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5 Helpful Tips For Holiday Baking

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Snow dances down from the heavens, peppermint and pine scent the air, and jolly carols play wherever you go. It’s also the time for holiday baking and cookies covering every surface of your kitchen counter. Delicious as all these holiday treats are, baking is very time-consuming. 

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to ensure that there’s still joy infused into this holiday tradition, rather than being overwhelmed by the need to bake and bake and bake. Here are some of our top tips for holiday baking to help you get the most out of the holidays!

#1. Practice, Practice, Practice

holiday baking tips

If you can start baking sooner rather than later, this gives you the time to make some test batches. Taste-testing these practice batches allows you to fine-tune your baking for the tastiest possible treats. Plus, holiday baking takes a while, but the resulting treats are gone in the blink of an eye. Practicing also gives you and your loved ones more goodies to try before the real holidays roll around. 

#2. Prepare Thyself

While cooking is an art and something that you can really experiment and have fun with, baking is more of a science. A measurement that is off or a batter that is over-mixed can impact the end result. Hone your skills by attending a cooking class or two.

If you’re a scratch-baking beginner, we actually have an ongoing blog series of tips and tricks to help you out! To learn more about how to better prepare yourself for success in holiday baking, check out the following blogs:

To give you the general gist of those articles: ensure that you have everything that you need prior to getting started and follow the recipe to a T. The more organized you are and the more careful you are to follow the instructions, the more likely it is that your holiday treats will turn out well!

Another way you can prepare yourself is by making some goodies in advance! Check out our previous blog, How Far In Advance Should You Start Holiday Baking? 6 Helpful Tips For Storing Cookies, to learn more. 

#3. Ensure That Your Ingredients Are Fresh

holiday baking tips

How long exactly has that flour been sitting in your cupboard? While some dishes, like casseroles, are great for tossing together random ingredients that you want to use up before they go bad, when it comes to holiday baking, you want to ensure that your ingredients are fresh. The fresher the ingredients, the tastier the treats. 

It’s good to be aware of the shelf-life of baking basics.

  • Flour’s shelf life depends on the type of flour that you have. Wheat flour usually lasts about 6 months when unopened. White flour can last up to a year. To help your flour last longer, refrigerate it.
  • Sugar can last you up to 2 years before it is recommended that you dispose of it.
  • Baking soda can last up to 3 years unopened, and up to 6 months after opening.
  • Baking powder can last up to 18 months unopened, and up to 6 months after opening.

Keep an eye on the expiration dates. Remember that depending on your environmental conditions, some ingredients may vary in how long they last before they expire. How you store them impacts how long they remain fresh too. If you’re unsure of whether or not the ingredients are still good, it’s best not to risk it. 

#4. Mind The Decorations

One of the best parts of holiday baking is decorating your treats festively. Be careful with this, though. Not all decorations that can be used on food are edible. There’s a difference between something that is food-safe, which means that it can safely come into contact with food, and something that is safe to eat. 

It can be confusing trying to figure out what decorations are actually edible. A tip for you: if the decoration is edible, it should say so on the packaging. If it does not and only sayings something like “food-safe” or “nontoxic”, it’s best to err on the side of caution and assume that it will make your treats look pretty, but that it isn’t safe to eat.

#5. Make It A Family Affair

holiday baking tips

Bring magic and new traditions to the holiday season by getting your loved ones involved in holiday baking. Many people enjoy decorating sugar cookies and the like. Holiday baking together is a wonderful way to form memories together and to start new traditions you can continue to enjoy for years to come. 

Remember: holiday baking is supposed to be fun! If you find yourself getting overwhelmed and stressed, there’s no shame in using box mixes or picking up a box of cookies from your local grocery store or bakery.

Quality Baking Ingredients And Equipment For Your Holiday Baking

Kitchen Kneads is here to provide you with the quality equipment and ingredients you need for your holiday baking. Click through our site or stop by our store in Ogden, UT, and let us help you bring tasty magic to the holiday season.

Contact us with any questions you may have about our products or services!

