The easy guide to baking

Our guide gives you everything you need to know about baking, including tips and recipes. Once you've baked your own, you'll never go back to shop-bought!

There are lots of great reasons to bake your own. Apart from the fact it's lots of fun and something you can enjoy with the kids (don't miss our cooking with kids recipes), it's better for you than shop-bought stuff. After all, do you really know how fresh anything is from the shop? What products have they put in it to make it last? Will the additives be bad for your kids? And to top it all off, baking your own bread, cakes etc. just taste so much better!

Arm yourself with baking tools!
Make sure you've got the right utensils to hand or you could be making your job a whole lot harder. Sometimes there are good reasons why you don't want to beat your cake to a flat pulp in a blender (e.g. anything using self-raising flour) but then again, why whisk by hand if the machine can do it?

Your essential baking tools:
Wooden and metal spoons, silicone spatula, plastic dough scraper, brush, rolling pin, measuring spoons and jug, sharp knife and palette knife.
Hand whisk, scales, mixing bowls (you always need more of these than you think!), tins, sieve, wooden board, , timer and greaseproof paper.

And when your hands just won't cut it...
Electric mixer, blender, electric hand mixer and food processor.