Monday, February 27, 2012

How to become a perfect Baker - Measuring Ingredients

Cake baking is not a difficult task. Most of us have the misconception that baking perfect cakes is very toilsome. But, it is not! You just have to make sure you have on the dot measurements and follow the procedure precisely. In this post we are going to aim attention at measuring ingredients.

I am currently a member at Keikos-Cakes and the first thing i learnt there was to perfect my measuring skills. Baking is a lot like science. In order to make perfect cakes, you should make sure you get the Chemistry right! When you are following a recipe and you are ready to scale out the ingredients, you should greatly focus on the amounts of each ingredient used in the recipe. The recipe you have in your hand, may have been obtained from a cook book or the net or any other source - which means it could have been originated from anywhere in the world.

As you know, several recipes use different ways to list their ingredients. Some recipes include units of weight - grams, ounces, and some recipes include units of volume - cups, liters. But i was taught it's best to use units of weight because as you know, 'volume' measures the amount of space occupied by and object, and different ingredients available in different parts of the world and of different brands will not be of the same size - flour, sugar, salt and all other dry ingredients can have different grain sizes and hence occupy more/less space and therefore they can weigh differently. So, if i list '1 cup of flour' in my recipe, it is for sure that my 1 cup of flour and your 1 cup of flour will not weigh the same because you could be using a different brand. Therefore, in the recipes that i post here, i will be listing all my ingredients in units of weight including EGGS!

Eggs come in different sizes in different countries. 



Egg size

Mass per egg


Canada
Europe
Australia
Jumbo
70g or more
-
68g
Extra large
63-69 g
73g and over
60g
Large
56-62 g
63-73 g
52g
Medium
49-55 g
53-63 g
-
Small
42-48 g
53g and under
-
Pee wee
Less than 41g
-
-

A large egg in my country (Sri Lanka) weighs 50g. Therefore, if i list '1 large egg' in my recipe, and if you are from Canada, you will be using an egg that weighs 56-62g or if you are from Europe, you will be using an egg that weighs 63-73g. Big difference isn't it? Quite bewildering too.
So to get your mind back to working clearly, always measure eggs in units of weight J In the video I show you how to measure 90g of egg.



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Alright then, you are all equipped to make the perfect cakes ever and blow away the minds of all those having it! Happy baking! J

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