All-New Cake Mix Doctor - Anne Byrn [7]
Nuts: My nut cabinet is my freezer door where I have sacks of pecan halves, walnuts, and whole and sliced almonds ready for baking. The freezer can keep nuts fresh for six months or more. How long they last really depends on how fresh the nuts were in the first place, how they are packaged, and how many times you open your freezer. Take nuts out of thin plastic bags and store them in heavier resealable plastic bags. Nuts can be chopped and added right to the batter, but nuts will always have more flavor if you toast them first in a 350°F oven until deep brown and fragrant. For brownies, I scatter walnuts or pecans on top of the batter before baking. For Bundt cakes I might place the chopped nuts in the bottom of the pan and pour the batter on top. As the cake bakes, the nuts toast on the bottom, and when the cake is turned out of the pan, the nuts form a crisp and attractive crust on top. Since I don’t use macadamia nuts too often, I buy them just when I plan to make a particular recipe.
Spices: My spice drawer is well stocked for cooking dinner, but my baking needs are simpler. Ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger are my favorite baking spices. Buy spices in small amounts and replenish them as needed for they lose their pungency over time.
The Cake Baker’s Expanded Pantry
Cream cheese: A necessary add-in for sturdy pound cakes and cupcakes, cream cheese makes many cake batters richer and just better! When making cakes, I use reduced-fat cream cheese with no regrets. I don’t buy fat-free, and I prefer regular cream cheese for frostings. That’s because the reduced-fat kind has more moisture and can make the frosting wetter, a disadvantage if you add strawberries to it or are frosting a cake to be served in the summertime in Atlanta humidity.
Make sure cream cheese has had time to come to room temperature so it will blend evenly and not lump up in your cake or frosting. If in doubt, place it in the microwave for ten to thirty seconds. Or just dump it in the mixing bowl by itself and beat it until it softens and is creamy. While cream cheese can be frozen, it gets watery when thawed, so I only buy what I need and store it in the fridge.
Evaporated milk and heavy cream: Keep a can or two of evaporated milk on the pantry shelf. Buy heavy cream when you need it and use it by the date on the carton. In a pinch you can substitute evaporated milk for heavy cream, especially in frostings and fillings.
Buttermilk, sour cream, and yogurt: These are some of my favorite add-ins. They contribute moisture, richness, and character to a cake. Shake buttermilk well before pouring it. I use buttermilk for making pancakes and banana bread, but if you don’t think your family will use up a quart of it, buy buttermilk powder instead and store it in your refrigerator.
Sour cream is a mainstay at our house, and I use full-fat sour cream in rich fillings and frostings and the reduced-fat kind in cake batters. Plain nonfat yogurt is a great substitute wherever sour cream is called for, and it is a lot lower in fat and calories. Flavored yogurts are also fun to bake with—add them to recipes instead of some of the oil and liquid, using lemon yogurt in lemon cakes, coffee in chocolate, and so on—pairing flavors that are compatible.
Coconut: Coconut has moved down on my pantry list this go-round. In the South we can readily find the frozen unsweetened coconut that is so delicious in coconut cake and coconut cream pie. But this ingredient is hard to find outside the South, something I learned after the publication of the first book. Now I simply call for sweetened flaked coconut, found in the baking aisle most everywhere. If you can find unsweetened flaked coconut at the supermarket,