our top 10

Everyone has some form of New Year’s resolutions that more often than not involve being better at something (even being better at not eating too much cake… which may be something we fail at)! Anyway, whether you’re learning an entirely new skill or making sure you perfect a hobby we’re sure a few tips and tricks are welcome. We bake and design cakes for a living so we receive hundreds of emails in a year from people asking what, how and WTF. With this firmly in mind for the new year we thought we’d put together a (hopefully) helpful post with our personal top 10 tips for the beginner baker!

Top 10 tips for the beginner baker!

01: Plan ahead!

Too many people decide to take a huge project at the drop of a hat. We’ve heard it all before; someone asks us what went wrong and when we ask how they started and then it generally goes a little something like this…

Baker decides on a cake they want to make for a friend (or worse yet… their own wedding) - an ambitious two tier cake for a beginner who has only made cupcakes previously. One day before the Baker’s friend’s birthday they finally begin baking, mixing up buttercream, prepping jams and making decorations (flowers, figures etc). At 2am they’re pretty frazzled, tired, covered in sugar. No sleep is had with the cake crumbling and about to fully fall to pieces. The buttercream is melting and seeping down the entire cake. At 5pm an hour before the friend’s party they give up and decide to cover and hide sections of the cake with either real flowers (and there are a lot of flowers out there that are toxic and can’t touch food) or candy. Cake gets taken to the party and then collapses in on itself resulting in one huge cake fail.

The most obvious thing is that no planning was done. (OK, so there is also a complete misunderstanding of personal limitations and lack of experience too, but that’s a whole different section!) Too many people think “It’s just cake” and then are utterly deflated and on the edge of despair when “just a cake” turns into “just a disaster”. Even a small buttercream / bakery-style cake for us is a detailed production so imagine what needs planning for a two tiered floral birthday cake? One of the best tips for the beginner baker is to plan in advance!

Course of action? Find what cake you want to try and make (make sure it matches your ability - be honest), finalise colour palettes / flavours / size, sketch out your design with notes and adjustments, type up a bake & make list a week prior to the due date including a full shopping list of ingredients or decor, make any flowers or figures at least 2 days before the due date and keep them in a cool and clean environment, cover and trim your board 2 days in advance too, bake / crumb coat / ice your cake the day before it needs to be picked up or delivered and spend the rest of the day adding details and decor!

02: Prepare what you need!

Weigh and lay out all ingredients and tools on your workspace in advance and on the day. It’ll help make you feel less panicked and more organised to see everything you need to bake up the perfect cake. You may even have completely ran out of something like piping bags or greaseproof paper. Finding out at the last minute is soooo annoying. We’re human and we’ve all done it. Everyone has that moment when they remember seeing that bottle of Madagascan vanilla paste in the cupboard and think they won’t need to pick any up from the store, but when it comes to the big day it turns out to actually be coffee extract.

03: Don’t blame the recipe!

A lot of people like to try out recipes they find in books, magazines or even on the internet. This is great as there are some pretty awesome things to make out there. The only problem is that some people are a little to quick to blame the source of the recipe. Too many things can make a cake or macarons or cookies go wrong which aren’t the fault of the chef, blogger or author. Everyone we’ve met in the food development industry tests, tests and then tests recipes over and over again to make sure it’s perfect before it gets published. Think about it; why would anyone want to release a recipe that doesn’t work and is bound to get complaints? There are, unfortunately, lots of factors that could hinder your progress with a recipe. Your oven could well be off… it’s common knowledge in the industry that ovens can be below or over the temperature you think it is. Humidity is also a pesky little tyrant depending on where you live (it’s often blamed for dismal macarons and even fondant). Ingredients vary from brand to brand and country to country - e.g, some sugars contain different anti-caking agents and can seem more or less sweet than other companies. Quality of ingredients vary too. If a recipe recommends couverture chocolate then they’ve done so for a reason.

Also, READ the recipe. That may sound obvious, but the amount of emails we get asking us why there’s cream in a frosting recipe when we’re referring to ‘cream’ as an instruction or verb not a ingredient or noun. Sit down, have a cup of tea and read through everything you need and everything you need to do. You’ll find yourself less flustered and less likely to mess up. Sometimes one of the most obvious tips for the beginner baker is the most overlooked.

04: Taste test!

