Baking Rules

Poggie123

I've just been baking a cake for my Dad's birthday tomorrow and it got me thinking.....

When I was at school in the 80's and 90's we made the usual rock cakes and scone based pizza etc but were never really 'taught' how to cook, just how to follow a recipe :rolleyes: so i'm not very confident with the 'make it up as you go along' sort of thing or adapting existing recipes iyswim??

I was wondering if anyone has any 'rules' for this sort of thing - like the 'half fat to flour' type rule for pastry? Someone had posted on a previous thread about weighing eggs for recipes which makes so much sense when you think about it, why didn't they teach me this sort of stuff??

Anyway - enough rambling - any ideas anyone??

spaghetti_monster

I read somewhere that a basic sponge cake is 4oz each of sugar, flour and butter plus 2 eggs, or 6oz of each then 3 eggs, then possibly add a bit of milk to get it to the right consistency.

I think that you can replace flour amounts with cocoa powder for a choc sponge. And add lemon/orange zest, vanilla, fruit toppings for variety.

Never heard of weighing eggs...... Although I usually stick pretty much to baking recipes, I think you can improvise a little. If I don't have quite enough sugar/flour/butter or the eggs are smallish, not large - it still all seems to come out tasting fine!

Gingernutmeg

Ummm .. meringues - 2oz (50g sugar) to one egg white (that's handy because I freeze egg whites in bags when I have spare so I can just grab as many as I want to make whatever size meringue I need). And I'm the same as Alexw - if I just want a basic sponge then it's 2oz of everything to one egg, handy when you want to whip something up quickly and you've got an odd number of eggs. I think that the weighing egg idea is similar ... like the old pound cake when it was made up of a 'pound' of ingredients, consisting of 1/4lb each of fat, sugar, eggs and flour.

lucasmum

My mum always taught me to weigh the eggs when making a victoria sponge. Generally eggs are 2 oz but sometimes you get big or little ones. So you would weigh the eggs you want to use, then use the same amount of flour sugar and marg. Really easy and never goes wrong. So for 4 eggs you might end up with 8oz but more often than not its 9oz. Hth

katiecoodle

regarding cakes: I'm a firm believer in baking powder to help it rise, just one tsp should do it.
I'd like to know of any good jam rules/recipe's which don't use ridiculous amounts of sugar if anyone has one?

exlibris

When I was at school (50s) we were taught general proportions for dishes. The only one I can remember is for short crust pastry. I think ther were others for victria sponge etc

1/3 to 1.2 weight fat to flour
1tsp salt to pound of flour
water to mix.

I have had a quick google and found general proportions on the WI page but it did not take you to them.

I will keep looking but maybe someone else knows where to look.

Lyndsay_21

one of my rules is always keep eggs for baking at room temp as it stops the mix curdling when you add then and gives you a lighter cake

Poggie123

Thanks everyone :T :T :T

I'll stick these in the front of my recipe folder

Toonie

I always weigh my eggs and work from there as I don't always manage to buy the same sized eggs. Also, most of my recipe books use medium eggs and I buy large eggs sometimes.

When making crumble I tend to substitute part of the flour for oats to give a different texture and use less sugar, for instance the recipe I use at the moment is
1 tin of pears sliced (without juice)
Handful of mixed frozen berries
75g margarine/butter
125g self raising flour
25g oats
50g sugar

Rub fat into flour, until you have breadcrumbs, stir in 30g sugar and the oats. Put fruit in a dish and put mixture on top, sprinkling with sugar. 190 for 25 minutes normally does it well.

I think i inherited my cooking skills, as my mum cooks, and Grandma and Great Aunties all were cooks and incredible bakers, so I think its in the blood.