Sweet Kitchen Tips 22

Unless you have a very expensive scale, bulky containers, large roasts, and the like can obscure the display on the digital scale, making it impossible to get a good read out.  To the rescue! Your cake stand. Steady a light weight cake stand on the scare and ste the tare at zero.  The cake stand, which is wide enough to accommodte large pans and big cuts of meats, elevates items so that the display is visible.

and to keep it clean, specially when you weight meats, such as chicken, meat, pork.  All you have to do is cover it with plastic wrap.  If you don’t use the elevating trick above, you can in some cases slide the entire scale into a large zipper-lock bag.  The buttons will visible and usable thruough the clear bag.

Sweet Kitchen Tips 21

This past week I took another decorating class and the instructor gave us a great tip for cleaning our decorating bags and tip, because have you ever tried to clean off that greasy buttercream with soap and water? Impossible!  She mentioned that soaking your decorating tools in hot water with soap and salt will do the trick.  And you know what it does, I got home, put everything in a bowl with super hot water, soap and salt and let it soak overnight. The next day I washed it up and yep, the salt broke down the “greasy” feel on the bag and tips – squeaky clean.

And since are talking greasy stuff.  Have you even spilled oil? The mess! I think is one of the most difficult things to pick up and clean up.  Sprinkle a thick layer of flour over the spilled oil and wait a few minutes for the flour to absorb the oil.  Then with paper towels or a brush move the flour around until it absorbs all the oil, then sweep it up with a dustpan and broom.  Final step is to spray the area with your favorite multi-purpose house cleaner (or window cleaner) to wipe away the traces of oil and flour.

Sweet Kitchen Tips 20

I learn this one recently, I usually weigh my baking ingredients in different bowls or pieces of parchment paper.. but then I have to clean up those bowls.  I found this tip genius!  Use a small brown paper bag (you can score a couple of them for free at your local supermarket) to hold the flour while measuring it on the scale. The bag stands open the scale, is deep enough to hold a lot with no overflow.  And the best part? Pours neatly into your mixer.

How about when you need to dust the cake pan (if you are not using spray) or the work surface… I store my flour in a big 5 gallon container, so hauling it out just to use a little is a pain in the you know what.  Instead I use a salt shaker that I got on the cheap at the dollar store and use to to fill it with flour (mine hols about 1/2 cup) store it in my pantry and when I need a little it’s great to have at hand without needed heavy lifting.

Another great tip is when you need to add flour to your food processor in small increments. You need to unlock and lock the lid a couple of time again loosing time if you ask me.  So before adding any flour (or other dry ingredient), I shape a double piece of parchment or waxed paper into a funnel and slide it into the feed tube of the food processor.  Now your dry ingredients can be added as needed to the funnel and it will flow slowly, evenly and steadily into the work bowl.