My Holiday Baking Success Secrets

BBs, it’s time. The holidays are a home baker’s Super Bowl, and I am determined to have a small army of BwB community members who knock everyone’s proverbial socks off during this season. I want y’all to be undeniably successful with all of your holiday bakes this year, so I’ve put together my best tips and resources to ensure that you have crowning achievements on your holiday dessert tables!

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Practice. Practice. Practice

Friends. FRIENDS. Hear me on this one:

Please do not serve anything on a holiday table that you haven’t made before. And, by “made”, I mean that you’ve done the entire recipe, from start to finish, and you’ve tasted it! Please, please, please don’t serve anything to the aunties and grammies that you haven’t made at least once! (And, if you do and it flops, please keep my name out of it. 😂)

Essential techniques like “creaming butter and sugar until light and fluffy“, or achieving that perfect drip-worthy glaze for your pound cake, take practice to master. A trial run helps you iron out any challenges before the pressure of holiday baking begins. You get to have your proverbial (and literal) cake and eat it too! There’s literally no downside to practicing before the big day.

When you practice and test your recipes beforehand, you know what modifications (if any) or improvements in your techniques that you need to make before the final product hits the dessert table. (And guess what? If you taste it and want to modify, but don’t know how to modify, you can always email bakingbestie@beginwithbutter.com for help!)

Master Mise en Place

Mise en place, friend, is a beautiful, lyrical French phrase that simply means “everything in its place.” In baking (and cooking!) usage, it means that you have your ingredients prepped and ready to use. It’s a perfect way to ensure that you have all of the ingredients that you need before you start, and it’s an incredible technique to help you gain kitchen confidence.

For example, in my Pineapple Carrot Pound Cake, the ingredient list calls for for 250 grams (1 cup) of boiling water, and 218 grams (1 1/2 cups) of raisins. In the recipe instructions, however, it states that I have to place the raisins in the boiling water for a period of time, in order to plump up the raisins and prepare them to go into the cake. That’s mise en place, friends. The act of having ingredients at the ready to go into your recipe. Not the act of having your ingredients out on the counter, ready to be measured.

I am very passionate about mise en place, BB. So much so, that I wrote a whole blog post about it! Want to get a full understanding of how to properly prep your mise en place, bestie? Check out the post! (spoiler alert: proper mise en place starts with reading the recipe from start to finish, so that you can get an idea of how to prep your ingredients.)

Common mise en place steps:

• Combine dry ingredients and sift them into a large bowl
• Crack eggs into a separate container, to ensure that you don’t get egg shells in your final product
• Add fats (butter, oil, cream cheese, or even dulce de leche) to your mixing bowl
• Place sugar in a medium bowl, or in my favorite prep container of all time…the deli cup (I often add citrus zest or vanilla beans to the sugar as well)
• Place extracts in a small container (or a teeny jar) and set them aside (if using a vanilla bean, make sure to slice it down the middle very carefully, and scrape out the vanilla bean goodness!)

There are other steps that are recipe-specific, but these steps are a great place to start. Do this and you’re guaranteed to have a calm, confident bake instead of a frazzled, terrible one. And let’s be honest, with the holidays upon us, we need all the baking cheat codes right about now. 😂

Use Metric Measurement and a Digital Kitchen Scale

There are two general types of unit that are used in baking: volume (think: ounces and cups) and metric (think: grams and kilograms). I live in the United States, and volume measurement reigns supreme here. Those dry measuring cups get a workout in just about every home kitchen across this country.

BUT (you knew there was a “but”, BB!)

Baking is a game of inches, Friend. And, for that specific reason, the most accurate results will come from using the smallest units of measurement. And the smallest units of measurement are – you guessed it – metric units. When we use these tiniest of units of measurement, our bakes get more accurate and consistent. We eliminate the “great today, terrible tomorrow” bakes, and develop the skillset to reproduce the same excellent result over, and over, and over again.

I recommend using metric measurement because this one step improved my baking exponentially in one afternoon in 2014. It was actually right in that moment that I realized why I’d been such a miserable baker my whole life…I didn’t know how to measure ingredients to get a good result. 🤯 I’ve not gone back to volume measurement since.

For many pound cakes, we use 384 grams (3 cups 😩) of all-purpose flour, right? If we use metric units, we know that we will always come up with 384 grams (give or take 3-5 grams) of flour. With measuring cups, no matter the technique that we use (scoop and sweep, aerate, pray for a miracle and scoop, etc.), we will almost always add too much flour to our cake (and not just a little too much!). That is because every “cup” of flour that we measure has a different weight, and, left unchecked, we are naturally heavy-handed with ingredients. So, with volume measurement, we never truly know how much of an ingredient we’re adding to our recipes. This is a death knell for good bakes.

