I have recently decided to start a home-based baking business. My mom catered for close to 20 years, was booked 18 months in advance and never advertised. I did a lot of her baking. Having just recently stumbled into this wonderful site, I was reading about baking from cake mixes v. scratch. I was amazed at just how many use mixes and for the apparent reason of consistency. So that has me wondering whether or not you weigh or measure your ingredients. I was thinking that converting weight with all my recipes would help with consistency. Any thoughts?

This site rocks! Everyone is so helpful and I can't believe how much I've learned sitting here reading. I start my Wilton cake decorating classes Tuesday night. I need to learn the finishing touches for some of my cakes. Thanks again for any info you can offer.
Kim

I do everything by weight. It took some time to convert all my recipes but it was well worth the time. You get much more consistent results, you don't dirty nearly as many utensils and it is a real timesaver in the long run.

Good luck to you with your classes, they are a lot of fun!

Mrs Missey is correct use a scale and measure your ingredients. If it calls for an ingredient to be sifted, sift it before you weigh it. This is easily done by placing done some wax paper or parchment paper and sifting your ingredients into a bowl. I convert all my recipes to grams since everything I do is in grams.

I also do everything by weight and bake all my cakes from scratch. I get consistent results.
cheers
Nati

I weigh everything. It only takes a minute to convert to weights. If I like a recipe, then I retype it with the conversions and laminate it. It's faster...neater...easier to multiply....and when measuring dry ingredients, weighing eliminates the variance that high or low humidity can cause.

I laminated several sheets of plain card stock. I place one of those on top of the scale and measure my ingredients on top of them. With dry ingredients, you just have to knock any remaining powder off when you're done. For things like butter and shortening...just a quick swish in hot soapy water. So much easier than washing measuring cups and spatulas.

Sometimes, I put the mixing bowl on the scale and measure right into it, resetting the weight with each ingredient, so I don't have to do any math. Nothing to wash in those instances. My six-quart bowl is too heavy for my scale, but I did that a lot with my 4-quart bowl. I might get a larger capacity scale next time.

Weight all the way. Although I disagree with the sifting. Some recipes call for sifting before measuring and some call for sifting after measuring. When a recipe says cups sifted flour---sift and then measure, when it calls for cups of flour sifted-measure and then sift. It's not too hard to remember.


I love my baby scale.


-S

Can you tell me how you did that I would like to try it but don't know were to start.

Thanks for your quick responses. I have found that it has been much quicker to weigh the ingredients and was pretty sure that it would lead to more consistent results. My efforts are for good!

Also, thanks for the tips with the laminating. I have laminated all my favorite baking and cooking recipes that I reach for all the time. It saves plenty of paper! I'll be laminating all my baking recipes with the weight of each ingredient. BYW, it also helps tremendously to when costing out your recipe!

Again, many thanks! ...off to get my samples baked!