De-Clutter Your Cooking Space

NEVER bake or cook in a cluttered space, and prepare one recipe at a time.

Clutter is the road to disaster in cooking!

Laying out ingredients for a second cake, while working on the first recipe, usually ruins both. I speak from great and recent experience.

I was baking with my granddaughters, and it was joyous. I thought I would multi-task and set up the ingredients for the second cake while creaming the sugar and butter for the first... to be really organized.

Recipe #1 called for 2 eggs, Recipe # 2 called for 8. Of course, being distracted with the kiddies, I added the 8 eggs into the mixing bowl with the ingredients for the 2 egg recipe. There was no salvaging that batch of cookie dough.

Here's what I KNOW you need to do when preparing to bake.

1. Read the recipe from top to bottom first. Make sure you have all the ingredients and don't have to stop in the middle and run to the store, call a neighbor, etc.

(An organized pantry helps in being prepared...ahem). If you've spontaneously decided to bake, this is extremely important.

2. Make sure you take the right ingredients. One of my dearest friends, a phenomenal baker, grabbed the salted butter instead of the unsalted, and totally ruined her Chocolate Silk Pie, which she had brought to a friend's celebration party. Big Oooops.

3. Be careful with the baking soda vs baking powder mix up.

4. Get out your measuring utensils, no approximating allowed. Cooking has room for interpretation but baking is like chemistry. Follow directions explicitly.

5. Measure carefully and set out all the dry ingredients. (If you can combine dry ingredients, do so in advance. but check to see that you don't have to sift the flour first and then add the rest or sift them all together, or not sift at all.

6. Don't multi-task while finishing adding the rest of the ingredients. You just may leave something out.

7. Make sure you are within hearing distance of the timer once you put the cake in the oven! (Sounds like a basic concept, but I can assure you, it's so obvious that we can overlook it and burn the cake).

Contact me! I will help you organize your cooking space, your pantry and your kitchen so you can successfully serve up great food with pride, not pressure.