Baking is a part of many peoples lives throughout the world, a day to day practice and ritualistic activity for some. Those of us that do bake, even the masters among us, know how time consuming it is when doing everything from scratch. As many of us know, juggling a work life balance can be tricky, especially when baking is a passion and something we wish we could do more of. It’s really important for mental wellbeing and physical wellness to carve time out for things we enjoy, but we know that’s not always possible alongside everything else in life. Of course, there are ways to work around this.
Time constraints- young kids, busy work life, social plans/dinners when going to buy something takes too much time or is too expensive.
We all know the kind of things that hold us back from venturing into the kitchen and trying to bake. There are so many things in life that can take up all of our time, like having young children, or a busy and stressful job. For instance we’ve all been in the situation of having friends over for lunch or dinner and we haven’t had the time to make a sweet treat for after the meal and ended up with some dry store bought cake from the local corner shop.
One way to make sure you still get to do some baking even with these pressing time constraints is to use pre mixed ingredient pouches like ours, to ensure stress free and speedy bakes. Keeping them in stock in your kitchen means you’re sure to be able to make a fantastic sweet treat in no time with minimal effort. The thing about our pre-mixed ingredient pouches is that all the dry ingredients you need are pre weighed and mixed, to give you less time in the kitchen making and more time enjoying what you’ve made. All of this convenience but unlike other store bought cake mixes, you don’t have to compromise on flavour, and French authentic baking. One other benefit of keeping our ingredient pouches in your kitchen is the fact they have a long shelf life and require literally zero planning; all you need to add for the perfect bake are kitchen staples you’ve probably already got, just add eggs and butter.
Here are some top tips on how to make the best out of our bakes from our head baker:
Try levelling up your making and baking with brown butter (also known as Beurre Noisette). It's worth having in every kitchen and is one of our favourite ingredients that’s always in the fridge at The Powder Patisserie. It adds depth of flavour to your bakes with a nutty, toasted flavour and aroma. You can prepare it in batches in advance and store it in a jar in the fridge. It’s not just great for sweet bakes, it’s also good for savoury dishes; it's a very versatile ingredient that can enhance every dish you cook with a heavenly taste. Making it is very simple. You can check out our brown butter tutorial on our Instagram.
Always grease your metal mould before baking; this prevents the batter from sticking to the pan. If you are using silicon mould (like the one in our Baking Starter Kit), then you don’t need to grease it with butter. Get your silicone mould from us here
Always start with room-temperature ingredients for baking, unless stated otherwise in the recipe. This helps your batter blend beautifully and results in a smooth, shining texture. Ingredients used straight from the fridge can cause your batter to become a curdled and lumpy mess.
Financiers and Madeleines are versatile cakes; our pre-mixed ingredient pouches are amazingly reliable, you always get a winning bake, but those of us wishing to level our bakes up might want to top them with seasonal berries or stone fruits. Our personal favourite things to use as toppings are chocolate chips, jams or chopped nuts. All of them help take your bake to the next level with minimal effort.
Only fill your cake batter about 90% of the way in your mould, leaving room for it to rise. We’ve all done it before, been too generous, and put too much batter in the mould, leading to overflowing cakes in the oven. Disaster, but easily avoided.
When baking Madeleines, always put your already mixed batter in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour (or even better, overnight). The shock of the cold batter in a hot oven is what creates the signature bump on our cakes.
In short, we’re committed to giving you a super easy and convenient way to bake, with minimal forethought and planning. This is the whole reason we started The Powder Patisserie, to bring convenience and beautiful French techniques and baking to our customers’ everyday lives. Providing premium cake mixes to people so no one has to go without amazing baked goods.
