Essential Baking Tools

Grandmothers kitchen produces so many wonderful baked goods, but when asked the question if you are brand new to the kitchen and don’t own one single item for baking what would be the most important tools to allow a new baker to get started, given they have a limited amount of money to spend.

You can read the reason below: or else here is the basic list.

E essential Baking Tools:

1. A Set of measuring spoons

2. A 2 cup glass measuring cup

3. Two large mixing bowls

* Here, choose 1 glass 8 cup measuring bowl with a spout

* 1 deep metal/glass or ceramic mixing bowl at least 10 inches wide

4. A handheld mixer (or if you can splurge, a stand mixer is great if you plan to bake a lot)

5. One Silicone spatula

6. One Large wooden spoon

7. Baking pans of various size/shapes, but some basics are:

* large cookie sheet

* 12 hole muffin tray

* pie plate

* 9 x 13 inch cake pan

* 10 inch round springform pan

8. Two oven mitts

9. wire cooling rack

To create this list, the best way to think it through was imagining baking something.

Every recipe requires measurement, so we need a set of measuring spoons and a 2 cup glass measuring cup.

You need to mix the recipe into something so we need at least 2 large mixing bowls and in many baking recipes, you first combine you dry ingredients, like flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder together, and in another mixing bowl you do the wet ingredients such as butter, vanilla and eggs.

For your bowls, would suggest one 8 cup glass measuring cup and one deep mixing bowl (ceramic, glass or metal) at least a 10 inches wide, deep mixing bowl.

Butter usually needs to be creamed. A hand held electric mixer is the most economical mixing tool to invest in.

A stand mixer is really a wonderful tool, but a hand mixer will get the job done!

When you are mixing things, you need to have a silicone spatula. Better to get a silicone one than a plastic one as often you are using a spatula to stir hot mixtures and silicone can handle the heat.

So the next next is baking pans. Once we have our batter mixed, depending what we are baking, if its cookies, we’ll need a cookie sheet, if it a cake we’ll need cake pans, a pie will require a pie plate, and a cheesecake will require a springform pan.

Okay so if you had to choose only ONE because that is all you could have I would choose a 10 inch springform pan. A springform pan could be used fairly effectively to make cookies in a couple batches, a cake, a cheesecake and a pie. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but it would be the one item that could work in lots of ways!

You are always asked to grease the pan and one of Grandmother’s kitchen favorite tools is a silicone basting brush. This silicone brush can handle heat and is easy to clean and can be used for greasing, basting, applying frostings to name a few functions. I would not put it on the list it if it were only to grease pans, but you will find very quickly how versatile the silicone brush is in your baking needs.

So we have transferred our batter to a baking pan, and we’ve put it into the oven.

Next important tool are oven mitt, to remove the hot pan from the oven.

You are always asked to put the cakes or cookies onto a cooling rack, so we need one of those for sure.

From there on you can make due with a kitchen knife for spreading frosting, although it would be great to have a straight icing spatula and a piping bag with tips.

Okay so not the perfect set of baking tools, but certainly you could bake with the above items.

Some other tools which are very helpful as you get deeper into baking:

Double boiler (for melting chocolate)

Piping bag (for frosting)

Scale (for weighing ingredients)

Good set of knifes (invaluable for chopping chocolate, nuts and your other cooking needs)

Silicone brushes (for greasing pans)

Parchment paper (which can be re-used) and make for neater baking

What are some baking tools that you would suggest to a beginner baker?

With love,

Grandmother's Kitchen