Easy as pie: The ABC guide to baking

I started baking about eight years ago when I was in college. I was excited about using my new little oven; I’d look up recipes, scour the market for ingredients and have my family and friends line up for taste tests. With each recipe that yielded moist vanilla cupcakes or dense and gooey brownies, my interest grew and I realised how easy it really was. I learned that with the right equipment, precise measurements and just basic ingredients (flour, butter, eggs and sugar) you can create a world of sweet deliciousness.

With this baking guide, you will soon find out how easy baking can really be —and will be on your way to making the perfect pound cake.

Choosing the right tools

An oven, basic pans and small equipement are worth investing in. Here’s a round-up of those that you need to get started:

Oven: The commonly available OTG ovens work like a charm for years together. Cakes might start browning sooner with the heated broiler coils on top, so just slide in a baking tray in the top third of the oven to reduce the direct heat. Nova, Bajaj and Morphy Richards are all good options to consider.

Kitchen scale: Measuring perfectly is extremely important and when you use a weighing scale, you reduce the chances of baking failure considerably. It is hard to go wrong when you have measured perfectly. To illustrate my point: a cup of flour can weigh anyway between 120-150g. So if the recipe writer intended you to use 120g of flour and you used 150g, you’ve just increased the dry ingredients by 25 percent, thus skewing your baking ratios.

Mixing bowls: Get yourself mixing bowls in various sizes. You could either buy heatproof glass or stainless steel ones, the latter being a lot less cumbersome.

Baking tins: An 8-inch round as well as square tin is a good starting point. Additionally, you can buy muffin tins, tart rings and loaf pans. A good point to remember here is that darker pans will absorb more heat and cakes will bake faster as compared to those made in shiny aluminium pans. A quick fix for this is buying the disposable aluminium boxes that are usually used for takeaways. Just make sure to keep the lid aside and not use it in the oven – it’s lined with plastic.

Hand blender: To cream butter and sugar together in minutes, to make fluffy meringues and cloud-like whipped cream you need an electric hand blender.

Wire whisk: For all the mixing that doesn’t require the use the high powered hand blender.

Rubber or silicone spatulas: They will help scrape the sides of the mixing bowls clean without wasting an ounce of the batter.

Serrated knife: It’s especially useful to slice cake into layers.

Baking paper: Parchment is preferable. Nothing sticks to it. If you can’t find that, then greased butter paper is fine too.

Cooling rack: One cooling rack usually comes with the oven, but if you’re going to bake a lot that won’t suffice. Cookies and such need to be placed on a cooling rack, else the moisture will condense on the lower surface and the cookie will become soggy.

Choosing the right ingredients

When I teach a baking class, I usually start by introducing the participants to the ingredients I use. It can get quite confusing with recipes calling for different types of sugars, flours and chocolates. We often end up with something that neither tastes nor looks like that perfect lemon cake from the bakery, and are left wondering about what could have gone wrong. For instance, one young girl thought that all-purpose flour meant atta (whole-wheat flour) and that’s what she used to make all her cakes and brownies. She couldn’t fathom why her cakes had a dense texture and a nutty flavour (which isn’t a bad thing for some recipes, but not quite what you want in all cases) even after following the recipe to the T.

Butter: Amul wins hands down for lack of other options. When a recipe includes salt, I usually skip it. Parsi dairy does sell unsalted butter, but that has a shorter shelf life and a higher water content. Also available is French President butter if you want to take the fussy, more expensive route.

Sugars: Granulated sugar, caster sugar, demerara sugar (a great substitute for brown sugar in most recipes), icing sugar, palm sugar and sometimes jaggery are all suitable sweeteners for baking. White sugar has a more concentrated sweetness than brown sugar. In cookies, white sugar gives crunch and brown sugar gives a caramel-ly softness.

Flour: I use regular all-purpose flour or maida for baking almost everything: cakes, cookies, brownies, and even breads. No high protein flour. We do get the 00 type flour (De Cecco), if you want to try your hand at making crusty breads.

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Cream: I use Amul Fresh Cream (25 percent fat) for all the recipes that call for cream (again, for lack of choice) and it works well. Of course, whipping it up is not entirely possible. The best option would be to get your hands on Parsi Dairy cream, even though it has a short shelf life. Other than that you can get non-dairy/vegan whipping “cream” called Tropolite.

Vanilla extract: Make your own vanilla extract instead of using cheap imitations. Just steep 2-3 spit vanilla pods in a bottle of small vodka and let it sit for 4-6 months, giving it a good shake every few days.

Chocolate and cocoa: White, dark and milk chocolate and chocolate compounds are both easily available in the market. Commonly available cocoa powders: Hershey’s, Hintz and Cadbury.

Baking powder and baking soda: Weikfield double action baking powder is really potent. Buy your baking soda from your local grocery store around the corner. Just to be sure of its efficacy, test it by adding half a teaspoon to a cup of very hot water. If it bubbles, it’s all good.

Now you’re ready to try your hand at your very first cake.

Perfect Pound Cake Recipe

240g all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

225g butter

200g granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 175°C for ten minutes. Butter a 9×5 inch loaf pan.

Sift the flour and baking powder together.

In a stand mixer or with a hand held mixer, beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating for a couple of minutes in between additions. Add the vanilla extract.

Stir in the dry ingredients with a spatula.

Bake the cake for 40-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Once baked, let the cake rest for about 15 minutes before you remove it from the pan to transfer to a cooling rack.

Shaheen writes about her quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie and baking escapades on The Purple Foodie .Wire whisk: For all the mixing that doesn’t require the use the high powered hand blender.