It seems to happen that just after I have greased a tin or started kneading, that will be the moment I need to reach for my phone to convert the weights in a recipe. The majority of the time though, the home button—actually my phone in general—tends to be covered with flour. It is no surprise that…
Category: Baking Hacks
Homemade Flaky Pie Crust
Nothing beats the feeling you get when you make a pie completely from scratch. However, unless you are a professional baker, pastry can be intimidating. I shied away for years, but now absolutely love baking pies. The Science of Flaky Pastry Inside the hot oven, the fat layered in the dough melts. This creates a…
How to Make Flaky Pie Crust
Nothing beats the feeling you get when you make a pie completely from scratch. However, unless you are a professional baker, pastry can be intimidating. I shied away for years, but now absolutely love baking pies. The Science of Flaky Pastry When the pie goes inside the hot oven, the solid bits of fat layered…
Of Flowers and Cake Flour …
I get my love of flowers from my mum. Every week, she always has a fresh bunch of flowers at home, not for any special occasion, but just because. I don’t have great pics of them, but for this post I have used beautiful photos of flowers taken by the husband. Cake flour This one…
How to Make Vanilla Extract
Making your own vanilla extract simply requires vanilla beans and relatively inexpensive vodka (it’s a neutral alcohol). I get vanilla beans from Uganda or Tanzania (Bukoba). It used to be a lot more for cheaper, but not really anymore. Talking of Tanzania, this post includes a few pictures of Tanzania from our epic Nairobi…
No-Fail Pizza Dough
Pizza for dinner? Then this is your game plan when you get home. Walk in the door and activate the yeast. Key to bringing dormant yeast “back to life” is the temperature of the water. Too cold and it will barely activate. Too hot and you will kill the yeast. Change out of your work…
How to Make Homemade Lemon Extract
Food scraps can be used to stock the kitchen pantry with your own specialty ingredients. Take for instance, citrus peels from lemons, oranges, limes, tangerines, grapefruit etc. Most often than not once we have eaten the fruit or squeezed the juice, we discard the rind/peel. Lemon (but it applies to all citrus) peels however can…
Homemade Cream Cheese
Why Have you seen a gorgeous no-bake cheese cake recipe you would like to try? Or maybe you simply want some cream cheese for carrot cake icing, a dip or sandwich spread but … you are broke? Do I sound like a commercial? What to do We are surrounded by people who think outside the box…
How To Beat Egg Whites
Want to attempt a chiffon cake, sponge cake, lemon pancakes, or a meringue etc this weekend? What they all have in common, is that you have to beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. What? Why? (Confession: Actually I was doing a post on the orange chiffon cake but it was too long and so I decided…
Baking Essentials
Hey! Do your weekend plans involve baking? However, do your cakes sometimes turn out not as moist as you hoped, or dense or do they sink? Or do you simply want to improve the quality of your baked goods? One of my besties who makes amazing chocolate chilli cakes, sticky toffee puddings, and the list…