There’s no doubt about the fact that Thanksgiving dinner is a beast to prepare. The turkey in and of itself is an entire event, not to mention the sides and dessert. While people joke about food comas and stuffing themselves with food, if you’re the one cooking the dinner, you may be wondering what you can do in order to make it more manageable. Trying to do an entire Thanksgiving dinner all in one day is quite a feat, especially with the turkey claiming the oven for its own for hours on end.

Fortunately, there are indeed things that you can do in order to maximize efficiency and make Thanksgiving more manageable. You don’t want to spend a holiday stressed out and only really be able to enjoy it when you’re actually eating or after all the dishes are taken care of. You deserve to be able to enjoy the holiday the same as everyone else, and these tips can help you do just that.

Thanksgiving manageable efficiency

#1. Plan Ahead

In order to avoid a day of stress and trying to make everything happen at once, do your future self a favor and plan ahead. You don’t need to make everything the day of, after all! You can come up with a schedule for yourself of what days you’ll be making this or preparing that. While the turkey itself needs to be made the day of, as do mashed potatoes, a lot of the prep work and some dishes can be made in advance.

For instance, you can dedicate a day solely to chopping veggies and storing them in the fridge. While chopping vegetables is easy, it’s very time-consuming, so you can save yourself a lot of time by having them pre-chopped and ready to just toss into your dishes. 

You can also figure out what dishes can be made ahead. For instance, if you’re a stuffing or a casserole family, a lot of these types of dishes actually taste better when made in advance! This is because you’re giving the ingredients time to get to know each other, leaving you with more delicious and flavorful dishes. 

It’s also helpful to know what can’t be made ahead. The turkey, mashed potatoes, and rolls should all be made the day of, so that they taste their best. 

#2. Don’t Put Off Going To The Grocery Store

Or else you’ll be one of the masses crowding the aisles the day before – talk about stress! See what you can buy before the week itself, like canned goods. While all stores, grocery or not, are busier during the holidays, you can save yourself time and preserve your piece of mind by hitting the grocery store either the week before Thanksgiving or earlier on in the week of. 

This also helps to ensure that you can find everything that you need. Turkeys are very high in demand, so unless your family does something different, like a ham or lamb or a vegan option, you want to ensure you pick out your turkey sooner rather than later to ensure that you select a good one.

#3. There’s No Shame In Premade Dishes

If you’re a beginner, you may feel the need to show off all the skills you’re learning and present your loved ones with an extravagant dinner. Remember, though, that there’s no shame in using boxed mixes or premade dishes! You can still show off your skills, but you can save yourself time and money by opting for cranberry sauce from a can, rather than homemade. 

#4. Don’t Be Afraid To Delegate

If you’re the chef in the family, you may be tempted to lay claim to the kitchen and snap at anyone who dares enter your realm and interrupt your process. Don’t be afraid to delegate, though! If you are having guests, you can ask them to bring a dish that they specialize in, like your best friend’s exceptional pumpkin tarts or your sibling’s mouthwatering scalloped potatoes.

Play to everyone’s strengths. If there’s a niece or nephew running around who is hopeless in the kitchen, assign setting the table to them. If there’s a loved one who wants to learn or help, assign them something easy, like mashing the potatoes.

Teamwork makes the dream work, after all. Everything tastes so much more delicious when made with love and shared memories.

Thanksgiving manageable efficiency

#5. Take A Cooking Class

Want to learn how to make a Thanksgiving dinner because you’ve never done it before? Or perhaps you want to learn how to make some new dishes or some tips and tricks from a pro. You can sign up for our Holiday Baking Class with Chef Brad, who will teach you recipes like mushroom galette and make-ahead rolls.

You can register for the event here. 

Kitchen Kneads is here to help you with your Thanksgiving cooking needs. Whether you need some more equipment or some ingredients or you want to learn, don’t hesitate to browse our store – either online or in person! Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you. 

