Important Things To Know About Cooking And Baking

1. Practice mise en place (in French it means loosely, Everything In its Place.) Measure out and prepare your ingredients like cutting, mincing, blending...etc. Have them all ready before you begin cooking or baking. This will reduce the chance of accidentially leaving out an ingredient.

2. Use a digital scale to weigh your dry ingredients and liquids properly. This will ensure the outcome of a successful recipe.

3. Bring eggs, butter and milk (or buttermilk) to room temperature before attempting to bake a cake. Ensure the correct size container is used for the correct amount of batter in the recipe. Preheat your oven to the correct baking temperature and bake your cake for the required time.

4. Chill your cakes before applying frosting. It makes it so much easier to coat them with the frosting.

5. Always start cooking the meat which usually takes longer to get tender than the potatoes or carrots. Those vegetables can be added in later or cooked separately and added in during the last five minutes of cooking.

6. Sugar cookie dough, pie dough and puff pastry can be made in advance. This is then covered in baking parchment paper and then wrapped in cling plastic and kept in the freezer. Thaw the dough back to room temperature when need to use.

7. If you are having a celebration and have to cook a number of dishes, you might want to prepare the rempah and keep it in a plastic container in the fridge overnight. You can also cut and prepare your vegetables and keep them in plastic ziplock bags in the fridge until the next day. This will be less time consuming the next day and you will be able to complete many dishes in a short amount of time.