I love to bake. In my parent’s neighborhood, they call me the Cookie Lady. Every time I go out there I bake and bake and bake and then I go around the neighborhood with plates of cookies.
Great fun!
They live about 9 inches above sea level and I am at 8500 feet in the mountains, so it is particularly nice that what I bake down there actually turns out the way they are supposed to! Well, most of the time.
Cooking at altitude is an interesting experience – I still haven’t gotten used to all the little tricks and tweaks you need to make up here to be sure things will turn out well!
But you can run into issues with baking even at sea level…
One of my favorite reviews of baking mistakes was on thestir.cafemom.com recently. Don’t forget to read Adriana Velez’s readers comments too – they have some more mistakes listed there that I could identify with! Adriana mentions things like using the wrong-sized pan(s) and not reading the recipe all the way through (I’ve done both of those more than once, I’m sorry to say!)
Five other baking blunders that came to mind for me:
1. You know how they tell you to grease and flour the pans in some recipes? I like to spray mine with PAM, then I don’t get my hands all gooey. That works SOME of the time, but if you are baking a cake you are pretty likely to end up with chunks of your cake in the pan when you skip that step! If the recipe says grease and flour, do it – what is one more hand washing anyway?
2. A continuation of the first item – parchment paper. Martha always tells you to use parchment paper when you make cookies. You know what? She’s right, it really helps. Don’t you hate that?
3. Using old spices. I forget to look at those darned expiration dates! But if you use old spices rather than getting new, the flavor will just not be what you want. A week after expiration? Probably fine. 3 years after expiration? Not so much…
4. Putting more than one cookie sheet in the oven at the same time. I have tried swapping shelves halfway through so they would both turn out OK. They don’t. If you want them to turn out the best way possible, only bake one sheet at a time.
5. When baking cookies, don’t try to get done faster by placing the dough too close together on the baking sheet. You will end up with one big blob cookie. It might taste OK, but not really what you want to deliver to your Mom’s neighbors!
Oh – and one more. Remember to resist the urge to open the oven door early to see if everything is OK!
