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Guest Post: Baking & Recipe Changes – What Not to Do

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This wonderfully helpful guest post comes from a new contributor of ours, Janet Foster. She’s the creator of Music City Foodie, a blog documenting the adventures from her little kitchen in Nashville, TN. Learn more about Janet at the end of the post. —

There are a handful of recipe sites that I peruse periodically to get inspiration when I want a sweet treat. I particularly enjoy sites that allow readers to leave comments and rate recipes. When someone leaves a bad review for a recipe with a list of 4 or 5 changes, I always cringe. Many bakers don’t realize there is a lot of chemistry happening when baking cakes, cookies, and breads. Seemingly small changes to a recipe can drastically change the end result.

Here are five recipe changes to beware of when baking:

1. Reducing the amount of sugar Sugar helps cakes and cookies retain moisture during baking. Reducing the amount of sugar in a batter not only reduces the sweetness but it can cause your baked good to be dry.

2. Changing the type of flour all flours are definitely not created equally. Different types of flours contain different amounts of protein, which determine the texture and crumb of your baked goods. Low protein flours like cake and pastry flour produce very different results than high protein flour like bread flour.

3. Reducing the amount of fat – Fat acts as a tenderizer when baking. Drastically reducing the amount of fat can make your baked goods tough.

4. Using a different size pan Changing the size of pan that a recipe indicates increases or reduces the amount of surface area directly exposed to the heat. Increasing the surface area causes the food to cook faster. Decreasing the surface area causes food to cook slower. You can end up with an over cooked cake or a cake that isn’t done in the middle.

5. Changing the cooking time or oven temperature You can easily overcook or under-cook something by varying the published time or temp by a few minutes or degrees. The exception to this is if you know that your oven isn’t properly calibrated, you may have to adjust to compensate.

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By day, Janet works full time for a healthcare technology company. At night, she’s an avid cook, blogger, and photographer. She’s a self taught cook that has catered events as small as 25 people and as large as 700 people. Many of her culinary insights come from 30 years of experience and lots of trial and error. Music City Foodie is the journal of her culinary explorations as well as her life in Nashville, TN.

Learn even more about Janet on our Featured Foodies section at RecipeLion.

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