What to measure in metric units, and how to do it

The ingredients that I use metric measurement for are my flour, sugar, butter, liquid, and sometimes my eggs. You can continue to use teaspoons and tablespoons for things like salt, spices, leavening, and pure vanilla extract.

The how is easy. A lil’ $15.00 digital kitchen scale will set you right.

Want to Scale a Recipe? Use Your Scale

The holidays are a peak time for indulgent treats. To that end, that means that we need a lot of sweets during this time. What that means for many of us is that we need to scale a recipe up, in order to avoid having to make two, three, or four batches of the same thing.

To successfully scale a recipe, the most important thing to remember is to use a digital kitchen scale and metric measurement.

Want to go in-depth about how to scale a recipe? You’re my kind of baker! Check out this post for rules of thumb about scaling.

Why metric measurement + a digital scale is important for scaling recipes

When you scale a recipe, precision is key. Too little liquid and your cakes won’t reach their pillowy, rich best. Too much flour and your cookies will be a crumbly mess.

When you use volume measurement (think:cups), the likelihood of over- or under-measuring ingredients goes up exponentially. And, since baking is a game of precision, it’s critically important to accurately measure ingredients, whether you’re making one dozen cookies or five dozen.

Time is an Ingredient

Time to get philosophical, BB. And it’s also time for me to share something that my Mommy taught me in her kitchen.

Time is an ingredient.

You see, you wouldn’t approach a baking project without flour. Or sugar. Or eggs. If you did try to power through without any of those main ingredients, you know that you’d be setting yourself up for failure. So you know not to do something as silly as trying to make a cake without flour.

What if I told you that time is as important as any other ingredient? Without adequate time, you’re almost certainly setting yourself up for an unintended (read: bad) result from your bake. And you’re definitely certainly setting yourself up for an extremely anxious bake.

When you give yourself the gift of enough time to do a baking project, and you allow yourself to truly enjoy the process of the bake without unnecessary clock-watching, it’s a magical experience that can lead to the best outcomes.

So, read the recipe. Reverse engineer the timing of the recipe. Be honest with yourself about whether you have enough time. And then make a decision about whether to proceed. I guarantee that your friends and family would rather eat that store-bought something-or-other that you didn’t want to buy, rather than the raw-in-the-middle-burnt-on-the-outside pound cake that you didn’t truly have “time” to make.

Prep Ahead When You Can

Y’all, let me tell you something that took me way too long to learn: some of our favorite holiday treats actually taste better when made in advance! And I’m not just saying that to help you manage your time (though it definitely will).

Take my Sweet Potato Pie, for instance. Those warm spices and that rich filling? They need time to get to know each other, BB. Making it a day or two ahead lets all those flavors dance together like a senior prom slow dance in 1994. And my Perfect Sunday Dinner Rolls? You can make the dough ahead (reducing the yeast by half) and let it do its first rise in the fridge – it’s like letting them take a spa day before the big show. That “low and slow” rise time will only improve the final taste of your dinner rolls.

My Southern Rice Pudding? Chile, listen. That creamy comfort food actually develops deeper, richer flavors after it chills out in the fridge for a day. It’s like how Whitney Houston’s voice got even better with time – some things just need that extra moment to reach perfection.

Just remember to wrap everything properly (we’re not trying to serve Aunt Clara freezer-burned anything, or worse, serve her something that will make her stomach all topsy turvy), and make sure you know which treats can handle being made ahead and which ones need to be served a la minute. When in doubt, your baking bestie is just an email away!

Temperature is Also an Ingredient

Back to our Philosophy 201: the philosophy of baking course. 👓 BB, temperature is also an ingredient. There are a couple of things to note as you go forward with your bakes that can help you achieve baking zeniths that you never believed possible.

Make sure that cold ingredients reach room temperature before starting: This refers to your butter, eggs, and liquid (e.g. milk, cream cheese, sour cream, crushed pineapple, etc.). You need these ingredients to be room temperature in order to create a fully cohesive batter or dough. If they’re too cold, they might not ever fully combine and become the cohesive, silky, beautiful batter or dough that you’re envisioning. (Want to learn how to identify whether you’ve reached room temperature? This is an outstanding skill to learn and it will help your bakes tremendously! You can find more information in this blog post.)

