If you’re an occasional baker, it’s not only motivation, time and a killer recipe standing between you and the perfect cake.
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it → ’re → you
It might also be stale staples lying in wait to sabotage your sponge, kibosh your kougelhopf and flatten your financiers.
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It → lie → financiers
We checked in with expert baker Alice Bennett from Miss Trixie Drinks Tea to find out which ingredients need to go.
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ingredients → check → Tea
“Baking powder definitely loses its oomph,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → lose → oomph
Keeping your powder dry is key to maintaining tip-top condition.
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Keeping → keep → condition
“Always keep it in an airtight container in a cool, dry place but if it’s been open for a year, replace it, regardless of the use-by date.”
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it → keep → date
If it fizzes ferociously, it’s still good.
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it → fizz → ?
“If flour smells stale, musty or dusty, you don’t want to use it,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → smell → it
She cautions against topping up storage canisters before the last of the existing flour is used.
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last → caution → flour
It’s better than hiding old flour at the bottom of a jar.”
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It → ’ → jar
Because self-raising flour contains baking powder, it can deteriorate more quickly.
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it → raise → powder
Vanilla extract, essence and paste
Because of their alcohol content, vanilla preparations keep well.
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preparations → keep → content
“The problem can more be that the tube or tub gets sticky or claggy,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → get → ?
“It doesn’t affect the end product, but it can make it less pleasant to use.
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it → affect → product
Make sure you clean the nozzle or rim after each use and make sure it’s properly sealed when stored.”
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it → make → use
“Keep it in the fridge and use it as fast as you can,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → keep → it
“In most recipes, you mix yeast with lukewarm water.
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you → mix → water
It should start to go a bit foamy and then become cloudy.
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It → start → ?
If it doesn’t, your yeast is dead.
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yeast → do → ?
If you’re an infrequent baker, your nice, soft brown sugar may turn out to be neither nice nor soft at all.
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sugar → ’re → ?
If it’s not been kept in an airtight container, it may indeed have dried into a hard, craggy lump.
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it → keep → lump
You can reintroduce moisture by bagging sugar up with a slice of bread, but Bennett prefers to use the hard sugar for a recipe that requires heating, thereby melting the lumps.
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that → reintroduce → lumps
“I would see it as an opportunity to make caramel, butterscotch, mud cake, rum sauce, or sticky toffee sauce,” she says.
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she → see → caramel
“If you’re making one of them, hard sugar is no issue.”
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sugar → make → them
If butter smells sour or rancid, it’s gone bad.
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it → smell → ?
“I’d be saying goodbye to it in that case,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → say → case
If you’ve bought discounted butter that’s about to expire, you can freeze it.
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you → buy → it
“But use that butter for melting, rather than thawing it and using it to cream with sugar,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → use → sugar
“You’ll know when an egg is off because it will absolutely stink,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → know → ?
The safest way to use eggs is to crack each one in a small bowl to check it’s good, then add them to a larger bowl one by one.
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it → use → one
“Fresh spices like ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon should be quite pungent, almost so they make you sneeze,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → make → ginger
“If they don’t, they are probably a bit flat.”
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they → do → ?
In most cases, that just means using more.
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that → mean → more
“You can also add a pinch of salt, because that will enhance the spice flavour.”
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that → add → flavour
If the spice is a main focus of a recipe – such as with a ginger cookie – it’s worth buying it fresh especially, but if it’s just a pinch of spice in a cake, a sub-par sprinkle will not cause a cake fail.
Chocolate
“The biggest risk to chocolate is heat,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → ’ → chocolate
“It gets that awful white colour and tastes like chalk.”
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It → get → chalk
There’s not much you can do about heat-damaged chocolate, except go to the shops for fresh supplies.
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you → ’ → supplies
It’s best to buy fresh in small quantities and use quickly, especially for recipes in which nuts are a major ingredient, such as carrot or hummingbird cakes.
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nuts → ’ → cakes
“You can certainly tell when they taste old, dusty and lose their crunch,” says Bennett.
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Bennett → tell → crunch
“You can keep it at room temperature, it doesn’t go off, and it rarely splits a mixture,” she says.
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she → keep → mixture
…and 1 more, not listed.
The Aporia
