Five confectionery tips to follow

Do you still remember the first time you made a cake or a simpler dessert? Until recently, I was convinced that a roulade was one of the easiest desserts to make. The kind of dessert that you make on the spur of the moment when you have unannounced visitors. "We make the dough, bake it, make the filling and spread it on, roll it up and that''s it." I now know, and I can say with certainty, that this is not an appropriate dessert to make when you have unannounced visitors.

Or making a cake. If you have the right baking tray and BAM baking products, half the job is already done. Add to that a BAM recipe book and the story is complete with a signature success. A little bit of banter and "direct selling" aside. The cake is challenging to make, the sponge is never fluffy and has no straight lines. And all that gelatine that needs to be dissolved never dissolves right, the cream flows... All this is happening. And it''s right that it does. Because that''s how we learn to handle basic baking ingredients like eggs, flour, gelatine, butter, etc. And if we read a pastry trick or two beforehand, success is guaranteed. Maybe not the first time, but the next time.

1. The butter should always be the right texture.

Butter is often the base for many bakery products, so it is important to take into account the texture of the butter as dictated by the recipe. The temperature of the butter can have a huge impact on the texture of the dough. There are three different butter textures that are usually called for in baking recipes: softened/room temperature, cold or melted butter.

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Most recipes that call for butter call for room temperature/softened butter. Room temperature butter is actually cool to the touch, but not warm. When you press it in, your finger will sink in slightly and you will see your fingerprint in the butter. For the perfect consistency and temperature, leave the butter on the counter for about 1 hour before starting to prepare the recipe.

Chilled butter is butter that has been well chilled in the fridge or freezer so that it does not melt during mixing. This helps to create the perfect dough structure that recipes for pies, muffins and biscuits require.

Unless otherwise stated, melted butter should be liquefied and lukewarm. If melted butter is too hot, it can cook the eggs in your batter.

2. Read the recipe all the way through before preparing?

Do you think it is silly that in the second place of pastry tips, there is a tip about reading the recipe all the way through before preparing it? Well, it is not nonsense. Maybe we should have put this advice first, because it has happened many times (including to me, of course) that I thought I knew all the steps and that the preparation would go like clockwork. But then I am surprised by the measured amount of oil that should have gone into the sponge cake mixture, which is already browning beautifully in the oven. This happens most often with desserts I''ve made before. I do sometimes get a step or two too far ahead, but this school of mistakes has cost me so much that in most cases I read the recipe all the way through and only then do I start to prepare it.

3. Pre-prepared ingredients.

I link the next pastry tip to the previous one: before you start preparing a dessert, measure out and prepare the ingredients called for in the recipe. But again, read the ingredients first, then place them, measured out, on the counter. I usually put them in order and dose them that way. That way there is really little room for error. An additional point: if possible, avoid swapping ingredients. Stick to the ingredients as the recipe dictates. In some cases, substitutes are written next to the ingredients, but if they are not there, do not substitute them '' on your own''. Remember, baking is chemistry. However, if you do want to substitute ingredients, I still suggest that you first prepare the recipe following the exact steps and ingredients written down, and then substitute as you see fit.

4. Keep the oven door closed.

Another obvious tip, no? I thought so too. But I have often found myself opening the oven door to see the sponge cake baking. Because I couldn''t see it very well through the transparent glass door of the oven. Just as too high a temperature can over-bake the dough, you can imagine how much opening the door often can lower the oven temperature. As tempting as it is to open the oven and enjoy the smell of baking sponge cake, it also brings in cold air along with our inquisitive noses, making sure that the dough doesn''t rise as nicely. Let''s just rely on the lighting in your oven.

5. One last cookie trick.

To keep the cookies soft after baking, store them with a piece of bread. Have you heard of this? If you store your cookies in a cookie jar or a cookie jar, put one plain piece of bread in the jar or cookie jar. The biscuits will absorb all the moisture in the bread, making the bread hard and the biscuits extra soft.