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The dessert topic is so broad! We have an abundance of dessert types; cakes, cupcakes, donuts, pastries, cookies, and the list goes on and on. Plus, the baking techniques vary as well! So we’ve created a beginner’s guide to baking desserts, where we’ll discuss some key concepts and baking principles that will help get you started 😊
When you’re getting ready to bake and have a recipe in mind to use, it’s important to review the entire recipe before you begin. This way, there are no surprises and delays. For example, you might need room-temperature butter or egg whites separated from yolks. Moreover, you may have to combine some ingredients prior.
Once you’ve read through the recipe and have all ingredients needed, measure all of your ingredients before starting the recipe. This is called “mise en place”; which means “put in place” in French.
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Having your mise en place helps to keep your baking ingredients organized, then following the recipe will be a breeze! With the ingredients prepared ahead of time, you can avoid overmixing the ingredients as well while your stand mixer is running. Or if you don’t have a stand mixer and use a power hand mixer, you don’t get flustered with getting the next ingredient.
It’s imperative to be cautious when handling food in general, you want to avoid cross-contamination and exposure to bacteria. Food preparation areas and equipment should be clean and sanitized. Here are some useful food-handling tips that are good to follow!
Wash and dry any fresh fruits thoroughly – fruits should be dried fully if you’re using them as decoration for a dessert. This will prevent water from getting on the baked dessert, and mold from developing.
This YouTube video from Super Geek Show provides a full tutorial on how to prepare and make chocolate-covered strawberries. She washes the strawberries in a “bath” of 1 gallon of water with 4 ounces of vinegar.
As we all know now (thanks to covid), you should wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water, but you should also avoid using your hands to handle food as much as possible. Instead, use food-safe gloves, utensils, tongs, spatulas, etc.
If you’re preparing ingredients ahead of time, keep them covered if you’re not using them right away (you don’t want them to be contaminated by any foreign air particles! ew!).
Last but not least, clean as you go! Keep your work area as clean as possible and avoid stuck on foods (like raw eggs 😐). Use these tips and protect your friends, family, and clients from harmful bacteria 🙂
This was something I learned when I went took the Baking Pre-Employment program at George Brown College in Toronto. It seemed so odd at the time, but all of the recipes…err…formulas we used were in grams and milliliters, not cups and teaspoons!
We used a food scale for our formulas, and we often had to use a mathematical equation to increase or decrease the yield.
To put it simply, in a formula, the flour is always 100%. And each ingredient is a percentage based on the flour. So if the flour is 200g and the sugar is 100g, then the sugar is 50% in the formula.
All formulas have a total yield in grams, and this total yield is what is multiplied when converting a recipe. You would use this calculation: new yield ÷ old yield = conversion factor.
SO! Let’s say the total yield is 2000g, and you only want to make 600g of the formula. You would divide 600 by 2000, which gives you 0.3 (this is your conversion factor). You would multiply each ingredient by 0.3 to get your new measurements.
Increasing the recipe? Want 3000g? Divide 3000 by 2000 to get 1.5 as your conversion factor.
Now, don’t be alarmed! Most of the recipes you’ll find online and in books will come in cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons. But do you ever notice that when you try to increase or decrease a recipe, it doesn’t ALWAYS turn out exactly like the original? This is why.
Measuring your ingredients is always going to be more accurate with a food scale. Try measuring a cup of flour in one measuring cup, then use another type – one might have more flour. Not all measuring cups are the same, but 100g is 100g no matter what!
But to be as accurate as you can without a scale, use stainless steel measuring cups instead of plastic ones 🙂
Okay, let’s get to the yummy stuff! While there are dozens upon dozens of different types of desserts, let’s cover a few options that use different baking techniques.
First off! Donuts! Or doughnuts? However you spell it, they’re delicious either way! You can have a yeast-raised donut or a cake-type donut.
Yeast-Raised Donuts
As you can probably guess, in a yeast-raised donut, yeast is used to leaven the donut dough. This process is called fermentation. In simple terms, fermentation happens when gas is released as a result of the yeast transforming the sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol.
Proofing involves fermentation at a higher temperature, creating a higher dough volume. Gemma at Bigger Bolder Baking has a great No-Knead Donut Recipe, which you can bake or fry! She demonstrates how the proofing process can work at home, without a proofer 🙂
Cake-Type Donuts
Making cake-type donuts is a much simpler process. They do not contain any yeast and the batter can be directly dropped into a hot frying pan or deep fryer.
