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The process of cutting food into small cubes of equal size so that the food is evenly cooked and has pleasant appearance for the recipe.

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o reach the temperature at which it bubbles and turns to vapor.

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a rich white sauce made with milk infused with herbs and other flavorings.

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Used to blend ingredients smooth or to incorporate air into a mixture

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A roux is a mixture of fat (especially butter) and flour and is used in making sauces.

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A pastry blender is a kitchen tool used to mix a hard fat into flour in order to make pastries. The tool is usually made of narrow metal strips or wires attached to a handle, and is used by pressing down on the items to be mixed.

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A pastry brush, also known as a basting brush, is a cooking utensil used to spread butter, oil or glaze on food.

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The biscuit method is a method for making quick breads such as scones and biscuits. The biscuit method is one of the only mixing methods that does not require you to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Your fats and liquids should be cold for the biscuit method.

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Cut in' means working solid shortening into dry ingredients with two knives or a pastry blender until well mixed. When making a pastry, solid shortening, lard, or butter is cut in to a flour mixture until the particles are the size of small peas.

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Demonstration on how to cut in fat when baking biscuits and pastry

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The puropouse of adding  sour cream to baked good is because it adds sweetness, tenderness, and it helps the baked good brown better. It also helps yeast rise and adds mouister to the bread.

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The liquid portion of a cake recipe can be easily overlooked as an insignificant ingredient but, it plays an important role in the character of the cake. In this segment I will take a look the differences in three different types of dairy products and how varying these will change the resulting cake. The three dairy products are whole milk, buttermilk and sour cream. Let's delve in and see what changes happen and the properties that of the dairy items that lead to these changes.

The main properties of the liquids that affect cake are acidity and fat.

Acids in a batter have an effect on protein interaction and starch gelation.

Fat in batter provides moisture, and by coating gluten forming proteins, reduces gluten formation and thus tenderizes the cake.

When you alter the type of liquid that goes into a cake batter you redefine the balance and interplay of the fats and acidity. Whole milk is a relatively neutral liquid and provides around 9 grams of fat per cup. It provides little acidity but is moderate in the fat department. Buttermilk, which is generally derived from low-fat or non-fat milk contains little fat at approximately 2.5 grams per cup but offers greater acidity at around 1% acid content. Sour cream has acidity akin to buttermilk at about 0.8% but unlike buttermilk, sour cream also imbues a batter with 40 grams of fat per cup.

How does changing these ingredients actually play out in a cake recipe? It seems that acidity truly is an important factor of cake liquid. The cake baked with whole milk was slightly darker in color that the acid containing cakes and the milk cake had a coarse crumb. The coarseness of the crumb is likely caused by the lack of acidity, which allows gluten proteins to readily form, and the neutral liquid which can bolster gluten formation. The milk cake was also slightly bland in flavor compared to the others because of its mild flavor.

The buttermilk cake was lighter in texture and had a tenderer crumb. Interestingly, the cake did not seem to suffer significantly from the reduction of fat. It was as moist as the whole milk cake. The buttermilk cake did have the advantage for flavor though. It provided a mild complexity that was not too tangy.

The sour cream cake had a very fine, tender crumb. The sour cream contains acidity as well as sizable amounts of fat. This combination generated a cake with a very appealing texture. The sour cream cake was also light in texture and at the same time moist. This cake, like the buttermilk had a lovely flavor that was brought about by the subtle sour acid notes in the sour cream.

Acidity and fat derived from liquids can have a great impact on the outcome of a cake. My preference is for a cake containing sour cream which offers a beautiful balance of acidity and fat that translates into a flavorful cake with a fine moist crumb.

Happy baking!

Now read my article, Mixing Up The Perfect Cake.
See exactly how long to mix butter and sugar together!

Next see If Sifting Makes a Better Cake.
I think you'll be surprised by my results!

And don't miss my article, The Meringue Buttercream Myth!
It's a unique new way to make Swiss Meringue Butterceam.

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The liquid portion of a cake recipe can be easily overlooked as an insignificant ingredient but, it plays an important role in the character of the cake. In this segment I will take a look the differences in three different types of dairy products and how varying these will change the resulting cake.

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a crumbly topping or filling made from fat, flour, sugar, and often cinnamon.

