Sweet Kitchen Tips 4

As a avid baker, I have tons of baking pans, they are all different sizes and volumes, in most cases the manufacturers indication of size on them often are either totally illegible or nonexistent, leaving me with guest work when I’m trying to find the right pan.  Not good.  So, I have come up with a sure way to have them all nice and labeled.  Use oven safe metal paint (I found mine at the hardware store) to mark the bottom of each pan with the dimensions and/or capacity.  It will never fade and one quick look and you are all set.

How about when it’s time to bake those cookies and the recipe calls to line a baking sheet with parchment paper? Yeah, time to do the battle with the curly – unruly paper. Well, I put it on its place! Grab four refrigerator magnets and place one over each corner of the parchment.  Now the paper will stay in place while you scoop that cookie batter in place! (remember to remove the magnets before it goes into the oven!)

How about when you are trying to use the baking pan to pour bake batter? Obviously the magnets are not a good idea, so another way to keep the paper in place is to coat the baking sheet with a light coating of cooking spray making the parchment paper adhere to the sticky surface.  Now who is the boss?

And in the subject of coating pans…

Make your own all-in-one baker’s coating mix. Combine 2 parts shortening with 1 part flour and brush this paste lightly onto the cake pans when you need to coat the them for baking.  And the best part is that you can store any remaining mixture at room temperature in a plastic resalable container, so you’ll have the coating on hand when the need arises.

Sweet Kitchen Tips 3

And I’m back from a glorious vacation out in the wood.  As you can see, while we did have cellular service we had very limited internet.  Remember when dial-up use to be the best.thing.ever?

Yeah, well, after you seen mecca, slow dial up its not going to make the cut.  So, we decided (all of us, except for Tom) to let our technology drug of choice be put to pasture for a weeks time.

For the first 24 hours, we had a very hard time letting go.  Afterwards… “what iPhone?” while on the deck, sipping margaritas.

But, now I’m back with my tech-y drug of choice: high-speed, 3G networks and fully connected!  I will write up a post about our travels and how we saw wild animal life right in our cabin, as in “RIGHT THERE, staring back at us”. And will post pictures - because we took a ton of those.  

But, for now I will leave you with some kitchen tips, which actually came about when I found out that our great kitchen cabin was beautiful in the outside only.  As far as stocking the place up with the essentials kitchen gadgets, it was lacking, so we put our thinking caps on because as Plato will say: “Necessity, who is the mother of invention” will always come to the rescue.

Croissants for breakfast? or your sandwich bread of choice?  Except that you hate to crush then when using a knife to slice them apart - and if that knife is dull and awful, trust me, that croisant is not going to be pretty. To the rescue? Kitchen shears, or in my case a pair of scissors, was the solution.  Aim the points of the shears/scissors into the croissant at a right angle and start snipping.  Voila! Perfectly sliced croissants every time - the one you mangle before you came up with this, you can snack on.

Biscuits for breakfast? It’s on!  No so much when you roll out your dough and no biscuit cutter in sight. But plenty of caps from spray cans!  Specifically from the nonstick spay can, which is perfect substitute for a 2 1/2-inch round cutter.  The edge is sharp enough to clearly cut thru the dough and with just a slight squeeze of the lid, the dough easily releases from the cap. 

Sweet Kitchen Tips 2

Who said that you can only use kitchen utensils? How about going to the hardware store to get those things that in the kitchen store will cost you a bundle?

Instead of using a knife to break apart chocolate or frozen liquids, try this:

Keep a cheap chisel on hand.  The chisel’s sturdy edge does a better job and keeps your knives’ sharp, delicate edges out of harm’s way.  Place the chisel on chocolate or ice, angled away from you and using short quick strokes, chip into pieces.

If you are a baking buff (like me!) and have limited space in your kitchen drawers, then run and get a inexpensive plastic toolbox and store your baking gadgets (cookie cutters, measuring cuts, spatulas, etc.) in it.