  It's worth taking the extra few minutes to ensure your ingredients are the right temperature; otherwise, you could end up with an inferior product. (Shutterstock.com) |
Even the most experienced baker can flub a step or two in the kitchen. Watch out for these common mistakes for the sweetest desserts possible.
1. Using out of date or stale ingredients: Yes, even flour, baking powder and oat bran can go off. Nuts, dried fruit, and even chocolate have a shelf life, and if you can't remember when you bought them, or they smell anything other than sweet, chuck 'em.
2. Using poor quality ingredients: No matter how mad your baking skills, if you're using cheap, waxy chocolate, you're going to end up with a poor end product.
In baking, a little goes a long way, and it's usually for a special occasion anyway, so buy the best you can afford, and use it well. Biggest trade secret in the book.
3. Substituting ingredients without understanding what role they play in the overall recipe: Every ingredient in a recipe performs at least one function. Once you start substituting, you risk putting out of balance the flavour, structure and texture of the finished dessert.
It can absolutely be done, but only by replacing one ingredient with another that does the same job. Sure, you can replace some of the butter in a muffin recipe with prune purée, but the resulting muffin won't be the same.
4. Baking out of season: Strawberry shortcakes are for SUMMER. Resist the urge to give in to that craving in January.
Instead, look to the wealth of tender dried fruits, fresh nuts, chocolate, apples, pears, cranberries, and even sweet vegetables like carrots and parsnips to be the focus of your winter baking. Save the shortcakes for when the pails of jewel-like berries from local farms flood the markets in June and July, and they'll taste all the sweeter for waiting.
5. Not reading the recipe all the way through before starting: Personally, I suck at reading recipes, so I'm careful to to it several times before even starting. Otherwise, I'm likely to completely skip a step or two, and end up with cups of nuts or sugar still on the counter when the cake is in the oven.
6. Working with your ingredients at the wrong temperature: In many cake and cookie recipes, butter and eggs ought to be at room temperature before beginning in order to achieve the optimum batter; similarly, for the best pastry, all ingredients should be very cold.
It's worth taking the extra few minutes to ensure the right temperature; otherwise, all else being equal, you'll have a noticeably inferior dessert.
7. Adapting a recipe to make it low fat: Once you start trying to make a certain recipe without a central component, like butter, or sugar, you've sabotaged the final product; it will be neither very special, nor truly satisfying.
Instead, make it authentically, using the best ingredients you can find, and celebrate the occasion. Most of us don't make desserts from scratch every day, or even every week. It's special, and it's rare. Instead of three low-fat chocolate bars every day, save your craving until the weekend, and make a gorgeous, decadent dessert. Savour it! One small piece of something divine goes a long way.
Regan Daley worked for several years as a pastry chef in some of Toronto's most prominent restaurants, including the celebrated Avalon (named by Gourmet magazine as one of the best in North America), where her elegant and original dessert creations, such as Valrhona Molten Chocolate Cakes, quickly become household words. She now conducts dessert and pastry-making seminars and is a contributing editor for President's Choice Magazine. She lives in Toronto with her husband and their two sons.
Learn more about Regan Daley and her cookbook, In the Sweet Kitchen, at http://sweetkitchen.regandaley.com.