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The Muffin Method is a technique whereby two mixes are created: a mix of wet ingredients (eggs, soft or liquid fat, milk and sugar)

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It's time for another mixing method.
(Quick recap: A mixing method is the order or process by which you incorporate different ingredients together to make a cake, cookie, pie dough, muffin etc.. Different mixing methods produce different textures and knowing how to use them and which one to use is important for creating a certain type of baked good).
Today we're talking about The Muffin Method, which along with these baking secrets, will have you baking the kind of muffins all your friends and family rave about.

What is the Muffin Method?

This method of mixing is typically used for making muffins, quick breads, waffles, and pancakes but can also be used for cakes that use a liquid fat.
It has 4 main steps:

1. All dry ingredients (e.g. flour, sugar, salt, baking powder/soda, spices etc.) are sifted into a large bowl and then whisked until well combined.

2. In a medium sized bowl, all wet ingredients (e.g. eggs, milk, cream, liquid fat, vanilla extract and sugar) are whisked together.

- Incorporating the sugar with the wet ingredients enables better distribution as the liquid helps the sugar to dissolve - Mixing the wet and dry ingredients separately first enables an even distribution of ingredients

3. Using the back of a large metal spoon, a well is made in the dry mixture (i.e. a hole in the middle of the mixture).

- this helps even distribution of the wet ingredients

4. The wet ingredients are combined with the dry ingredients and are gently folded together until just combined (about 10 folds)

What does it mean to "fold"?
Folding is a technique used to limit over-mixing.
To fold, hold the spoon at the top of the bowl and 'cut' down through the middle in a straight line, and then bring the spoon up around one side of the bowl, like so:
Folding (opposed to stirring) the wet and dry mixtures together helps to prevent too much gluten from forming - producing a light and fluffy texture and avoiding a chewy, tough texture with 'tunnels' (large gas bubbles).Any fruit, chocolate, nuts etc. are also added at this stage.

The mixture is then spooned into the prepared pan ready to be baked. The most important 'rule' to remember about this method is to not over mix. Why? Because over mixing produces more gluten which results in tunneling, chewy and tough textured baked goods. Want to give this method a go? Try it with these fluffy apple walnut muffins , or these blueberry and lemon muffins.
Other methods to take a look at: The Creaming Method

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Your guide to the 'Muffin Method' and all your questions answered It's time for another mixing method. (Quick recap: A mixing method is the order or process by which you incorporate different ingredients together to make a cake, cookie, pie dough, muffin etc..

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Folding is usually done with a rubber spatula (for liquid & dry ingredients) or with a wire whisk (often for whipped cream and egg whites so that the mixture gently incorporates

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Of all the types of recipes out there, baking recipes can be the most cryptic.

After all, how often do you see phrases like, "Have ready 1/4 cup mirepoix in brunoise" in your standard cookbook. Or perhaps, "Have ready one chicken en crapaudine..." It's just not gonna happen. For better or for worse, these days, you have to clearly enunciate through the abbreviated format of the recipe. Otherwise, your recipes risk being dismissed outright by the harried, simplicity-seeking cooks of today.

However, baking recipes still use an erudite shorthand that some new bakers find intimidating. How do you temper chocolate? How do you cream butter and sugar? What the heck are stiff peaks? As a baker, I find these phrases reassuring. An age-old collection of jargon that tells me exactly what to do. But to many, these instructions are enigmatic and need decoding before they can be useful or helpful.

A long time ago, I posted instructions on separating eggs whites and yolks. You'll want to reference that before beginning the next exercise: whipping and folding egg whites into batter.

Whipping egg whites and folding them into batter is often performed when making chiffon or génoise cakes or when lightening up a normal cake recipe. Some pound cake recipes call for you to do this in order to make them lighter.

Before you whip egg whites, wash your mixing bowl with warm, soapy water. You want to be sure that there are no oil or grease particles in your bowl. Even if you haven't used your mixing bowl recently, I recommend washing it. In the kitchen, grease tends to build up almost everywhere, as I recently found out while washing our windowsills.

Dry the bowl thoroughly. Do the same for your whisk. Place your egg whites along with the amount of cream of tartar specified in the recipe in the mixing bowl. Cream of tartar is a byproduct of wine making that is often used when whipping egg whites to stabilize the egg foam and increase the volume of the whites.

