June 17, 2008

Top Kitchen Tips

Here are some of the top kitchen tips that I've come across in various books:
  1. Use a raw spaghetti noodle to see if a deep cake is done baking.
  2. When a recipe calls for dough to be formed into balls, use a melon scoop to ensure that the balls are uniform in size.
  3. If you make your own bread crumbs or croƻtons, make them with the leftover heat in your oven after you turn the oven off from baking another item.
  4. Rather than paying too much for premade dough in a plastic tub, make the dough yourself ahead of time and store it in your own plastic tub. Sugar cookie, chocolate chip, and peanut butter dough all freeze well.
  5. Use an onion chopper to quickly make graham or saltine cracker crumbs. The crumbs will have the added benefit of being more uniform in shape than those made with a rolling pin.
  6. Instead of warming stick butter up repeatedly to take small pats off of, use a potato peeler. The pats will be uniform in size and you don't risk the danger of allowing a dairy product to warm and cool repeatedly.
  7. Out of confectioner's sugar? Run granulated sugar through the blender. The texture won't be exact, but it will be close enough.
  8. When you need to add butter or shortening to a recipe with your mixer, heat the blades in hot water first. The warm blades will aid in the butter and shortening mixing quicker and will prevent the butter and shortening from sticking to the blades.
  9. To make it easier to find recipes in a cookbook, highlight the titles of your favorite recipes in the cookbook index.
  10. A pipe cleaner can be used to clean the nooks and crannies of a mounted can-opener. Don't forget to clean the blade of your can opener regularly!

For more Works for Me Wednesday, check out Rocks in My Dryer!

8 comments:

  1. What a great list! A lot of these were new to me and very helpful. I really like the idea of using the potato peeler with the butter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a great list – I love the idea of using a spaghetti noodle to test baked goods!

    I usually take a paring knife and just "shave" frozen butter when I'm ready for it. I find that I use less that way too because the shavings come off thinner and are easier to distribute equally.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm going to start doing #9 from now on. Great tip!
    TX Poppet at Canned Laughter

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great tips, I wasn't aware of the sugar substitutions. Another great scoop for dough are ice cream scoops, you can use the larger ones for making meatballs and filling muffin tins too.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great list! I'll have to remember the sugar one - I'm always out of confectioner's sugar when I need it most!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great ideas!
    Have a wonderful day!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great tips! I love the potato peeler for the butter!

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Excellent ideas!!
    I found your blog through Heathers & it's really great!! I shall have to start using some of your ideas posted here!
    Renata :)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for caring enough to leave a comment! I typically don't respond to each separate comment here on my blog. If you would like to ask me a question and have my reply, please feel free to e-mail me at heathershodgepodge@hotmail.com