Tip No: 3

Good results in baking depend on accurate measurements, and the best way to guarantee accuracy is to weigh your ingredients. Use a scale and you won’t have to worry about how you scooped your flour or packed your brown sugar, because you’ll know for sure you are using the correct amount. I’ve scrupulously gone through these recipes and matched up the weights of ingredients with their corresponding volume measurements. Now that I have spent time testing recipes and baking with both volume and weight measurements, I am eager to get all home bakers onto the scale bandwagon. The weather, the bin in which the ingredient was stored, the measuring cup used, how tired I was—all of these factors and more contributed to inconsistencies when I tested with volume versus weight measurements. Sometimes the difference was insignificant, but other times it was enough of a discrepancy to throw off the whole recipe. If you want to guarantee that what you bake will come out great, buy a scale. You will thank me for it.