Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Muffins and Cakes
When flouring a pan, try using cocoa powder
Nov 29th
When a recipe calls for the pan of a chocolate cake or cupcakes to be buttered and floured to prevent sticking you will often get a final product covered in dusty, crusty white bits rather than having something deep brown and tasty looking.
To prevent this try using cocoa powder alone or a combination of flour and cocoa. Cocoa powder does have fat and less starch than flour so there is a slight risk of sticking, but it’s never been a problem for me. If you’re really worried, try the combo first.
Types of flour and their substitutions
Jul 14th
Lately, Culinary Tips has been getting a lot of searches for types of flour, substitutions of flour types, and uses of flour, so I’ve expanded the entry here on flour. Hopefully this helps answer some questions. If not, as always, drop us a comment below or email a question.
Firstly, to understand flour, it helps to understand its source, wheat. There are several varieties of wheat, which I won’t delve into here. They vary in colour, protein content, and texture. The seed of which, has three distinct parts: the hull or bran, the endosperm, and the embryo or germ. In whole wheat flour, the husk of the wheat grain is left on and ground, hence the term whole wheat. In white flour is it removed, and only the endosperm and embryo are ground.
Inside flour are two important proteins that make baking possible – glutenin and gliadin. When these are kneaded together in the presence of water, they interlink and form a network called gluten. Gluten gives baked goods a chewy/firm texture, and captures the gases released from yeast during fermentation, and the carbon dioxide released from chemical leaveners in baking.
For many baking projects the right type of flour can make all the difference, but how do you know what the right type is? First lets discuss the types of flour, and what they are used for. The four basic types of wheat flour on the market are:
- All Purpose
- Cake and Pastry
- Bread
- and Self-Raising
Apart from self-raising, which has a chemical leavener (baking powder) already added, the others differ from each other in respect to how much protein is left in during the milling process.
Though there are many different proteins found in flour, the ones that are of concern to bakers are gliadin and glutenin. These proteins form gluten. Gluten is what makes dough elastic. When making bread you want maximum gluten formation, so the CO2 from the yeast will have a place to stay, but when you’re making say, scones or pie dough, the less gluten the better so the product will not be chewy.
Strong / Hard / Bread Flour
Bread flour has the highest protein content of them all, and though it varies from brand to brand and place to place, the protein content is 12-14%. It is often made using a type of wheat called Durum. Due to the high protein content, when worked with water, the most gluten is formed resulting in a chewier product. Strong flour is typically used for making pasta, bread, and other yeast leavened baked goods. Strong flour is also the type that should be used when dusting a workbench because of the large particle size. Unless you are using yeast in your product, or making pasta, consider another type of flour.
All Purpose Flour
Next in strength comes all purpose, which has an 8-10% protein content, putting it basically in the middle of the road when it comes to gluten forming potential. It is a blend of hard and soft flours. If you are going to be making a variety of products, but only want to buy one type of flour, this is the one for you.
Cake Flour / Pasty Flour
At the grocery store, you will often see a single product called Cake and Pastry Flour, with generally the lowest protein content of around 7-10%. Cake and pastry flour has the lowest protein content of all common types of flour, and should be used in making products with a light texture as gluten development is to be avoided. For example, using a high protein flour will make your cake tough, causing it to not rise when baked.
If you only have bread flour and you want some scones tonight, by all means use it, but be extra aware that the potential for chewy scones is higher with bread flour than cake flour. If you are making bread, and you only have cake flour, you may be in for a little more trouble. Soft bread depends on proper gluten development to trap the gases from the yeast, creating leavening, and therefore a nice soft crumb. With cake flour, there is only about half the protein in bread flour, so the potential for gluten development is lesser. To get fully developed dough, you may have to knead for so long that the heat from the friction in the bowl kills the yeast, leaving you with a big sticky pile of mess.
Quite a few British recipes call for self-raising flour because in the UK, self raising flour is roughly the same price as regular flour. For each cup of unleavened flour, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder. If you only have self-raising flour, and your recipe calls for regular, omit the baking powder and/or salt (if your flour already has it mixed in).
Sponge Cake Pans
Jun 24th
When baking a sponge cake, such as an angel food cake, don’t grease the pans. Greasing will prevent the cake from rising, and will probably cause it to fall entirely. A piece of parchment or silicone paper at the bottom of the pan will do, and leave the sides free. When it’s baked and cooled, you can run a knife along the edge of the cake pan to release it.
Making marble cakes
Jun 23rd
To marble two different cake colors together without getting too much mixing, pass a knife or skewer through the unbaked cake in a spiral motion starting at one end and ending at the other. If you spiral through just once, the batters should be nicely marbled without being indistinguishable.
Folding whipped egg whites when making a cake
Jun 21st
When folding, a lighter product is folded into a heavier one, creating a homogeneous light mixture. This technique is especially important when making sponge cakes as the entire texture and leavening power of the cake is dependant on how well the whipped egg whites are folded into the other ingredients. There are a couple of tricks to folding:
1: Don’t under whip the whites or cream, as some of the air will be lost during folding no matter how quickly or gently you do it.
2: Mix approx 1/3 of the lighter mixture into the heavier one. This will enable the remaining mixture to be incorporated with more ease.
3: Next Fold in the remaining thirds one at a time, waiting till the first of the two is almost homogeneous.