I like to whip my egg whites on medium speed (I use a KitchenAid stand mixer. For handheld mixers, use high speed). I find that they retain their structure better when whipped slower. Begin whipping and keep an eye out for them to foam and thicken.

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. You'll know you've reached this stage when you can lift up the whip, and the tip of the peak formed by lifting the whip droops over. At this point, gradually add the sugar called for in the recipe.

Continue whipping at medium speed until the egg whites form stiff, glossy peaks. You can see this clearly by lifting up your whip and holding it horizontally. The egg whites should not droop or fall off the whip.

It is important not to overbeat at this stage. If you whip until the egg whites are dry, the mixture will break down as you fold it into the batter, creating a heavier end product. I like to stop my mixer frequently as I get close to the stiff peak stage. This way, I can check the consistency of the whites and make sure I don't overbeat them.

As soon as the whites have reached this stage, immediately fold them into your batter. To do this, first add a third of the egg whites to the batter and fold them in gently. This is to lighten the batter initially and prepare it for the rest of the egg whites.

When I use the term "fold," I mean to use a rubber spatula. Gently plunge the spatula down (hold it so that the flat side is facing you--you should be able to see the expanse of the spatula's head) in the center of the mixture. Draw the spatula towards you, scooping a swath of batter along with it. Bring the spatula up the side of the bowl and plunge it down in the center of the batter again. You should see a ribbon of batter left in the wake of the spatula. As you repeat this movement, rotate the bowl, working your way around, always starting in the center, moving to the side of the bowl, and bringing the spatula upwards to mingle the egg whites and batter. As you fold, the position of the spatula will change. When you plunge it down in the center, you want the flat side towards you, meaning that the "sharp" side goes down into the batter first, causing as little deflation of the whites as possible. When you bring the spatula up again, you want the flat side facing up in order to bring up as much batter as possible.

Repeat this movement until the batter is more or less homogenous. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't want to see large streaks or clumps of egg white, but total and complete incorporation of egg whites is not necessary. You may see some thin, fine stripes of egg white. This is okay.

Immediately transfer the batter to your pan and finish the recipe as instructed.

Once you find your rhythm, this technique is actually very satisfying. It also has a way of making you look very accomplished and professional, so make sure someone is watching you as you do it. It's not very often that we get to feel accomplished and professional.

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Essential Techniques: Whipping and Folding Egg Whites

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Of all the types of recipes out there, baking recipes can be the most cryptic. After all, how often do you see phrases like, "Have ready 1/4 cup mirepoix in brunoise" in your standard cookbook. Or perhaps, "Have ready one chicken en crapaudine..." It's just not gonna happen.

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Molded Cookies made by shaping dough by hand into small balls, logs, and other shapes.

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Drop cookies are transfered from the mixing bowl to the baking sheet with a simple scoop and drop.

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Bar cookies consist of batter or other ingredients that are poured or pressed into a pan and cut into cookie-sized pieces after baking.

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Line a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with foil, leaving a 2-inch overhang on two sides; coat the foil with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (unless making no-bake bars, Nos. 44 through 50).

Prepare your batter or dough. Spread in the prepared pan or press in using damp or oiled fingers.

Bake as directed, then transfer to a rack and let cool completely in the pan.

50. No-Bake S'mores Cookie Dough Bars Beat 1 stick softened butter with 1 cup light brown sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla with a mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy. Reduce the speed to low. Add 2 cups finely ground graham crackers and 1 cup flour; beat until combined. Beat in one 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk. Stir in 1 cup each milk chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. Press into the prepared pan and chill until set.

Photographs by Justin Walker

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Line a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with foil, leaving a 2-inch overhang on two sides; coat the foil with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (unless making no-bake bars, Nos. 44 through 50). Prepare your batter or dough. Spread in the prepared pan or press in using damp or oiled fingers.

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a white, crystalline, acidic compound obtained as a byproduct of wine fermentation and used chiefly in baking powder.

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This simple powder has a host of culinary uses.

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The Maillard Reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor.

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If you're a regular reader of Serious Eats, you've definitely seen us refer to the Maillard reaction time and again. That's because the Maillard reaction is responsible for the browned, complex flavors that make bread taste toasty and malty, burgers taste charred, and coffee taste dark and robust. If you plan on cooking tonight, chances are you'll be using the Maillard reaction to transform your raw ingredients into a better sensory experience.