Chocolate is divine. Whether it’s the cheap stuff from the candy aisle of the grocery store or the fancy goods from a professional chocolatier, the melt-in-your-mouth goodness is an essential part of the holiday season. But what about homemade chocolate? It’s pretty much law that everything homemade just tastes better, after all. So, how hard is it to make chocolate candy yourself?

homemade chocolate candy making

In truth, it just takes practice! Just imagine how much more special the holidays will be when you’re able to treat your loved ones to chocolate goodies you made yourself. Plus, homemade = so much more freedom in the realm of flavors and customizations. What decadence. 

With research, practice, and maybe a cooking class or two, you too can learn how to make your very own homemade chocolate. Here are some of our top chocolate candy making tips to make the learning curve easier for you and set you on the path to becoming the chocolatier of your family.

Do You Need To Use Raw Cacao Beans?

So, if you hear homemade chocolate, you might be worried that this means you’ll be working with raw cacao beans. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

You can breathe a sigh of relief here, because even professional chocolatiers rarely process raw cacao beans themselves. They leave this to processing plants and then stick to chocolate right from the bean. 

Invest In High-Quality Chocolate

Chocolate Blocks Thumbnail

Sure, you can use the same semi-sweet chocolate chips that you’d dump in your chocolate cookies for your chocolate candy making. However, these can be thick and difficult to work with. For an easier time with your chocolate candy making, don’t be afraid to invest in higher-quality chocolate. Not only will higher-end chocolates be easier to work with than the commercial chocolate you snack on, but the end result can be so much tastier.

However, if you don’t want to use high-end chocolate, you can still have success with your homemade chocolate! Just know that it will likely be a more difficult process.

Keep Coconut Oil Nearby

You know how we just mentioned how if you use a cheaper, commercial chocolate, it will likely be thicker and more challenging to work with? Coconut oil is your friend here. If your chocolate gets too thick, you can add a bit of coconut oil to it in order to thin it out. 

Don’t like coconut oil or have an allergy? No worries, there are other options you can use instead. Butter, olive oil, neutral oil, and cocoa butter can all take the place of coconut oil, and many people are more likely to have butter or an oil on hand anyway.

Why do you need to use coconut oil (or a substitute) when making chocolate? You need a binding agent when you make chocolate in order to keep it from melting. Unless you have chocolate ice cream or something like that, chocolate is usually room temperature. Having a binding agent keeps your chocolate solid at room temperature.

Melted Chocolate Kitchen Kneads Ogden, UT Kitchen Supply Store

Mind Your Climate

Where you live can very much impact the tempering process (aka, how you heat and cool the chocolate in order to harden it into a uniform structure). High temperatures and humidity levels can be difficult to work in while cooler climate or parts of the day can make your life easier. 

Tempering is important in order to ensure that your homemade chocolate has a nice smooth texture and shine to it. If your chocolate isn’t tempered properly, you could end up with sticky, soft, or cloudy chocolate. While sometimes people get creative with their chocolates and have fancy cloud-like swirls in them, that’s very different from the cloudiness that results from chocolate that hasn’t been tempered properly. 

Hold Your Molds Up To The Light

This will help you to find any holes in the chocolate that you can then fill in in order to ensure that there’s no fear of the filling oozing out. You can do so much when it comes to molding your chocolate, from fun horse shapes to traditional truffle balls. But in order to ensure that your homemade chocolate come out well, the chocolate needs to fill the mold well. 

Once you’ve ensured that there are no holes, let it set in the freezer, and added any desired filling with the chocolate over top, you pop them back in the freezer. Then, you can just tap them out. It’s important to ensure that you work quickly with molds for the best results. 

Do You Want To Learn More Chocolate Candy Making Tips?

We could go on and on and on about homemade chocolate, but there’s not enough room in this blog for that! If you’d like to give homemade chocolate a go, we have the supplies you need to get started. Keep an eye on our cooking classes page, as we often do cooking classes centered around fun things like this. 

To learn more about our products and cooking classes, please do not hesitate to contact us at Kitchen Kneads today!

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Kitchen Kneads is your one stop shop for quality grains, flour, kitchen appliances and other ingredients. We are Utah’s premiere baking and cooking resource! Questions? 888-881-9957 [email protected]
Kitchen Kneads Ogden, UT Kitchen Supply Store