Baking Hacks, Part 1

Hello, faithful Miss Whisk friends! It’s been a long time (Do you even remember me?!). A lot has happened.

I had an emergency appendectomy while 17 weeks pregnant in January, they ended up leaving the festering appendage in there, I was treated with antibiotics three times during the pregnancy for recurrent chronic appendicitis, had a baby, and my father passed away after a gut-wrenching diagnosis of malignant cancer only weeks prior (those of you following me on Facebook and Instagram know a few more details).

I’ve heard of that happening to people–suddenly being diagnosed with not only cancer, but malignant cancer so metastasized that they have only weeks to live. But the thought of it happening to my family was rather removed from the realm of possibility in my mind. We–or at least I–often feel a painful sympathy for others going through this kind of tragedy…but I don’t expect it to happen to my family. While mourning my Dad this Thanksgiving, I’m going to make forced efforts to let that turn my sight to all of the enormous blessings in my life. I will likely write a cathartic blog post about my dad at a later time. But I’m not ready to do that just yet. So allow me to change the subject to a much lighter topic! Food!

I’ve been working on this Baking Hacks post for about a year now, collecting all my shortcuts and tips as I’ve been baking throughout the year. There will be a second installment of hacks at a later time; I’ll limit this post to 10. Without further ado! Baking Hacks, Part 1.

1. When your recipe calls for eggs, crack the eggs into a separate dish before plopping it into your mixing bowl. This gives you the chance to remove any egg shells that might’ve broken when you cracked the egg. There’s nothing more annoying in baking than trying to fish out an uninvited egg shell, camouflaged in a sea of flour.
2. You can freeze cake batter! Oil- and butter-based cakes freeze well. If you only want to make a dozen cupcakes from a 24-cupcake recipe, or you know you’ll be too busy the day before you kid’s birthday to prep a cake, just freeze the batter in a freezer zip-top bag, pressing or sucking out as much air as possible first. Do not freeze batters with whipped egg whites folded into them. This type of batter does not freeze well.
3. You can freeze buttercream frosting, as well! Follow the advice above for proper packaging.
4. You can freeze already-baked cakes and dessert breads! Let your baked good cool completely first, so as to avoid moisture turning into freezer burn. Then wrap your item in plastic wrap twice around. Finally, insert your wrapped item into gallon-sized zip-top bag, and remove as much air as possible. Bonus: You can re-use the zip-top bag since the food is covered in it!
5. You can also freeze already-baked oil-based and butter-based cupcakes and muffins (Note: This does not work for recipes involving whipped egg whites folded into the batter, like soufflés). The best way is to individually wrap each individual cupcake or muffin. However, in a time crunch, I have also just left the cupcakes/muffins in the tin and wrapped the entire tin (top and bottom) in plastic wrap, twice over. This works better for oil-based batters than for butter-based cupcakes/muffins. I honestly cannot detect a difference in quality between these two methods for the oil-based batters, so if you have an extra muffin tin to spare, why waste time individually wrapping oil-based muffins/cupcakes?
6. You can freeze cookie dough! Double your cookie recipe and wrap up the remaining dough in parchment paper (vs wax paper so you can defrost the cookie dough in the microwave, if needed. See #9 below), and insert into a freezer zip-top bag, removing as much air as possible. This is awesome to have on-hand as a quick thank-you gift or easy potluck contribution. You can defrost overnight in the fridge.
7. It’s a myth! You CAN microwave butter to soften to room temp! Just make sure the setting is on “Defrost.” Test the time it takes on your own microwave to *just* soften the butter, starting with 5 seconds. My microwave takes 8 seconds on the Defrost setting to yield perfectly room-temp butter with no signs of melting or over-softening!
8. You can similarly defrost buttercream in the microwave, but this needs shorter time, and very close observation. I put a block of frozen buttercream in a bowl in the microwave on defrost for 3-4 seconds at a time. If it softens too much, you’ve got a problem on your hands that takes a while to re-solidify in the freezer…but still fixable for American buttercream (warning: Italian and Swiss meringue buttercreams should be defrosted in the fridge overnight; they do take well to the microwave, and in my experience, are not salvageable once warmed even just a little too much).
9. The same applies to frozen cookie dough! Remove the dough from the plastic bag and place the dough wrapped in parchment paper directly into microwave (had we wrapped it in wax paper, the wax would melt onto our dough in the microwave, or the wax paper would rip if we try to remove it first). Defrost for 4-second increments to soften just enough to be able to work with it. It’s very important for cut-out cookie dough that you don’t soften the dough too much so that it can hold its shape. But even for all other cookies, I like to defrost the cookie dough very little so that the cookies have a lightly browned edge with a softer middle.
10. Cut-out cookies: Hold off on preheating your oven! Once you’ve cut and laid out your cookies on the baking pan, stick the pan in the freezer and then set the oven to the appropriate temperature. Once preheated, take the cookies out of the freezer and put directly into the oven. This process preserves the shape and sharp corners of your cookies beautifully. Some people prefer to chill the dough in the fridge as opposed to the freezer. Experiment with both and see what you prefer!

And there they are! The first 10 Baking Hacks. Ten more to come!

May I ask you a favor before I bid you adieu? Would you please like and share this blog post, using the social media icons (top right on desk top, and several places on the mobile version)?

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! I would tell you to go order something, but I’m booked through Christmas! That said, if you have any birthdays or celebrations coming up in 2020, PLEASE ORDER HERE as soon as possible! 2020 orders have been coming in since September of 2018!

-Miss Whisk