But the Maillard reaction doesn't just make food taste delicious. Understanding the reaction, even on a surface level (that's a Maillard pun, and you'll totally get it soon), is a gateway to understanding the chemical and physical processes of cooking. Grasping the variables involved and learning how to manipulate them is one of the best ways to become a more confident cook-it's the difference between being a slave to a recipe and being free to make a recipe work for you.

The good news is that the Maillard reaction is everywhere, which means plenty of chances to practice and learn. We use it so often that it's easy to forget it's there, but when it's missing, you'll certainly notice. Imagine a steak that tastes boiled instead of roasted, or a stir-fry that tastes more like a stir-steam. Each one represents a missed opportunity to exploit the Maillard reaction's potential.

So, What Is the Maillard Reaction?

The Maillard reaction is complex. So complex, in fact, that it's only in the last few years that scientists have begun to figure out what it actually is. While they still don't entirely understand it, they do know the basics: The Maillard reaction is many small, simultaneous chemical reactions that occur when proteins and sugars in and on your food are transformed by heat, producing new flavors, aromas, and colors.

Practically speaking, the Maillard reaction makes food more enticing to us humans, encouraging us to dig into a steak, drink a coffee, or chug a beer.* Unlike all the other omnivores prowling this earth, we no longer tend to find a hunk of raw cow shoulder particularly appetizing. But if that same muscle is ground up, formed into patties, and seared on a flattop, we'll eagerly line up around the block. In large part, that's because we have evolved to respond to two important signals when encountering food. The first is a "nutrition" signal that tells us the food will deliver a hefty dose of easily digestible calories, vitamins, and minerals. The second is a "general harmlessness" signal that tells us the food won't kill us. The Maillard reaction is evolution's way of combining these two signals into one super-signal, specific to the roasty or browned flavors of cooked food.
* Yes, even beer undergoes the Maillard reaction-when the grains are roasted prior to brewing.
All that cooking we've come to seek out is, at its heart, the process of applying heat to food over a period of time. If all goes well, it also makes you hungry. A burger, to extend our example, is composed of a basic set of building blocks: proteins, sugars, and water. The Maillard reaction is what can happen to those proteins and sugars when heat and time are added to the equation.

Long story short: With the right amount of heat, moisture, and time, those specific sugars and proteins will act like a couple of lust-drunk lovers making out in the back of a Chevy, rapidly becoming a tangled, hot mess, until, nine months later, a whole new creation emerges. Except that with the proteins and sugars, it takes minutes, not months, and instead of a child, the result is an increasingly complex array of flavor and aroma molecules, along with a darker color courtesy of newly formed edible pigment molecules called melanoidins.

Heat, Moisture, and Time

The first thing you need for the Maillard reaction to take place is heat. A steak left to sit on the counter for a week at room temperature will certainly undergo some chemical changes, but the Maillard won't be one of them.

That steak doesn't just need heat, though-it needs a relatively high level of it if you want surface browning to kick in. Boiling water, which tops out at 212°F (100°C) at sea level, isn't hot enough. That's why a boiled steak turns gray instead of dark brown, exciting the palate of exactly no one.

The Maillard can work at lower temperatures, and with a lot more water. If you cook a chicken or beef or vegetable stock at a bare simmer for eight or 12 hours, the result is still a brown, fragrant liquid-a dead giveaway that the Maillard has occurred.

But most of us aren't cooking stocks for that many hours, and none of us are boiling a steak for anywhere close to that period of time. Instead, we're roasting, frying, and grilling. These cooking processes happen relatively fast, in minutes rather than hours, and for the Maillard to happen quickly, we need to drive off enough moisture to break free of that 212° cap.

By cooking a steak in a ripping-hot skillet, you can dehydrate its surface thoroughly enough that the temperatures on that surface will begin to climb, to upwards of 300°F (149°C). At that point, the Maillard reaction will kick into full gear, creating new flavors, aromas, and the characteristic brown colors that give the reaction its more commonplace name, the "browning reaction."

