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Top five baking tips
Posted in Bettys, Great Cricket Tea Challenge.
Justin Clapham knows a thing or two about baking.
He mans the spatulas in the Craft Bakery at Bettys, our sister company, and he was named “Rising Star” at the Baking Industry Awards in December.
You might have spotted him on our Great Cricket Tea Challenge, where he’s been one of the three judges casting an expert eye over our four teams’ delicious cricket teas.
But it’s no fun sitting on all that baking knowledge if nobody gets to enjoy it. So you can, of course, get a taste of Justin’s handiwork by ordering something online – and we’ve also asked him for a few tips for the home baker.
The result is some absolutely cracking advice. Here’s Justin’s top five...
1 – Know your oven
Each oven is different, so you’ll find yours might not be running at the correct temperature. If your cakes are raw, catching on top or burning round the outside, this could be the problem. I’d suggest buying an oven thermometer which will tell you what the temperature inside really is – then leaving it in different spots inside the oven for 20 mins, and then noting the differences down.
2 – Use quality ingredients
Buy better quality ingredients and you’ll get more out of them. As an example, many people see cheaper flour in the supermarket can find themselves tempted – but it doesn’t have the same protein content. Better quality, or “high ratio” flour, absorbs more water, which helps to ensure your cake won’t collapse. And what goes for flour goes for other ingredients, like eggs, too. Get the best ingredients you can.
3 – Be aware of temperature
The temperature of your ingredients and your hands can have a big effect. If you’ve got warm hands and you’re handling pastry, it’ll start becoming sticky and hard to handle. And with a cake, it’s good to have the eggs, your butter and your flour at the same temperature. Let’s say you want to make a lovely fruitcake, using the creaming method (when you cream the butter and sugar and add your egg)... that can curdle really quickly. But if you’ve got everything at the correct temperature, everything works together a lot better.
4 – Mixers beware
People have a thing for putting ingredients into a mixer... but the beater can overmix. Machines can be good for egg whites, but for baking, when you’re at the batter stage, you’re more in control when you do it by hand. The danger of over-creaming is that the cake will rise, rise and rise and then it’ll sink – and that can happen with bread and pastry too. There’s less danger of over-creaming when you mix by hand. You can see the colour of the mix and you’re not going to walk away from it like you might with a machine.
5 – Be your own judge
Make sure you try your cake! You can follow a method, you can follow a recipe, but after that, try your cake and see what the flavour’s like. See what it tastes like. Is it lacking flavour, is there too much flavour? If it’s a lemon drizzle cake, it might need more – or less – lemon. Do you think it could be better next time? It’s part of the enjoyment and passion of it.
You can catch up on our Great Cricket Tea Challenge here.
