Lisa's Top Baking Tips

As you may or may not know, Lisa here at the Hideaway is a huge fan of baking and treats all of our guests to delicious afternoon tea every day of their stay.

Her cakes are the best around, baked with love, care and attention and after much cajoling we’ve managed to persuade her to share her best baking secrets with our blog readers- just in time for the GBBO final this evening!

So without further ado, here are Lisa’s top five baking tips:

1.       Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

   When you’re baking, there can be a fair few processes underway at once, and precision is key. Weighing and measuring all your ingredients into bowls or dishes before you start means you can ensure accuracy and make the whole process less stressful (plus there’s something extra nice about having lots of little bowls of lovely ingredients).

2.       Use the Best Ingredients

As every chef knows, the quality of ingredients is key to any dish and it’s no different with baking. Here in Windermere we’re really lucky to have plenty of fresh locally sourced ingredients available to us, and we make the most of them where we can.  Try using local organic eggs in your next sponge- you’ll definitely see a difference in the lightness of the cake, and you can’t beat local honey in your sweet treats. One ingredient to definitely avoid scrimping on is chocolate- the richness you can achieve with a high cocoa content chocolate will take your fudge cake from Yum to Yippeeee!

3.       Experiment with Flavours

We all have our old faves that we always go back to- Victoria Sponge, chocolate cupcakes, brownies, but when you experiment you get some really great results. Ease yourself in adding chilli to your chocolate cake or thyme to your lemon cake, then see what other combinations you might like. We’ve seen cakes with beetroot, brownies made of sweet potato and loads of great cocktail themed cakes.

4.       Pre-Heat

Simple, but true- always pre-heat to the temperature in the recipe and if you’re extra cautious use a thermometer to ensure accuracy.

5.       Dry into Wet

The modern baking jury is out on this one, but you usually find that the traditional method of sieving your dry ingredients into your whisked wet ingredients gives nice light cakes and no soggy bottoms!