Handy Hints and Good Ideas

A friend recently said "Cooking is like life, you won't know how it turns out if you don't try it."  Wise advice.  I thought I'd write a post about all those tips that have been passed on to me from the older generation, friends, books and from my own experience... so that in the future my children can read this post and pass it all on to their own children. My daughter is already quite good at baking, recently she's made heart shaped iced cookies and a very light and delicious lemon drizzle cake, as well as several chocolate cakes for her school friends and her own birthday cake - and my son is getting seriously handy with a peeler, so this post is for them. It's also for all my friends and family who passed on their tips, including some very wise advice such as: "Keep trying even though it may not turn out right first time" and "Eat the whole tub of Philadelphia before someone else does"!!!

I'm always happy to listen to advice, but I don't always follow it.  My Mum said to always follow a recipe the first time, before adapting it, and I don't do that.  Ditto the advice about not trying out new recipes on guests! However, here follows just a (slightly random) selection of tips that you might or might not find useful:

• It's ALL in the planning. Prepare ahead whenever possible, do some chopping before work, or make a freezeable pudding a week ahead for a dinner party.
• Trust your instincts.
• Mark your favourite recipes in books and magazines with post-it tabs.
• Don't try to slice lemons when you've had a few glasses of wine, or are crying from onions, while using a blunt knife.
• Don't balance sharp edged baking trays on top of the fridge freezer - I have the scars to prove this one.
• Use oven liner.
• When you're making a roast dinner, don't skimp on the gravy.
• Use good quality stock cubes or concentrate.
• Add fresh herbs at the end of cooking or the flavour will be lost.
• Don't open the oven until at least two thirds of the way through a cake's cooking time, and don't open it until the very end if there's Yorkshire pud in there. I've got an oven without a glass panel in the door on purpose so it doesn't show the dirt but the downside is not being able to monitor whatever's in there.  You can usually tell when baking is done because you start to smell it.
• A lot can be stuck together or covered up with butter icing and lots of sprinkles.
• Pour hot sugar syrup over cupcakes when they come out of the oven to keep them moist, there's nothing worse than a dry cupcake.
• Chill onions before slicing to minimise tears, if you do cry, running your wrists under cold water will make you feel better.
• Use a plastic spatula to scrape out every last scrap of mixture from the bowl.
• Never use "cake covering" - supermarket basic level real chocolate is cheaper and much nicer.
• Choose clever gadgets - like the silicone garlic roll that peels garlic so easily without making your fingers smell.  I've got one of these and several of my friends have too, it really works!

 



• Talking of smells, fishy or other strong smelling packaging should go straight in the outside bin, then you won't have to change the indoor one before it's full due to the whiff.
• Younger children are not always so helpful in the kitchen, so have a stack of DVDs or a playpen to keep them out of the way and save accidents happening.
• If it goes wrong, bluff your way out of it (the story of the "wholemeal" potatoes may be saved for a future post...).

And if all else fails, have a spouse or partner that loves cooking and will do it all for you, including the washing up!

More soon, thank you for reading. There may be a follow up to this post as there are probably loads more tips that I can't think of just now.  What's yours?

Caroline :-)