Baking isn’t that hard, you’re just making noob mistakes.

People who know me are often surprised to learn that I bake, and that I’m even good at baking. This is probably because they think I’m impatient, easily frustrated, and hate reading instructions. They are correct in thinking this. However, contrary to popular belief, those qualities don’t really have much to do with baking ability.

I’ve noticed people tend to think of baking as a mysterious science that demands accuracy, precision, and skill, and punishes anyone less virtuous with disastrous results.

In my experience, if you avoid a couple common missteps, baking is actually a very forgiving kind of science. A bit more complicated than science fair volcanoes, but a lot simpler than brewing alcohol or cooking meth probably. It definitely requires less precision than building things that don’t fall apart with wood and tools.

Most of the baking disasters people experience are caused by the same beginner mistakes: there a couple hard rules to baking, and if you don’t know them, you’ll probably fuck everything up. A lot of recipes assume you know the basic rules, and don’t make a point of emphasizing them, leading to many frustrated would-be bakers posting their disastrous “NAILED IT” creations on reddit.

So, some rules:

1. Don’t over-mix the batter.

It’s a common instinct to think that more mixing is better, but most of the time you’re better off mixing less. If the recipe says “combine”, “mix”, “fold” or really anything other than “whip”, then you should only combine the ingredients until they’re just incorporated and no more. If it says “blend until smooth”, that’s all you have to do. This is super important, because over-mixed batter starts to form gluten, and you end up with chewy or dense pastries or cakes. If you’re making flaky things (scones, pie crust, other pastry), I highly recommend a pastry mixer.

2. Don’t over-work the dough.

Similar to point 1, but it’s like, really important, so deal with it. Unless you’re baking bread, you want to handle the dough as little as possible. Think of how awful everything kids ever bake tastes. It’s because they play with the dough. Also they can’t read and have short attention spans. For stuff like scones, you just want to sort of shove the dough into shape and then leave it at that. This is for two reasons: the gluten thing mentioned in rule #1, and also because it warms up the butter, which brings us to rule #3.

Update: discussion with some friends brought up that it’s hard to tell what “not overmixed” looks like. I found an article with really good pictures of what pastry dough is supposed to look like. The first 4 pictures apply to all flaky pastries.

3. Butter temperature matters.

For flaky pastry, your butter needs to be as cold as possible. I usually stick it in the freezer while I prepare other ingredients. Cold butter is important because when the butter melts in the oven it makes little air pockets and that’s what makes stuff flaky and fluffy. For denser pastries like cookies, you want to start with room-temperature butter. If you start with fridge-temperature butter you’re going to have a bad time blending it. If you try to put fridge-temperature butter in the microwave and use that, you’re going to make a mess. Leave your butter out in a room until it is room temperature.

4. For the love of god, wait until your cake has cooled before icing it.

Trying to ice a hot cake is like trying to spread something melty on something hot and hoping the melty thing doesn’t melt. This is the reason for 90% of the baking failures people use to demonstrate the “BAKING IS REALLY HARD” point.

5. Baking Soda ≠ Baking powder.

Check the recipe: does it say soda or powder? Check again. Are you sure? Check again. They are not the same thing. If you use baking soda instead of baking powder, your cookies will taste like ass and be really hard and gross. If you do the opposite, your cake won’t rise enough and will have a weird texture.

If you need to know the difference, Baking powder is just baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) + cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is a weak acid, which baking soda needs to do its thing. When a recipe uses baking soda, it usually also includes an acid like vinegar or lemon juice. Since baking powder includes two ingredients, you’ll generally be using more of it (cream of tartar is somewhat voluminous). So if you use soda instead of powder, you’ll end up using way more sodium bicarbonate than you should and it will be gross.

Be really careful that you don’t use too much of either.

6. Use parchment paper.

And stop worrying about burning the bottoms of your cookies or leaving half your cake behind in the pan.