tips from the smitten kitchen

There are few baked goods and/or frostings not improved by the addition of brown sugar but if your kitchen is anything like mine — that is, woefully understocked most of the time — you’ve probably needed it before and not had it. Fortunately, you can make your own with a combination of molasses and regular sugar. To make one cup of light brown sugar, combine 1 cup granulated sugar with 1 1/2 tablespoons molasses; to make one cup of dark brown sugar, combine 1 cup granulated sugar with 1/4 cup molasses; the food processor works great for this, if you have one. Now bring on those brown sugar shorties!

Does your grocery store have the nerve to inconsistently stock cake flour? Does it drive you crazy to see recipe after recipe that calls for it, and wonder what else you can use? Good news: Cake flour is really easy to make at home. Add two tablespoons of corn starch to each cup of regular flour and sift this mixture together twice. Measure your cups of flour from this mixture.

The biggest different between all-purpose and bread flour is the amount of gluten: bread flour has more of it. But it may seem annoying to have to keep a giant bag of bread flour around if you’re only an occasional bread-baker. Enter a product known as a “gluten additive” or gluten flour, something you can usually add one tablespoon of to each cup of all-purpose flour to turn it into bread flour. Think of all the cabinet space you’ll save!

Have a lot of egg whites or yolks leftover from a recipe but don’t know how many? A good approximation to keep in mind is that 1 large egg yields about 1 tablespoon of yolk plus 2 tablespoons of white. This has come particularly in handy when I have halved a recipe that called for an odd number of eggs — I simply beat one egg and measured out 1.5 tablespoons.

Cream is labeled illogically, with names and not numbers representing milk fat within. This ought to help sort them out: half-and-half (equal parts milk and cream) has 10.5 to 18 percent milk fat; light cream (a.k.a. table cream) ranges from 18 to 30 percent, but is most often actually 20 percent; whipping cream (a.k.a. light whipping cream) has 30 to 36 percent; and heavy cream (ironically, better for whipped cream than “whipping” cream, though both work) has 36 to 40 percent. Double cream (not widely available in the U.S.) has 42 percent. Oh, and it is awesome.

You know when recipes indicate a specific size of egg? They’re not just trying to mess with you. In fact, 1 cup of eggs can be made with 4 jumbo, 4 to 5 extra-large, 5 large, 5 to 6 medium or 7 small eggs, so it is good not to use the sizes interchangeably. The good news is that large eggs are fairly standard in U.S. recipes, thus they’re your best bet to keep around if you don’t wish to buy multiple sizes.

Who besides me is crazy enough to keep self-rising flour in the pantry? Honestly, there’s no need to since you can make your own at home. For each cup of flour, add 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and a 1/2 teaspoon salt; mix extra and store it in an airtight container for months. Now go forth and bake some 1-2-3-4 cake!

Out of buttermilk and just itching to make some biscuits or lemon cake? Make your own by mixing 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice with 1 cup of milk and letting it sit until it curdles, about 10 minutes.

To make your own baking powder – some say with fewer metallic undertones than the commercial stuff – mix one part baking soda to one part cornstarch and two parts cream of tartar.