Love it or loathe it, the new series of Great British Bake Off has hit our screens and brought millions of adoring eyes with it, giving hope to every viewer that has ever considered taking up baking as an in-home hobby, and why not. Perhaps the thought of opening your own little bakery business has always niggled away at the back of your brain, or you want to up your game so that you no longer embarrass your children at school fetes, or you just want to find a new little something that stops you from looking at facebook all the time. Whatever it is, taking up baking is the answer.
However, while baking is all about trial and error and having fun, it is also about having the right tools to help you produce the perfect cake, or pie, or biscuit… Here’s a list of kitchen gadgets every baker needs to have handy.
You are still the key ingredient when it comes to creating absolute deliciousness, but these will help you out no end:
The Oven Thermometer
Baking is all about little details; it is a hobby that relies on total precision, and that is why you need to invest in an oven thermometer. If you have a brand new oven or have your old one calibrated on a regular basis, then you probably won’t need this handy little tool. But, chances are, you don’t have either of these things, meaning your temperature gauge may not be accurate and, as any experienced baker will tell you, having the wrong temperature ruins baked goods faster than anything else.
The Stand Mixer
Some bakers will tell you that they only ever use a hand mixer, which is fair enough. However, the reason why we have chosen a standing food mixer is that it lets you get on with the other tasks involved in baking. After all, time is of the essence, as you will know from watching GBBO. Let’s say you are making a huge cake, a big loaf of bread or anything that requires minutes and minutes of mixing, like thick and delicious fudge, that is when you will be so chuffed you went down the standing route and not the handheld one. You’ll be multitasking like the best of them in no time at all.
The Cooling Racks
Rule number 1 of baking: never let your cakes, cookies, biscuits, cupcakes, muffins or anything like that cool in the tin while sat on the counter. You will just ruin them and all that effort you put in will have been for nothing. You need to allow the cool air to get to the bottom of your cake-based products otherwise you are running a huge risk, and that is exactly what a cooling rack does; it cools the base. Invest in a few of these, stick to using them as much as possible and you will find that your cakes, biscuits, muffins and cookies are baked evenly right the way through.