There is a lot of baking in this book, but only a few recipes require special pans. Most of my baking is done on quarter sheet pans with one-half-inch rims, which are smaller than typical pans and easily fit two per shelf in a standard oven as well as in the refrigerator.
In addition to sheet pans, it’s useful to have muffin tins in both standard and mini sizes. I like the silicone muffin tins, as they clean up more easily than their metal counterparts. A doughnut pan (I like the mini ones) and a canoe-style snack cake pan (to get that true Twinkie shape) are also nice to have.
A few of the recipes also call for cookie cutters. Of course, Cheesy Fish (this page) are still delicious even if they aren’t shaped like fish, but you might make a few more people smile if you pick up the tiny cutter for one dollar.
A solid metal bladed bench scraper makes quick work out of cleaning up any sticky rolled-out doughs and also helps lift fragile pastries. This is a six-dollar investment that you’ll definitely get your money out of. I like the one by Norpro that also has a ruler on it; it’s handy for measuring rolled dough thickness.
Quite a few of the recipes in this book require a blender or a spice grinder. There really isn’t a good substitute for a well-functioning blender if you want to create your own powdered sugar or cheese powder. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars; just make sure you get a blender with a glass canister, a metal blade, and at least a 450-watt motor. It will last you for years.
A spice grinder is also nice to have, mostly for grinding smaller amounts than a blender can easily do, but a blender or a food processor will usually work if you don’t have one.
Want to know the best way to improve your baking? Spend the twenty dollars to get a digital scale. It’s amazing how inaccurate volume measurements for flour can be. According to the back of the flour bag, most flour should be between 120 and 130 grams per cup, but most people will scoop a cup that weighs between 140 and 160 grams.
Your scale doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should give you gram and ounce measurements, have a tare button to set the current weight to zero, and be accurate to within a few grams. To test your scale’s accuracy, weigh one cup of water. It should weigh 8 ounces or about 225 grams.
My husband thinks that a food dehydrator falls into the highest level of kitchen-appliance craziness. That didn’t stop me from getting one. The fact is, a food dehydrator is an incredibly useful thing to have around for making everything from your own dried herbs and spices to homemade cheese powder, and unlike a lot of kitchen appliances, it isn’t easily replicated with tools you already own. Sure, your oven on low will dehydrate, but the higher temperature will cause changes in color and flavor. At a price of around fifty dollars, your biggest problem is going to be where to store your dehydrator (they do take up a lot of space).
If you don’t want to buy a food dehydrator, you can still dehydrate food with your oven. With the oven fan on, turn your oven on and off for about five minutes at a time, keeping the temperature between 150°F and 170°F and using an accurate oven thermometer to constantly monitor the temperature. You’ll need to do this for several hours.
I went for years without a food processor due to lack of counter space and a basic belief that it was unnecessary. I guess that’s the beauty of naïveté: what you don’t know, you don’t miss. While most of the tasks of a food processor can be replicated in some way with a mixer, a blender, or simply a chef’s knife, it’s amazing the time and energy you can save. As with a blender, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on one; in fact, I think the smaller six- or seven-cup processors actually work best for most applications.
Many of the recipes in this book require precise temperature measurements. Whether you are making a caramel or frying up chips, having a working thermometer that measures up to 400°F is critical for achieving the best results. I have tried all sorts of thermometers from the classic clip-on dial candy thermometer to the spendy instant-read Thermapens. In the end, I tend to rely on a basic Taylor clip-on thermometer that I bought at a restaurant supply store. I do recommend testing your thermometer for accuracy every now and then by sticking it into a glass of ice water and then transferring it to a pot of boiling water. It should quickly come up to temperature and read 212°F.
Parchment paper is a baker’s best friend. Not only does it save hours in cleanup, but it also helps your baked goods bake more evenly. It’s also compostable, so you don’t have to worry about landfill space. Having a silicone baking mat or two around is even better since they are quick to clean and less wasteful than parchment, but I still find that baked goods brown a bit more evenly on parchment than on silicone.
I have two things to say about these super sharp cutting tools. First, they can be incredibly dangerous (I’m not the only person that I know who has lost a bit of finger). Second, they’re irreplaceable in the kitchen. There’s simply no faster or better way to get super thin slices of vegetables. Just trust me on this: always, always, always use the finger guard!
I think that every kitchen needs a good stand mixer that has at least three different blade attachments: a paddle, a whisk, and a dough hook. Stand mixers make it easier to stream in liquids or sugars slowly without the need of growing a third arm. But you can use a handheld mixer for all of the recipes in this book that call for a stand mixer.
For beaters, avoid those made with a burnished aluminum finish, which will easily tarnish; all that black film will end up in your baked goods. Yuck.