Oven Temperature: This one is key, friend. Our ovens mean well, but they often lie to us. Some of them have devastating hot spots that burn everything that dares come their way. Or, some of them have spots that never. quite. get. to. the. right. temperature, no matter how hard we try. Most of them scoff at the set temperature of our oven. (Mine actually laughs when I set it to 325°F, because it knows that it won’t go a single solitary degree over 297.1°F. 😂) To avoid the headache of uneven baking, an oven thermometer is key.

Instant Read Thermometer: Friend, let me tell you, I’m not using toothpicks or skewers to test a thing. The way I’ve been let down by those little pieces of wood…😮‍💨. Instead, I use an instant-read thermometer to test the doneness of cakes. I use an instant-read thermometer to test the internal temperature of bread dough. I use an instant read thermometer to test the doneness of delicious cinnamon rolls. Internal testing, using my favorite ThermoWorks ThermoPop, has led to consistently amazing results. Because who among us wants to hold their breath and pray that there’s no river of unbaked cake batter when Aunt Clara cuts into our holiday cakes? The answer is…not me.

Honor Tradition, But Don’t be Afraid to be Different

This one hits home for me. You see, my Mommy was a prolific baker. The absolute best. She was so good, that if people knew that she was bringing dessert, they would often decline to do the same. She was humble about her gift, but she saw how much joy it brought to our friends and family.

And she shared every family recipe. She wrote them on 4″ x 6″ index cards in her meticulously beautiful handwriting, hoping that the recipe recipient would be able to replicate her special recipe. To this day, my aunts and uncles still boast about how she took the time to write out a recipe for them.

It is with this blog that I honor that tradition that my mother started, of sharing the recipes that are dearest to me. I do not believe, at all, that we should gate keep and hoard recipes – this is just my personal opinion. The joy in a recipe is the ability to share that recipe. So, I share freely because I truly believe that there is true beauty in passing the recipe torch. You see, my mother’s recipes are alive and well, on 4″ x 6″ index cards, because she shared them freely. So did her mother. And her mother before her. I have a deep appreciation and understanding of the tradition of sharing food and recipes.

Here’s the thing, though. I could not comprehend the techniques that my home-baking Mommy tried to teach me. Those techniques were steeped in generations of tradition, but, cognitively, they were fully lost on me. I had to teach myself how to bake from scratch in 2014, and, while I am a little sad that I can’t execute anything with my Mommy’s techniques, I know she’s proud of what I can do because she’s my Mommy.

That’s a long way of saying that you should execute recipes in the way that makes the most sense to you. Please, don’t ever dismiss the importance of tradition in your baking, but also, don’t be afraid to blaze a path that’s just a touch different. As long as your remain thoughtful and true to the cultural and historical intent of the recipe, the ancestors will be pleased.

Nobody Does it Alone. Ask for Help!

There are many things in life that we “practice”. Attorneys “practice” law. Yogis “practice” yoga. Doctors “practice” medicine. Parents “practice” patience. 😝

Guess what? Baking is as much a practice as any of those things. A baker gets better as they continue to practice their skill. Even now, as a professional baker, I see myself as a practitioner instead of a guru. There is always someone who knows more, and it is to those people (or textbooks) that I race when I’m stuck.

I encourage you to do the same. Nobody gains mastery as a baker without oodles of help. Whether it was from your grandmother standing behind you, teaching you how to roll out a perfect pie crust, or your mother showing you her special trick for stiff meringue peaks, or from a textbook (🙋🏾‍♀️), or from a baking bestie (also 🙋🏾‍♀️), we all need to know that someone has our backs as we endeavor to improve.

That’s true of baking and life, BB.

In baking, know that I’ve got you. When you’re stuck, or frustrated, or ready to panic, I want you to reach out to me at bakingbestie@beginwithbutter.com. When you are faced with kitchen heartache and you’re at your worst, know that 🎶 you’ve got a friend in me. 🎶 I’m here to listen, help you troubleshoot, and figure out whether this is a salvageable moment or a “start all over” moment. And I promise to always do it lovingly, with integrity, because I’ve been there.

You have baking mastery in you, BB. And I am honored that you trust me to help you get there.

Conclusion and Resources

Friend, I know that was a mouthful. It’s my hope that you found this information helpful and calming as you get ready for all of your holiday bakes.

Remember, Begin with Butter is more than a recipe website. There are tons of resources on this site to help you gain proficiency as a baker, and I’m always happy to share them! The resources are organized by techniques, equipment, and ingredient science, and each of those will help you tremendously on your baking journey. There’s great information that will help you not just during the holidays, but with every bake going forward.

I wish you the absolute best this holiday season (and beyond)! And don’t forget to tag me in your amazing bakes @beginwithbutter on Instagram. I’m always so proud to see your baking growth!

XOXO,

Shani

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