heating pad set on medium heat.

• When working with dough, don't put extra flour on your hands to prevent the dough from sticking to your skin. Instead, pour a few drops of olive oil into the palm of your hand and work it in as you would hand lotion.

• Save the waxy wrappers of margarine and butter and put their oily residue to good use. Store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. When a recipe calls for greasing the pan, press one or two of the wrappers into service.

• If your muffins or cupcakes are stuck to the bottom of a metal muffin tin, set the hot pan on a wet towel. The condensation in the bottom of the tin will make the treats easier to remove.

• When you put bread in the oven, put a second pan holding six to eight ice cubes on one of the oven racks. The resulting steam will help the bread bake more evenly and give it a crispier crust.

• If your favourite special banana-nut bread, cinnamon coffee cake or carrot-zucchini muffins are super-tasty but heavy, substitute buttermilk for the milk in the recipes; it will lighten the texture of any quick bread you bake. Experiment to find what gives you the best results: all buttermilk, equal parts buttermilk and milk, and so on.

• If a baking recipe calls for so much butter that you feel your arteries clogging just reading it, substitute a 50/50 mixture of unsweetened applesauce and buttermilk. Best used in light-coloured or spiced baked goods, this substitute imparts a slightly chewier texture — and it's the reason you'll want to replace all-purpose flour with pastry or cake flour.

• Clay pot cookery is a kitchen tradition that goes back thousands of years. Even a simple, unglazed terracotta flowerpot will work perfectly! Simply wash an unglazed, unpainted pot in hot soapy water and air-dry. Grease the pot's interior and lip with vegetable oil until the clay will absorb no more. Place the pot on a baking sheet topped with aluminum foil and place in a cold oven. Heat to 205°C (400°F) and turn off immediately. Repeat oiling and heating one more time, and your pot is ready to use.

Next time your friends and family dig in to some delicious freshly baked bread, you can proudly say it's homemade.

--------------------

Discover the smarter way to save time and money

Ready to start saving more on your groceries and pharmacy purchases? Download the FREE YP Grocery app today! It lets you create shareable shopping lists, automatically finds all the best deals and coupons, then delivers them right to you. No more manually scrolling through hundreds of flyers to find what you’re looking for!

Download the YP Grocery app now!