Baking Techniques

You can make a rich dark chocolate icing by mixing your cocoa with some boiling water to make a paste. You then add this to the cake mix or icing like. Cocoa paste gets added to the marge of the icing once it has been beaten before adding icing sugar. If you are making a … Read more

Glace icing usually goes further when you mix a little Stork Bake (melted) and boiling water with icing sugar to make a pourable icing.

To melt chocolate you can use a double boiler over the stove top or just melt it slowly in a clean stainless steel pot. A few pointers when melting chocolate, is to ensure that you use a clean dry container for the melting as well as a metal spoon.

Cadbury’s and Beacon are quite good and reasonably priced. You could also find some really great tasting chocolate at your local baking shops that you might want to save for special occasions.

To make Fondant you need to mivx 1 1/2 tablespoons liquid glucose with 1 egg white. Add enough icing sugar to make a pliable but not sticky mixture. When rolling or shaping animals, use white holsum (just enough to lightly coat your hands). When smoothing on the cake, use corn flour.

Rusks will be crumbly if the liquid, fat, flour ratio is incorrect or if the mixture is too dry.

Yes, you can use marzipan on any cake, sponge, carrot or fruit.

Yes, it is advisable to spray a silicone baking mould with spray and cook.

350F is 180ºC.

Bread will stay softer on the crust if you have some moisture in the oven. You can do this by placing a bowl of hot water in the oven below the bread. Alternatively you can cover it with a damp cloth when it comes out of the oven so that it does not dry out … Read more

It is important when melting chocolate to not let it get too hot. When melting chocolate in the microwave, be sure to stir every 10 seconds. It is possible to add oil to chocolate (15ml oil to 180g melted chocolate), however it will not be suitable for dipping after this but can be used for … Read more

A cake rising too high in the middle is mostly caused by there being too much air in the mixture. Dropping your cake/cupcake tin when you have poured in the batter should help with getting more even rising from your cake. A short drop of 3-5cm onto the table should do the trick.