Baking Tip: Alternating Ingredients

Yesterday's banana cupcakes (click here for that post) have you alternating wet and dry ingredients mixing well after each addition. If you've never done that before it's simple - sometimes the recipe will tell you how much of each to add at a time, if not I do roughly 1/3 of the dry followed by 1/3 of the liquid. I don't actually know why this is done some of the time but I figure there's a good reason so if it says to do it that way I do :). Someone smarter than me has figured it out, I'm not going to rebel and dump it all in at the same time!

The banana cupcake recipe only needs 1/4 cup of liquid so that's not much to alternate with the dry ingredients - I just did it a tablespoon at a time.


one year ago: jam filled muffins
two years ago: Jen's got us exercising with circuit stations

Cookie Sheet Hack

Not sure this is a "hack" but since it's another way to use something I'm calling it that...

A little side story - I'm on day 4 of a 30 day no-sugar challenge and for whatever reason decided that I really, really, wanted to make cookies. I'm not a super big sweet freak but I do love cookies. So of course that is what I'm gonna want to make when I cannot eat them. And can't lick the bowl.  And can't lick my hand that has excess cookie dough on it. Sigh.

I'll post the cookie recipe I ended up making tomorrow - I woke up dreaming about snickerdoodles (my favorite) but doubt I have the willpower to not eat one, and needed to find a different cookie to make that would be easier to resist!  I have no idea if these taste good until I get some feedback from the neighbors haha, but they look and smell delish.

So getting to the hack already - it's best to bake cookies on a flat rimless cookie sheet, and you want the sheet to be cool between batches...so if you only have one sheet (like me), it's not very convenient to wait for your one sheet to cool down. I do have a couple baking sheets with an edge all the way around (also known as a  'jelly roll pan') tho so my tip today is to just turn the baking sheets upside down and put your cookie dough (on top of parchment) on the bottom. You get a flat surface this way (I'm sure there is a scientific reason to not bake them in the pan versus on the bottom of the pan but I don't have that info - I just know that you are not supposed to put them IN the pan that has a lip..)

Voila - a second baking sheet!

one year ago: turkey rueben sandwich
two years ago: make a scrabble tile keychain