5 Baking Tips & Basics You’ll Actually Use

Well bakers I'm going to share five basic recipes with you in five minutes. These tips and tricks are guaranteed to make your baking life easier in the kitchen. Basic number one, how to fix separated chocolate. This can happen a lot and it happens easily. It's when fats are put together there's too much fat and they separate from each other and that's what you're looking at. Often you think what can I do it has to go in the bin but wait I have the perfect solution. All you need is an immersion blender. Within seconds the blade of the immersion blender like magic will bring it back together. And then look at that it's smooth, it's silky, it's shiny like nothing ever happened. Now it is ready to use in any of your recipes. My second basic is an essential one, how to make homemade buttermilk. This is really easy all you need is two ingredients. Here I have a cup of milk and for every cup of buttermilk you want you're going to add two tablespoons of an acid be it lemon juice or vinegar. I prefer lemon juice personally because the flavor isn't as strong. If you use vinegar often you can taste the vinegar and then all you want to do is let this sit here for around 15-20 minutes and right before your eyes in minutes you'll see that the mixture has thickened and it has separated slightly. This is a fantastic recipe and when you find yourself in a pinch without some buttermilk to hand this is perfect especially when you're making pancakes waffles and cakes. This next basic is a great one not a lot of people know it's how to make your own piping bag for piping chocolate or icing. Here's how to do it. So I have a nice big piece of parchment I'm going to create a triangle by folding over. You want to make sure that all your edges are clean cut. Use a sharp knife to cut that edge so we end up with something that looks a little bit like a bandana or a triangle. There you go. So here's what we're going to do. Take one corner bring it in the middle create a cone just like that. Take the other bring it around the back and bring the two of them together until you create that very fine tip. What you're going to end up with is this kind of like folding over at the back you'll have these peaks and in the front you'll have nice and round and you'll have a very small peak. So to close the bag we fold down these peaks to strengthen the bag. You can make these piping bags as big or small as you want them and they're really useful especially when you're writing in chocolate. I'm going to put my chocolate in there. Remember this is paper still so you don't want to overfill it. When getting your piping bag ready we're going to seal the top just like this. What I want you to do here's the seam going down the back. We want to fold this over to close over that seam and seal it. Fold over on that seam to strengthen the piping bag even more and the more you go down with the paper the more pressure puts on the bottom. Now snip the top of the piping bag just a little bit and now it is ready to decorate. I find this tip really useful when I want to write on cakes. My fourth basic is an essential one. How can you tell if your baking eggs are fresh? Let me show you. So you take your eggs and you put them in some cold water. If they sink to the bottom like this one did it means that they're fresh. So that is what you want. Now here I have a different egg from a different pack. So this one is doing something a little bit different. It's almost floating and it's kind of pointing out this way towards the water which means it's not as fresh as the other one. Am I still going to bake with that one? Yeah probably. If it was floating up to the very top then that's an absolute no and in the bin. So I saved the best for last. My fifth basic is making your own homemade sprinkles. How much fun is that? All you need is some fondant, some leftover fondant. I like to use my marshmallow fondant because it's really easy to make. You color each piece whatever color you want your sprinkles. Roll it out nice and thin using a little bit of something like corn flour. You can do as many colors as you like. So once your fondant's all rolled out I like to use the top of a piping nozzle to get the size that I want and then I just cut and cut and cut. Yes if you want a million sprinkles this is going to take you some time but you can cut them pretty fast and they are so sweet. So cut all your fondant into sprinkles. You can even use different cutters and different shapes. You can even use a pizza cutter and do it really quickly. Once you've cut your sprinkles put them on a tray let them dry overnight until they're nice and hard and crisp and then the next day they're ready to be used. I think they'll make the perfect addition on the top of this birthday cake. There you go five basics in five minutes. I have loads more videos just like this one. Make sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on any upcoming videos and I'll see you back here again really soon.