This is why it can be a smart move to pat your meat dry with towels or let it dry in the fridge for several hours before you cook it. It's also why you should salt your meat either more than 45 minutes in advance of cooking (allowing enough time for the salt to draw out moisture through osmosis from the meat, which then reabsorbs that salty brine, turning the meat more tender and moist) or immediately before (allowing you to avoid significant moisture loss through osmosis altogether). Ideally, you'll have enough time to combine the two using a technique called dry-brining: salting the meat generously, then letting it air-dry in the fridge at least overnight and up to a few days before cooking. You'll end up with meat that's deeply seasoned while also sporting a nicely dried surface, perfectly primed for maximum Maillard once roasted or seared.

Proteins and Sugars

Heat, moisture, and time may be key to getting the Maillard reaction going, but without proteins and sugars to work with, it simply won't happen. Proteins are long chains of amino acids, crumpled up like wads of paper. Some of them are Maillard-susceptible, meaning they really love to bond with sugars. But not just any sugar will do. Molecules of complex sugars, like starches or table sugars, are too big to react with Maillard proteins. Instead, these proteins require "reducing sugars," which are essentially simple sugars that attract amino acids at certain moisture and temperature levels.

That's a critical point: The Maillard reaction starts with a somewhat limited set of proteins and sugar molecules, and, as these bond and mix over time, more and more new molecules are added to the equation. It's kind of an incestuous molecular orgy, when you stop to think about it. (Gross! And also...yum!) These promiscuous molecules mix and match over and over, billions and trillions of times per second, on the surface of a food, forming a growing, recursive, recombinatory aroma and flavor engine.

This engine is influenced by temperature, time, and pH-all things that home cooks can control. If you want to make lots of flavor and aroma compounds, just raise the pH a little with baking soda (as Kenji does to make quick-caramelized onions for his Pressure Cooker French Onion Soup). Looking for a crisp, browned crust? Just lower the pH with a little acid, or increase the temperature. Want a little of both? Frying in fats gives you the best of both worlds.

But...Why Do We Like It?

Let's think about the humble potato for a moment. A raw potato, most of us would agree, is pretty unappealing. Sure, you can eat a raw potato, and it won't hurt you-after all, it's just a large lump of concentrated starch, and starch is energy that's essential to our survival. But, thanks to the twists and turns of our evolution, we humans can no longer efficiently digest that raw spud. Our digestive system would struggle to break down a potato's complex starches into simpler ones, and it would fail to extract many of the nutrients hidden inside. Cooking breaks down the starches and unlocks those nutrients, improving their ability to be absorbed into our bodies.

When we cut up a potato and then roast it, a sequence of events takes place. First, the water on the exposed surfaces mostly boils off, bursting the starches open into a fluffy mass and breaking them down into simpler sugars. As the heat on those surfaces increases due to the loss of water, the proteins and broken-down sugars begin to break down even more, then recombine. A familiar faint-brown color emerges on the surface of each potato chunk. Some of the various protein-sugar molecules created on the surface of the now-cooked potato will lift off into the hot air above the pan, wafting toward your nose. That smell of roasted potatoes tells your body that it's in the presence of a food that can provide it with nutrients it not only needs but can readily use. Take a bite, and your mouth confirms-it's delicious.

Now, I can see some of you in the back saying, "Wait a minute-mashed potatoes are my fave, and they aren't Maillard-ed at all!" You make an important point: Boiled and steamed potatoes, because of the high volume of water present during those relatively short cooking processes, do not undergo the Maillard reaction, yet can still produce delicious results. I'd argue, though, that these potatoes only really become delicious once they're mixed with some other source of flavor and aroma, like butter. Butter's main flavor molecule is called butyric acid, and butyrates, it just so happens, are also the primary aroma molecules produced by the Maillard reaction when meats are roasted. Almost always, the path leads back to the Maillard reaction.

There's More to Maillard Than Just Maillard

Here's the next thing you need to know: The Maillard reaction isn't the only reaction that can happen to those building blocks of protein, sugar, and water-and, depending on the ratios of those building blocks, you can get different effects out of the Maillard reaction itself.

Cookie dough, for example, is made up of the same building blocks as a steak. What differentiates the two is the proportions: A steak is obviously much higher in protein, while cookies have a lot more sugar. This has a profound effect not only on the way in which the Maillard reaction occurs, but also on the degree to which these foods experience other, related reactions, like caramelization.

