The Right Tool for the Job...

I have learned quite a few things since starting my internship, but one thing that I learned was that you need to have the right tool for the job. The bakery folks are quite inventive with the way that they have come up with hundreds of ways to use one tool and they use it in ways that I have not thought of. A lot of the practices has forced me to look at my own kitchen and figure out what I do have and utilize while cooking and what I needed to get. Now I am not suggesting that everyone run out and get a lot of baking equipment, but I am saying that sometimes it is necessary to have a few basic tools to be successful in the kitchen.

At my internship I discovered how much easier it is to frost a cake while it is on a rotating pedestal like the one below. Connie has two of these and we use them a lot. I went to Michael's and purchased an inexpensive one (with a 40% off coupon) for $8.00


Connie (my internship supervisor) also has all of her frosting tips organized and labeled. As you can tell she uses quite a number of them daily.


In my own kitchen at home I have a lot of specialized tools for different jobs. I would say that in the picture below I use the mini cutting board (courtesy of my friend Claudine over at Good Things) the most. The microplane is also nice for various jobs including zesting lemons and grating parmesan cheese.


I can not express how helpful it is to have measuring cups and spoons of all sizes. I have measuring utensils for measuring both dry and liquid ingredients and both large amounts and smaller amounts.


It is so helpful to have scoops of different sizes for various tasks. I use the smallest scoop in this picture to scoop out uniform balls of dough to make delicious cookies. The one in the middle is a recent addition, prior to buying this scoop I used to use the top scoop to try and fill my cupcake containers with batter. The amount that the large scoop holds was far much more than the capacity that the actual cupcake pan would hold so the result was a disaster of cupcakes. Some were just right, some were filled too much and would often overflow, others would raise way to high and sink. So last week I purchased the scoop in the middle and it is just the right amount to fill the cupcake pan with just the perfect amount of batter to produce perfect cupcakes.


I also have frosting tips of all sizes and shapes.


Now if you bake and come out with inconsistent results I strongly recommend purchasing an oven thermometer. For too long I trusted the thermostat on my oven and I wondered why sometimes my cakes would take twice the recommended time and sometimes my cookies were dark on the outside and too crunchy. Well at Connie's recommendation I purchased an oven thermometer and discovered that our oven is 20 degrees cooler than what the thermostat/setting indicates. Since baking using this I have been pleased with the results.


So that is my little blurb about the importance of using the correct tools to try and obtain consistent and satisfying results. On another note at my internship I watch Connie with envy while she decorates a cake with one hand just moving her hand back and forth to create a border it takes her about 15 seconds to put a top and bottom border on a cake. I have been trying to get this and here are some pictures of the results. I did both of these cakes in about 10 minutes.