Another cake-type donut can be piped into a donut pan or donut silicone mold and then baked. We have an easy cake-type donut recipe in our post: Oven-Baked Donuts – Yay or Nay?
Check out our reel below demonstrating piping and decorating donuts!
Yes, there’s a difference between a pie and a tart! A tart isn’t just a pie with no crust. While tarts and pies are very similar, tarts are shallow and have less filling than a pie, so the flavor of a tart crust is important!
Tarts
There are unbaked tarts and baked tarts. The difference between them is when the filling is added.
For unbaked tarts, the tart shell is pre-baked, then the filling is added afterward. For example, a pastry cream, fresh fruit, and a shiny glaze are assembled inside the baked tart shell, but no further baking is required.
On the other hand, baked tarts include the tart shell and filling being baked at the same time. So I guess it’s more like a warm pie in this sense! Still not a pie though haha!
Pies
In the same fashion as tarts, there are baked pies and unbaked pies. And the difference is the same! Unbaked pies have a pre-baked shell, and baked pies have the shell and filling baked simultaneously. Tarts and pies are still not the same things, I swear!
You can have a lot of fun with the top crust of a pie, you can have a completely covered top, or make a lattice design. You can even use cookie cutters and create unique designs from the pie dough.
When making pie dough, you have to think about making an appropriate type of dough that’s most suited for the filling. A mealy pie dough (where the fat is well blended into the flour) works best for the bottom crust of fruit pies and custards, as it’s less likely to absorb the moisture from the filling. A flakier pie dough (where the fat isn’t blended as much and the texture is more coarse) works better as a top crust (or a pre-baked shell).
There are 3 key types of pastry dough that are suited for tarts: pâtebrisée, pâte sucrée, and pâte sablé. Pastry dough mostly includes butter (instead of shortening, like in some pie doughs), since tart shells are thinner than pies and have less filling.
Type of Pastry Dough
Pâtebrisée is similar to a mealy pie dough, where the fat is blended into the flour to produce a sandy texture. Pate sucre has a higher sugar content, making the dough more tender and fragile. And pâte sablé contains more fat and less egg, making it even more tender than pâte sucrée.
Puff Pastry
Puff pastry dough doesn’t contain any rising agents (like yeast) and involves incorporating and folding butter into the dough. The dough and butter are folded over and over, and this creates multiple layers of fat (butter) and dough – creating many layers of puff pastry once baked! I think it’s a pretty cool concept!
Like the abundant variety of delicious cookies out there, there are different methods of mixing and making cookies! These methods include one-stage, creaming, sanding, sponge, bagged, dropped, rolled, molded, icebox, bar, sheet, and stencil. That’s a whole lot, right?! So let’s cover them briefly 🙂
Mixing Cookies
The 4 main methods of mixing are one-stage, creaming, sanding, and sponge. To put it simply: one-stage mixes all of the ingredients in one stage, creaming begins with creaming the fat, sanding involves mixing the flour with the fat until a sandy texture is achieved, and sponge requires whipping eggs to the appropriate peak.
Cookie Makeup Methods
Makeup cookie methods are: bagged, dropped, rolled, molded, icebox, bar, sheet, and stencil.
Bagged and dropped cookies are very similar and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Both are used with soft cookie dough. Bagged cookies, like french macarons, use a pastry bag to pipe onto a cookie sheet, while dropped cookies require a spoon or scoop.
Rolled cookies, like sugar cookies, involve chilled cookie dough that is rolled out and cut into various shapes with cookie cutters.
The molded method might be the most common for home bakers. This is when you mold the cookie dough into shape, usually by hand.
The icebox method is perfect if you want to have freshly baked cookies readily available. These cookies can be rolled and stored in the fridge, then sliced when ready to bake.
Cookies made with the bar method are baked in strips, then cut into bars. A popular type of cookie that uses the bar method is biscotti!
Sheet cookies are normally spread evenly onto a sheet pan. The best example of sheet cookies is brownies! But wait, are brownies cookies?!?!
The last cookie makeup method is the stencil. This involves a soft cookie that is thinly spread into shape using a stencil. Popular stencil cookies are almond tuiles; these cookies use a round stencil and are immediately placed over a rolling pin to hold their round shape.
Now, which dessert will you bake first??
There are so many types of desserts, flavors, techniques, and fillings! The possibilities are endless. And we’re just getting started! We hope you learned some basic dessert techniques and concepts that will help get you started! For more detailed information, check out Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen – it’s where we got the majority of the information above. It’s like the baking bible!
Happy baking!
Mich
