The Easiest Things to Bake at Home
Baking can be a relaxing activity to help pass time during an idle day, with results that look beautiful and taste delicious.
From sweet treats to savory ones, here are some of the easiest items you can bake. Simply follow these straightforward recipes and preheat your oven.
1. Muffins
Muffins are one of the most beloved baked goods on the market, offering sweeter versions of scones and biscuits that can quickly satisfy sweet cravings in both children and adults alike. Plus, their ease of preparation makes them perfect snacks for when your little one gets hungry mid-afternoon!
Muffins are delicious breakfast treats adorned with fruit, nuts or chocolate chips for an instant breakfast sandwich experience. One easy way to distinguish a muffin from its cupcake counterpart is its lack of frosting – something frosting-topped treats don’t offer.
Traditional muffin-making techniques involve mixing wet and dry ingredients together, with wet being added in proportions determined by ratios such as flour:sugar or eggs:flour. These changes ultimately determine how they impact texture and flavor in the final muffin product.
By employing this method, milk, egg, oil (or melted butter) are quickly added to dry ingredients while stirring quickly until all streaks of flour have been thoroughly mixed into the batter and no visible streaks remain – this helps prevent gluten formation that could result in tough muffins.
2. Bread
Baking bread is one of the easiest projects, making it ideal for beginners or kids just starting out. Not only can it provide hours of entertainment and relieve boredom, but its satisfaction makes for a satisfying end product! We have plenty of easy bread recipes available here from quick breads (chocolate banana, anyone?) to classic cakes as well as more savory projects such as sheet pan pizza and crispy fries – something is sure to satisfy everyone in this collection.
This recipe was initially published in July 2018 and has been modified since to ensure freshness, accuracy and content. Additionally, it has been reviewed and approved by the American Diabetes Association’s culinary team.
3. Cakes
Cake baking presents many with the ultimate baking challenge. Due to the complexity involved in their construction and the potential pitfalls arising from using too much or too little flour (or failing to grease pans properly) mistakes can easily occur during cake baking.
Once you master the fundamentals, however, cake baking becomes truly amazing. Like other types of baked goods, cakes can be filled and frosted to create different desserts; additionally, they can be decorated to look gorgeous for special celebrations in life.
At its core, baking is an exact science; to achieve optimal results every time, use the necessary equipment, read and follow all instructions carefully and bring ingredients up to room temperature before beginning your recipe. This will ensure they mix properly together for delicious cake creations!
There are plenty of simple cake recipes out there perfect for beginners. Tori Avey’s chocolate cobbler recipe can be completed easily by anyone while Natasha’s Kitchen only requires four steps for their peach keen cake recipe.
4. Galettes
Galettes are one of the easiest things to make. A freeform tart with crisp pastry (that can either be carefully crimped or just pinched together for a rustic finish), they typically include thinly sliced ingredients such as fruit tossed with sugar or seasonal vegetables combined with herbs and cheeses for fillings that range from delicious sweet bites to hearty meals.
Galettes offer you the freedom to personalize them to suit any taste, making them one of the most beloved vegetarian and vegan-friendly dishes. Indeed, you could say the galette represents an entirely new culinary frontier for those wanting to create unique masterpieces in the form of galette baking.
Once your batter has been mixed, the next step should be rolling out and filling your dough. To prevent sticky rolling pin sessions, lightly flour your work surface before taking each ball of pastry out and rolling into circles two inches wider than the diameter of the pan you will be using.
5. Cupcakes
Cupcakes are one of the easiest baked treats to create and decorate, making them great for bake sales, showers or weeknight desserts. Furthermore, their size makes them easy to personalize and customize; there is an almost limitless combination of frosting colors, sprinkles and cake mix varieties available that you can select.
Cupcakes are often served as casual desserts and come in all kinds of flavors. From sweet to savory and chocolate to vanilla bean frostings and fruits – cupcakes can make any event feel festive! Converting traditional cake recipes into cupcakes is simple by decreasing ingredient ratios and using smaller baking pans.
Cupcakes’ appeal can be traced to their numerous appealing qualities: portable, portion-controlled, quick to make in batches, open to various decoration techniques and relatively affordable production. Furthermore, cupcakes seem uniquely tailored to our modern sensibilities: first described in 1796 in American Cookery book and again 1828 by Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook as small cakes baked using molds before being iced over with frosting or fondant icing.