Caramelization is what occurs when sugars are heated and begin to react with water in a process known as hydrolysis, breaking down and reforming into a complex, sweet, nutty, and slightly bitter substance known as... caramel. I like to think of caramelization as a first cousin to the Maillard reaction. When protein levels are low, sugar levels are high, and the temperature is north of 350°F (177°C)-such as in a batch of cookies baking in the oven-caramelization becomes a much more prominent factor. Like the Maillard reaction, caramelization also produces a darker color and more complex flavor, which is one of the reasons the two are often mistaken for each other.

Keep in mind that, though different, these reactions are not mutually exclusive. Both the Maillard reaction and caramelization can and do take place in both a steak and a cookie, but they produce markedly different, often complementary, flavors and aromas in each.

A steak is made of muscle, which is mostly protein and water and comparatively little sugar; the high concentration of protein leads to a Maillard reaction that yields more flavor molecules and fewer aromatic ones. Cookies, on the other hand, are the opposite: With a high volume of sugar and relatively little protein, the Maillard reaction produces more aromatic compounds and fewer flavor molecules.

On the other hand, because cookies have more sugar, they also undergo more robust caramelization, which contributes flavors that the Maillard reaction didn't. The steak, meanwhile, is short on Maillard-produced aromas, but thankfully, the scent of its lightly singed fat does the trick, contributing the aroma it might otherwise have lacked. The ability to leverage both of these processes can help us create more delicious food.

My grandfather used to say that cooking by recipes alone would have never given us the magic that is chicken and waffles. Sure, a recipe can show you how to make each one separately, but it's experimentation that taught us that putting both together tastes better. Knowledge of the Maillard reaction reveals my grandfather was even more right than he knew. Chicken and waffles go so well together because they are the perfect combination of different kinds of Maillard reactions. In the waffles, it's a sugar-heavy Maillard that's high on aroma and low on flavor; in the protein-heavy chicken, it's the opposite. Together, slathered in maple syrup (hello, caramelization!), you have an ideal science-driven meal just begging to be consumed.

It's another reminder that cooking is just edible science-the Maillard reaction is our geeky foundation, recipes our experiments, and you, our scientist, whose sustenance, satisfaction, and, ultimately, survival depend on the results.

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An Introduction to the Maillard Reaction: The Science of Browning, Aroma, and Flavor

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If you're a regular reader of Serious Eats, you've definitely seen us refer to the Maillard reaction time and again. That's because the Maillard reaction is responsible for the browned, complex flavors that make bread taste toasty and malty, burgers taste charred, and coffee taste dark and robust.

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A disher a a piece of equipment that helps scoop cookies, dough, fruit and much more.

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Caramelization is the oxidation of sugar, a process used extensively in cooking for the resulting nutty flavor and brown color. Caramelization is a type of non-enzymatic browning reaction.

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Creaming method. Also known as the 'sugar-shortening' method, the sugar and shortening fat are blended together first and then creamed by added mixing. During creaming, small air cells are formed and then incorporated into the mix. ... Sugar and shortening are creamed at a medium speed until soft and light.

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This method is one you need to master in baking. It is used for cookies, cakes and so many baked goods. This is an essential method that once mastered you can follow just about any baking recipe by only looking at the ingredients. To properly do the creaming method you need a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. You need fat and sugar and a little patience. Doing this properly will give you successful baked goods every time.

What You Need

Sugar

Fat (butter, shortening or some other type of fat)

How to Do the Creaming Method

1. Make sure your fat is room temperature (especially if using butter)

2. Add your butter and sugar to your stand mixer.

3. On medium speed cream together your butter and sugar, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go.

4. The sugar crystals are cutting holes into your fat and creating air pockets.

5. The color and texture will drastically change over the few minutes you let it cream for.

6. It should get light, fluffy and the sugar should be almost dissolved and be the texture of a wet sand.

After this step is properly done you can go onto adding your eggs one at a time and then your dry ingredients.

Tip: This step is so important because it can determine the density of your final baked product. It's great to master it!

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This method is one you need to master in baking. It is used for cookies, cakes and so many baked goods. This is an essential method that once mastered you can follow just about any baking recipe by only looking at the ingredients.