Baking involves flavour; pretty obvious huh? You’d be surprised how many people don’t test and assess what they eat - even their own recipes! This is a pretty fun exercise you can develop every time you eat (a great excuse to go out for dinner). To be a better baker you need to train your taste buds! Try out your’s and someone else’s cakes and work out what you liked and didn’t like about both. What would you change? Was your lemon cake lacking in flavour; did it need a bit of a kick? Try adding more lemon oil or using Limoncello for grown-up cakes! Is your buttercream too sweet? Try adding less icing sugar into the mix, switch to a different brand or maybe you’re flavouring it with too much of a sweet thing like caramel sauce.

05: Tools of the trade!

Lots of people new to a hobby get a little insane with collecting all the tools they think they need. Sometimes you really don’t need absolutely every little thing a company makes. Any company is trying to bring in the money at the end of the day so of course they’re going to release some tool that you just have to have when really it’s may not be that useful to you. Don’t go throwing money around when you’re just beginning. Instead invest wisely and buy slowly. For example, we don’t use cake levellers. Ever. They’re not really necessary. We simply use sharp knives, a clean spirit level (that’s only used for cake… no cross contamination), a stern eye and a steady hand! If anything we’ve found cake levellers to be more of a hindrance. By the way… we’ll be putting together a super handy blog post soon about baking tools that are perfect for beginners!

06: Be your own worst critic!

This tip is a hard one to put into motion for some people. For others it’s too easy! Basically, it’s pretty difficult to get the balance right. People who are good at what they do tend to have around 70% self-criticism and 30% self-awesomism (not a word or official statists too, but let’s pretend they are). You need that balance. You need to be your own worst critic because your friends and family don’t want to hurt your feelings or discourage you so it’s totally up to you to judge your work not them. In a nutshell, don’t trust your loved ones; trust your gut. Think about it… you make a wonky-melting-down-one-side-cake-that-tastes-rammed-full-of-crazy-chemicals-and-thus-may-be-inedible and your parents tell you it’s brilliant. Of course they would. Ignore them. Really look at that cake, taste it, assess what went wrong and vow to be better. You can do it! Being your own worst critic is the only way for you to really do better and move on to greatness!

07: Buy the best!

When it comes to tool shopping from spangly new cake pans to candy thermometers always pay a little more for a better product. It’s pretty much the same as the famous Vivienne Westwood quote “Buy less. Choose well.” Don’t be tempted by those cheap as chips (British phrase there basically meaning super cheap) deals for 500 cupcake cases on Ebay from Taiwan for £3. Don’t do it. They may be nice to your purse right now, but int he long run they won’t be. Get to know your brands, their reputation and opt for them instead of anything unknown. Our favourite brands (that we more than regularly use on a daily basis) include… Tala, Ateco, Rainbow Dust, PME, Sugarflair, KitchenCraft, Nordic Ware and Silverwood.

08: Know your stuff!

It’s important to learn and grow familiar with your ingredients. If you don’t understand them or know why you need them then you’re not going to know what you’re doing. If you concoct a cool cake flavour it makes sense to understand and plan out how it’s going to work. E.g, why would a dairy and gluten free whisky cake need some extra planning? Making a cake with substituted ingredients like no dairy or using gluten free flour makes it much less stable to work with. Adding an extra wet element into the mix then just makes matters worse. Solution? Test different dairy free butters and gluten free flours. Reduce whisky into a thicker liquid, shop around for whisky essence or opt to have a whisky glaze or buttercream to infuse flavour. There are some pretty fantastic books on the science of baking and how to understand ingredients such as… How Baking Works by Paula Figoni and Understanding Baking by Joseph Amendola and Nicole Rees.

09: Check your oven!

Ovens are insane. They can be under or over temperature so it makes sense to check it before you even think about putting a cake in there. Buy a good oven thermometer (NOT a candy thermometer or even a human one… naughty), place it inside and pre-heat (any degrees you like). Once your oven is ready check that it matches the thermometer. Chances are it won’t. Now you can do one of two things… call a specialist to have your oven fixed or you can keep the degrees difference in mind. So if you’re oven should be 200 degrees C and thermometer says it’s 180 degrees C remember whenever you back that your oven is 20 degrees C below what it should be.

10: Get some scales!

Though this may be the last tip on the list it’s a very important piece of advice! Cups really aren’t reliable. Sorry, but they’re not. Scales aren’t scary in the least; they’re actually waiting to be your best friend! Traditional style scales are great and we use some in our kitchen, but for finicky things such as macarons digital scales are perfect. They also make sorting out ingredients quicker and make less mess too!

Now go forth into the kitchen armed with our top tips for the beginner baker and whip up a masterpiece!