Impediments to Baking

[susandennis]

As I was whipping up my oatmeal cookies I was thinking... why is this so easy when for so many years it was not possible?

Stand mixer. My little stand mixer feels like a playskool toy that works just fine for me. It's very light weight and requires intervention (mushing the stuff into the beaters) but totally worth it. It fits neatly on my shelf and is easy peasy to set up and put away.

Room temp butter. I got a second butter keeper. So now I always have two butters at room temp - one for everyday use and one ready for baking. As long as you keep the light out, butter is fine not refrigerated. (Salted butter, that is. Unsalted can't stay out of the cold for days on end.)

Toaster oven. Not having to wait a day and an age for a giant oven to preheat. And not heating up a giant oven in Summer. Huge. My little toaster oven preheats more quickly than I can spoon out cookie dough onto the sheet.

Parchment paper. For rolling out on, for cooking on. This stuff is amazing and makes clean up a breeze.

These are the key ingredients that I finally figured out... they make baking easy and fun and less mess... for me.

Comments

[lenine2.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on all counts.

Room temp butter — we've had a butter keeper for many years. So many people have told us we'll die. Ha ha, not yet!
Toaster oven — we can't live without one. The current one is a KitchenAid refurbished one we found on Amazon when the previous one stopped working. They seem to be hard to find these days.
Parchment paper — I use it for a lot of things.
Stand mixer — I love your little Dash! My MIL gave us her KitchenAid white stand mixer that was a wedding gift to her in 1959. It's awesome. It's also heavy, which means I tend to do without if I don't feel like weight lifting.

[teragramm.livejournal.com]

That little stand mixer looks great. I've always wanted a stand mixer but they are so heavy and I don't really have shelf space in my kitchen. This little machine might just work for me.

BTW, what do you mean by mushing the stuff into the beaters ?

[susandennis]

I think you'd be thrilled with how light and easy this thing is to use. It weighs nothing but has VERY excellent suction cups so it doesn't move while using.

If you are buying on Amazon, check all colors — there is often a $10 difference. AND often there's a deal in Amazon Warehouse like here.

When my mixture gets into a lump, I take a rubber spatula and put it into the beaters (or actually usually the hooks which I like to use more), to break it up and help blend it with everything else.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

I'm so thrilled you're launched on the baking path with all the good stuff! I use baking [parchment] paper constantly, not just for baking but for roasting things and stuff like that as well as it's so easy to clean up. (I prefer to use gladwrap for rolling out dough though, as I find baking paper moves around too much.) When I was baking as a kid I used to cream butter and sugar by hand with a wooden spoon, so my stand mixer feels like a miracle every time I use it. Even more than my stand mixer though (which is a Kenwood Chef), I love a paddle for it I bought subsequently with rubber fins which scrape the butter off the sides of the bowl perfectly. I used to find it mega annoying having to scrape the bowl down with a spatula all the time, so this is a total game changer. I also love toaster ovens for quick heating, and they're also amazing for baking bread. I have tons of fancy apparatus for baking bread in the big oven, like an incredibly heavy baking stone and a baking peel, but because the elements in a toaster oven are so close to the bread they make all that unnecessary.