12 baking hacks the professionals swear by

When the pandemic took hold of the world in early 2020, many turned to bread baking to ease the anxiety. Unfortunately, not everyone had the skills to back it up.

If your attempts at sourdough looked more like dry pizza bases than risen loaves, take note of the following expert-approved baking hacks.

From cheating your way to room temperature eggs to the latest oven features, these are the secret tips bakers swear by, and the equipment they can’t live without.

1. Bake cakes ahead of time

If you’ve ever woken up at crack of dawn to make a last-minute birthday cake, this hack will come as a relief. Instead of same-day baking, many bakers recommend cooking ahead.

“I always bake my cake two to three days before the hand-over day,” says Decarawsweets custom cake baker Cassandra Seow. “Cover it in cling wrap and aluminium foil, then rest it in the fridge. This allows the cake to settle and the flavours to come together.”

2. Wrap cakes when they’re 70 per cent cool

If you’re baking a cake ahead of time (as suggested above), wrap it up and place it in the fridge after it cools down considerably, but not completely. “The remaining heat, when trapped inside the cling wrap and chilled, will allow for a moist cake,” Seow says. 

3. Cheat your way to room-temperature eggs

Baking with room-temperature eggs is essential, but if you’ve forgotten to remove yours from the fridge at least two hours before using them, you can fake it with a simple hack. “The fastest way to allow eggs to come to room temperature is to combine 50:50 boiling water and room temperature water, then pop the eggs in,” Seow explains. “Let them sit for five to 10 minutes.”

4. Avoid opening the oven

Unnecessarily opening the oven is one of the most common baking mistakes made.

The NeffLight oven lighting was specifically designed to avoid this, by brightly illuminating every corner of the oven to ensure food is always visible while baking.

“It’s a unique lighting system that uses a prism located in the oven door, compared to other ovens where the light is mostly coming from the top of the cavity,” says Christine Haas, NEFF product manager. “It distributes the light evenly for a perfect view – even of a cookie in the very back corner.”

When it is finally time to open the oven door, NEFF’s unique Slide&Hide feature allows it to fully retract under the cavity, so you can inspect your baking without obstruction.

“You can get really close to the baking environment, so it makes it really easy to taste and monitor food,” Haas says.

5. Use chopped chocolate over chocolate chips

Substituting ingredients isn’t usually recommended in baking, but one change you can make is switching chocolate chips for a roughly chopped bar of chocolate in biscuits. “It gives extra flavour and makes it super chocolatey,” Seow says.

6. Stabilise whipped cream for lasting shape

Voluminous, stiff whipped cream peaks require stabilisation, which can be achieved with a gelatin mixture. “Just add gelatin mixture (gelatin powder and cold water) when whipping.” Seow says. 

7. Use a mixer

Not creaming your butter and sugar enough is a common baking mistake. To avoid this, use an electronic mixer as the recipe often suggests. “Make sure the creamed product looks like softened butter or cream you eat off a cake,” Seow advises. “No mixer? It will definitely be an arm workout for you!”  

8. Use your oven’s specialist settings

Quality, modern ovens come with specialist features for achieving premium results at home. The Dough Prove and Bread Baking setting on NEFF steam ovens, for example, provide a warm environment perfect for proving yeast dough and achieving a textured, crunchy bread.

9. Create clean icing edges using the fridge

For so-perfect-it-looks-fake cake icing, follow the advice of Nikki Estrada, director of The Sweet Event Cupcakes.

“After initially icing your cake, leave the top edges unsmoothed and place in the fridge for no longer than five minutes (use a timer),” she says. “If you leave it for any longer, the buttercream will go too hard and create cracks when you later try to smooth off the edges.”

After five minutes, take it out and use a sharp knife to cut away the excess buttercream while rotating the cake on a cake spinner. Finish it off with a cake scraper. 

10. Stop fruit pieces sinking

To avoid fruit pieces sinking to the bottom of your muffin batter, Estrada advises gently flouring them first.

11. Evenly distribute batter with an ice cream scoop

Use an ice cream scoop to evenly distribute batter into muffin liners. The scoop will ensure you’re using collecting the same amount of batter every time, while the trigger release will help eliminate mess.

12. Set the right temperature

Setting the correct oven temperature is essential when baking. NEFF ovens are not only equipped with quality parts to ensure this is maintained, the CircoTherm feature facilitates simultaneous, even cooking on multiple levels without transferring flavour.

Experimenting and not sure what oven temperature to set? NEFF ovens also have a Baking and Roasting Assistant that recommends the ideal heating mode, temperature and time for your baked goods.