© 2010 Florence Tarbox

Temperature
Most soft baked goods like cakes and muffins cook at 350^o.
Some cookies and pastries should be cooked at 400^o.
The higher temperatures cook the outside more than the inside, so use high temperatures if you want a crisp finish and a tender inside. Use lower temperatures if you want an even, soft baked good.
Calibrate your oven so you know if your temperature is accurate.

This is the order in which to add the ingredients for cakes,
cookies, & muffins. This is very important. If you just put all your ingredients in a bowl and mix them up, you will not succeed.
1. Cream fat and sugar. The mixture should be light and fluffy.
2. Beat in eggs. The mixture should be very light and fluffy.
3. If your recipe requires leavening, sift baking soda, baking powder, and/or salt into flour.
4 Alternate flour and liquid and add gradually to the fluffy mixture. Be gentle at this step. Moisten all the flour.
5. Add fruit, nuts, or chocolate chips.

Sauces
If you are making pastry or sauces, add flour to fat, then add liquid.

If you need to add flour or cornstarch to a sauce, mix it with a little liquid or sugar first so it doesn't form lumps.  Only use sugar in a sweet sauce.

If you are adding extra eggs to a hot liquid, mix the liquid gradually into the eggs, not the other way around.

Cookies
If your cookies are too flat, you need more flour or another egg, or less sugar and fat. Cookies usually don't have a liquid ingredient like water, milk, or juice.

Cakes
If your cakes or muffins don't rise enough, cut back on the liquid or add more flour. Moist ingredients like blueberries add a lot of liquid. Cut down on the amount of liquid to compensate. Make sure you added your ingredients in the right order. This is the most common mistake with cakes.

Basics of Puddings, Sauces, Pastry, Cake, Muffins, and Cookies

Pudding: Lots of liquid plus a little thickener like egg, cornstarch, or flour. A sweet pudding has a moderate amount of sugar. Puddings can be mixed all at once except for fruits and nuts, which must be added last after the pudding is cooked. A food processor works well. Puddings are typically cooked on the stovetop, stirring constantly, or baked like a custard.

Sauces: A little fat and thickener plus lots of liquid. Again, the food processor or blender works well to mix the ingredients. Cook on stovetop, stirring constantly.

Pastry: Lots of flour (usually without leavening), about ½ to 1/3 as much shortening as flour. A flaky pastry has layers of flour and fat so don't mix thoroughly. Add just enough liquid to hold it together. Handle very little. A tough pastry was handled too much or has too much liquid. A crumbly pastry doesn't have quite enough liquid.

Cake: Sugar, shortening or butter, eggs, flour, leavening, and liquid. At one extreme, angel food cakes have sugar, egg whites, and flour. The extra egg whites provide the liquid. At the other extreme are brownies, which have lots of sugar and fat, little flour, and little egg. All other cakes are somewhere in-between. Sometimes, melted chocolate substitutes for liquid and/or fat. Sometimes fruit or grated vegetables provide part of the liquid. Use less liquid if you have another moist ingredient.

Muffins: Just like cakes cooked in small cups. Often, muffins have less sugar than a
typical cake.

Cookies: Shortening or butter, flour, eggs, flour, leavening. Cookies are basically small cakes, often made with less liquid. Cookie recipes often have less liquid, more sugar, and more shortening than cakes. The extremes are meringues, made with egg whites and sugar, and pastry squares, made with fat and flour.

Ingredients: Any combination of sugar, flour and leavening,
eggs, shortening/fat/butter and liquid will make some kind of a
baked product .

Most recipes need a bit of salt.

We often use self-rising flour, which already has salt & leavening (baking soda or baking powder.) To add leavening and salt, sift the dry ingredients with the flour before adding to moist ingredients.

Be observant. If you don't like the consistency of your baked goods, ask yourself, "What did I really make? A pudding? A pastry?" Then modify the ingredients to correct your outcome.