4: Fold with either a whisk or a rubber spatula. Don’t over mix, because this will lose volume. Starting at the bottom of the bowl, work in a spiral motion, slowly and gently, bit by bit moving the heavier mixture onto and into the lighter one. Since you already mixed some of the light mix into the heavier one, it’s now light enough to sit on the light one without flattening it.
5: Bake immediately.
No more crumbs in frosting with a crumb coat
Jun 12th
If you’ve ever frosted a cake, you may have encountered one of the most common problems with homemade cakes; that is frosting full of cake crumbs. There is an easy way around it, and that’s to do what’s called a crumb coat.
Once the cake has been assembled (sliced and filled if necessary), take a small amount of your frosting and spread a thin layer all over the cake making sure that no cake is left exposed. Chill this until it’s all set up, and then do your final layer.
As long as you don’t scrape any of the crumb coat into your top coat, all the crumbs will stay there and not be seen.
For better cheese bread use cubes
Jun 2nd
Cheesy quick breads and yeast breads can be awesome. What’s better than a spicy cheese corn bread, or a tasty crusty cheese loaf? But, they can also be lacking in cheese flavour.
Many recipes I’ve seen call for grated cheese. Grated cheese is a great addition to lots of things(pizzas, chilli, pastas etc), however it is not a good addition to breads and muffins. You can use twice or even 3 times as much as the recipe calls for and still not give you a good, cheesy taste, increasing the cost and calories of an otherwise nice item.
The trick to deliciously cheesy baked goods is to cut the cheese into roughly 1-2 cm cubes, and add these as called for in the recipe. They will stay relatively whole during baking, and will leave melted cheese nuggets in your final product.
Dividing Rounds
Mar 29th
Being in the pastry field, I spend quite a large part of my day it seems, cutting round things into wedges. Now as sad as that may seem, it can make a large impact on the final product if all your slices come out without crumbs and all the same size. There are a few tricks to help with this. First off, figure out how many pieces you want. Some numbers are easier than others, and there are even products on the market to make the more difficult numbers a bit easier. 
for instance, when pressed into your 8″ round iced cake, will leave impressions telling you where to evenly cut for 14 pieces. But you may not have one of these nifty tools, or you may be cutting into a different number than 14, or you may be cutting something that does not easily impress, such as a pie. What do you do then?
First off, get set up. For cakes, mousses, anything soft and without 2 pastry crusts, this will require a deep container of very hot water, a clean dry towel, a clean wet towel, a sharp knife at least as long as the radius of you cake and a ruler. For pies with 2 crusts, you can use the same method, or you can omit the hot wet knife in favor of a smaller serrated knife.
Place the item on a cutting board (it helps to have a non-slip mat underneath, or a wet towel so the board will not slip as you cut. ) If you are cutting into an even number of pieces, the first thing you should you do is cut your cake in half. The best way to cut perfectly in half, is to measure the centre. Take the ruler, and as best as you can without ruining your icing, place it across the widest part of the cake, hovering if necessary, mark the halfway point with the tip of your knife, or another sharp object, leaving an impression just large enough that you can see it. Rotate the cake 90º and using the center mark, place the ruler along the cake again, marking the middle again. With 2 points now, you should be able to discern a center. From this you can divide the cake in half. Hold your knife into the container of water, until it is warm to the touch. Dry it on your dry cloth, and make your cuts. The most important thing to watch for is that your knife stays at a 90º angle to the board, so you don’t get sloped pieces (this sounds easier than it is, especially with denser cakes).
Now that you cake it halved, it is easier to work with one half at a time (though admittedly not as speedy, but you can’t have it every way). Using your centre mark as a guide, and always starting your cuts there, you can begin to divide into your desired number. After each cut of the knife, (not necessarily slice divided), place the knife into the hot water until it is warm again, and wipe it clean on your wet cloth, drying each time on the dry cloth. This sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it’s the only way to prevent crumbs from getting on top of the cake. You may need to change the water in order t o keep it clean and hot. If you cake is frosted with a soft icing such as buttercream for example, you can mark where you are planning on cutting before you do and just smooth the line out if it’s wrong later, which will enable you to go back and double check your lines with a ruler first.
Using the basic technique of marking a centre with a ruler and cutting from the at point, you can quite easily divide the cake into most numbers that you will come across. The exception for this is 10. I have seem a lot of cakes divided into 10 (or 20 for buffets or rich cheesecakes).
To start to cut into 10 or 20, you must first halve your cake. The next step is to lightly using your knife, mark what one fifth slice of this half would look like (it may not be perfect, but it will probably be quite close). The more accurately you make this cut, the more even your slices will be but it’s not going to look too bad whatever happens. Once the first fifth slice is done, all you have to do is divide the remaining cake into 2 and then each slice into 2 again. Do this with the other half, and you have 10 perfect slices of cake. Half each slice again for 20.
Blueberry muffins
Nov 22nd
When making blueberry muffins, a common problem is blue batter due to squashing of the blueberries between mixing and baking. This can be prevented by adding your blueberries frozen and in stages. For example, divide your batter in half, add half the frozen blueberries to half the batter (keeping the other half in the freezer), mix gently to distribute and divide into the pans, then do the same to the other half, and the blueberries will not have had time to melt while you were dishing out the batter, and will not get so squashed during the dishing. It also helps to toss them in flour before adding to the batter.
