Easy Baking Hacks for the Home Baker

Don’t have an ingredient you need to finish your recipe? No worries! With these easy baking tips, you can get the ingredients you need in minutes!

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re baking and you run out of one ingredient?

Enter panic mode. I’ve been there too. But, over the years, I’ve picked up on a few of the best easy baking hacks that have saved me from a trip to the grocery store for only one ingredient.

I use this list of substitutions all the time in my kitchen. But I use the following list when I’m baking. A quick swap for a missing ingredient saves me tons of money! Because we all know that a trip to the grocery store for ‘one thing’ always leads to a small cart full!

Keep reading to discover 17 of my best tips to make you a better baker.

Tip: You might want to print this page and tape it to the inside of your spice cabinet or pantry, or any other place that would be handy to know how to make pastry flour or substitute baking soda for baking powder!

EASY BAKING TIPS

1. Cake Flour

Use a measuring cup and measure 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Scoop 2 tablespoons of flour OUT and replace with 2 Tablespoons of cornstarch. Sift flour and cornstarch together 5 times. Makes 1 cup.

Note: Arrowroot works as a substitution, but your item will bake more quickly, and the resulting texture will be different. For best results, use cornstarch.

2. Pastry Flour

Combine 1 ⅓ cups of all-purpose flour with ⅔ cups of cake flour. Makes 2 cups.

3. Self-Rising Flour

Combine 1 cup of all-purpose flour with 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt.

Note: Because self-rising flour contains both baking powder AND salt, use only in recipes that specifically call for self-rising flour.

4. Bread Flour

This simple easy baking hack involves combining 1 cup of all-purpose flour with 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten.

5. All-Purpose Flour

Essentially, all-purpose flour is whole-grain flour sifted to remove the outer portions of the grain. If you run out but still have whole-grain flour, make your own all-purpose flour.

6. Oat Flour

This is an easy way to stretch flour if you’re starting to run out. It’s easy (and frugal) to make your own oat flour from oatmeal. Depending on the recipe, you can substitute up to ¼ of the flour without anyone noticing the difference!

As a rule of thumb, goods that bake up (like cake) should use less. Goods that don’t (brownies, cookies, etc.) can use more.

7. Powdered Sugar

Measure 1 cup of white sugar in a blender or food processor. Process until very, very fine and powdery smooth. Use immediately.

Note: This method works for almost every type of granulated sugar out there, including coconut sugar and turbinado sugar.

8. Brown Sugar

This simple trick involves combining 1 cup of granulated sugar with 2 tablespoons of molasses. Keep adding small amounts of molasses to get the texture just right.

Tip: I stopped buying brown sugar altogether thanks to this little hack. It’s easy to halve, and in recipes that use less than ½ cup of brown sugar, I just use granulated sugar instead!

9. Baking Soda

Replace 1 teaspoon of baking soda with 2 teaspoons of double-acting baking powder.

Note: Be sure to use aluminum-free baking powder to avoid the bitter taste of baking powder.

10. Baking Powder

Combine ¼ teaspoon of baking soda plus a rounded ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar. Makes approximately 1 teaspoon.

11. Cream of Tartar

Replace ½ tsp of cream of tartar with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice or distilled vinegar.

12. Buttermilk

Find hope in these different ways to make buttermilk. From milk with apple cider vinegar, to Greek yogurt with lemon juice, I’m sure you’ve got everything you need to pull at least one of them off!

13. Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

For one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, mix 3 tablespoons of natural cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed) with melted unsalted butter. Chocolate chips are a great substitute for baking chocolate too.

14. Sweetened Condensed Milk

If you run out, you can make Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk with just two ingredients AND use just about any sweetener you want. Plus, you can make Dairy-Free Sweetened Condensed Milk too.

Heads up, this one takes a little bit to make!

15. Olive Oil

Pour a little olive oil into your measuring cups and measuring spoons before pouring in your sticky ingredients. This simple step allows the sticky ingredients to come out of the cups and spoons seamlessly without having to scrape them.

16. Vanilla

Usually, when I’m out of vanilla, I will simply omit it in a recipe. However, any of these 15 Vanilla Substitutes work in a pinch!

17. Eggs

Running out of eggs is probably the biggest problem I face in the kitchen. With growing kids needing a quick breakfast, eggs are their favorite! When baking, I will use one of these egg substitutes to save our eggs for meals.

MORE BAKING TIPS & TRICKS

• Make a double batch of everything, from pie crust to chocolate chip cookies, then freeze it with this step-by-step freezing tutorial.
• Make a flour shaker so that when you “lightly flour the surface with flour,” you’re not accidentally adding copious amounts of flour to the recipe.
• Have whole grains but no flour? Make flour without a grain mill with this 2-step tutorial.
• Easily convert bread machine recipes to by-hand homemade bread recipes with a simple conversion method.

BEST EASY BAKING RECIPES

Each easy baking recipe in this list is delicious! From classic pumpkin bread to no knead bread, baking from scratch is easy.

• Mini Chocolate Chip Scones
• Homemade Soft Pretzels
• Buttery Dinner Biscuits
• Chocolate Zucchini Bread
• Easy Brioche Bread
• No Knead Bread
• 5 Ingredient Banana Bread Muffins
• No Bake Brownie Bites

DELICIOUS EASY DESSERT RECIPES

It’s much healthier eating dessert recipes you make at home versus store-bought baked goods.

• Peanut Butter Cookies
• Chocolate Cake Mix
• Pumpkin Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
• Slow Cooker Peach Cobbler
• Slab Apple Pie
• Fluffy Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Shortbread Cookies