Four Lifesaving Hacks For When You Run Out Of Baking ingredients!
Claire Ptak is a reputable baker best known for leading the team of bakers that created Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's elegant wedding cake. Kindheartedly, Ptak has shared some of the most useful ingredient hacks, which she employs when she unexpectedly runs out of an essential baking ingredient. This list includes four major ingredients and the everyday food staples you can use to replace them; it is sure to come in handy while the pandemic continues!
This list targets four baking ingredients: buttermilk, eggs, vegetable oil, flour, and sugar. The major trick here is to find a common food staple that will perform the functions of these ingredients and give optimum results.
The following are, therefore, undoubted because a well-known expert, Claire Ptak, recommends them.
1. When you don't have buttermilk, use plain yogurt
Claire Ptak, who owns the London bakery Violet, is no newbie to the baking industry. During a recent interview with Insider, she disclosed that any plain yogurt could be used to replace buttermilk in any recipe.
Just like buttermilk, plain yogurts will help thicken the texture of your mix as well as add a delicious tangy taste to the product.
If you don't have yogurt, then a mixture of milk and either lemon juice or apple cider vinegar will work perfectly. Measurements of the milk and respective acid source should be in a ratio that is sufficient for your recipe, Ptak further advises.
2. Use melted butter or olive oil when you run out of vegetable oil
Vegetable oil is commonly used to make cakes because it produces a very soft, moist, and delicious product. But when you run out of it, don't worry, you can use olive oil and melted butter instead.
Ptak shares that olive oil is the best substitute for vegetable oil since they have the same consistency and features. Melted butter is, therefore, the second-best as it may alter the texture of the end product.
3. Mayonnaise is a good substitute for eggs
Believe it or not, the next best binder you can include in your cake recipe is mayonnaise. Like eggs, mayo acts to bind the other ingredients.
The only downside to using them is that not everyone particularly likes the idea and the fact that if not properly used, the product might end up being salty.
So, Ptak advises that when you want to use mayo as a substitute for eggs in a recipe, don't add salt anymore.
4. Flour and sugar varieties can be used interchangeably
Different recipes may direct you to use a specific type of sugar or flour. Well, if you are out of the type required or perhaps don't even know what it is, Ptak says to use what you have!
So, you can swap bread flour for all-purpose flour and brown sugar for granulated sugar. Easy peasy!
However, Ptak notes that this hack may not work when the recipe calls for finesse, e.g., making caramels and other complicated confections.
