How to Read a Baking Recipe

This recipe, for Quick Coffeecake, is quite easy to make. The words with numbers next to them are discussed below.

Quick Coffeecake

• 3/4 cup packed¹ brown sugar
• 2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened²
• 1-1/2 cups chopped nuts³ OR quick cooking oatmeal
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk⁴
• 1 cup sugar⁵
• 1/4 cup salad oil⁶
• 2 cups flour⁷
• 4 teaspoons baking powder⁸
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat⁹ oven to 375 degrees. Grease¹⁰ 13x9" pan and set aside. In medium bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon and butter and cream together¹¹ until blended¹². Stir in oatmeal until crumbly. Set aside while preparing batter.

Crack eggs into large bowl and beat with a fork until combined. Add milk and mix well with wire whisk or eggbeater. Add sugar and oil and mix with a whisk until blended.

Sift¹³ together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture and mix with a spoon for 20-30 strokes just until combined and all dry ingredients are moistened¹⁴. Pour batter into prepared 13x9" pan. Sprinkle oatmeal mixture evenly over batter. Bake at 375 degrees for 25-35 minutes until puffed and golden brown¹⁵, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean¹⁶. Serve warm. 12 servings

The body of the recipe contains the instructions about combining and heating the ingredients. In the coffeecake recipe above:

1. Packed brown sugar. Brown sugar must be pressed firmly into the measuring cup, then unmolded. The sugar should hold the shape of the cup when it's released.
2. Butter is softened by letting it stand at room temperature for about 1 hour. You can soften butter in a microwave, but it's easy to overheat the butter. If the butter begins to melt, the structure that creates the little air holes in baked goods will be lost and your recipe won't rise as high. The texture will also not be as tender.
3. Chop nuts until the pieces are a uniform size, about 1/4" in diameter. You can do this with a chef's knife or (the method I prefer), a small hand turned nut chopper. Look for the position of the descriptor. If the recipe says 'one cup nuts, chopped' that means measure the nuts, then chop. Oatmeal can be substituted for nuts in many recipes.
4. 1 cup milk is measured using the liquid glass measuring cup. Pour the milk into the cup, then bend down so the 1 cup mark is at your eye level. The milk should just touch the 1 cup mark, not be below or above.
5. 1 cup sugar is measured using the plastic or metal measuring cup. Spoon sugar into the cup so it's overflowing. Then use the back of a knife or a flat spatula and sweep over the sugar, level with the cup's top edge, so the measuring cup is full to the brim.
6. Salad oil is simply plain, unflavored oil. I like to use safflower oil in baking, although peanut oil and other types will work too. Do NOT use olive oil, as its flavor is too intense for baked goods.
7. Flour is measured carefully in baking. Spoon it lightly into the measuring cup - don't scoop it out using the cup. Don't pack it or shake the cup. When the flour is overflowing the cup, use that knife again to level it off.
8. Baking powder and baking soda are two very different ingredients. Baking powder is baking soda mixed with another ingredient. Baking soda needs to be combined with an acidic ingredient like vinegar or lemon juice. Each produces carbon dioxide. (Don't panic - carbon dioxide is very safe. It's what makes baked goods rise!) Don't pack the baking powder in the spoon - spoon it into the measuring spoon and level off as for flour.
9. All ovens need to be preheated when you're baking. It should only take about 10 minutes for an oven to get to the correct temperature. I highly recommend an oven thermometer, since almost every oven made isn't perfectly accurate.
10. Grease pans by rubbing them with a bit of unsalted shortening or butter, or spraying with nonstick cooking spray. The shortening should be a very thin, even coating over every inside surface - so the pan is shiny. No shortening should be visible. Or spray with nonstick cooking spray lightly and evenly.
11. Cream is a cooking term that means to push shortening and sugar together on the sides of the bowl using the back of a large spoon. This builds small air pockets in the shortening with the sugar crystals and starts to set up the product structure. A mixture is blended when you can't see the separate ingredients any more.
12. Blended means that the mixture is stirred together until the individual components disappear.
13. Sift flour and other dry ingredients by placing them in a sieve and shaking the sieve gently. This removes lumps and blends the ingredients together.
14. Quick breads are mixed just until dry ingredients are moistened. No flour should be visible, but there should be small lumps in the batter. Everything will smooth out during baking! Remember, these instructions are just for quick breads.
15. Baking doneness tests are descriptive. The range of cooking times, in this case 25-35 minutes, has been established in tolerance tests in test kitchens. Begin checking your product at the shortest cooking time. Golden brown means more golden than brown. When breads, cakes and cookies are done, they usually look done. Browse through products at a bakery, and note their color. That's how your homemade goodies should look.
16. The toothpick test is usually used to test for doneness. Stick a clean toothpick into the product near the center and remove it. There shouldn't be any uncooked batter or wetness on the toothpick. If there are small crumbs sticking to the toothpick, that's just fine.

I hope this explanation helps in your cooking adventures! If you have a recipe you'd like 'translated', please send it to me and we'll work our way through it. Also please let me know if this discussion was useful to you, or if you need more terms and phrases.

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