Common baking tools

It's also ideal to use for a chocolate fondue pot, though capacity is much less than a standard electric fondue. Decorating tools are a must if you plan on making birthday or special occasion cakes or cupcakes.

Cake decorating tools include colored writing gels and icings, preformed flowers and trims, and the icing bags and tips you need to apply frosting or cream. If you plan on making a lot of decorated cakes, a revolving cake stand makes the task easier and a cake decorating book can give you ideas and help you grow your decorating skill.

Also called breadmakers, these machines allow you to make homemade bread without having to spend time kneading it. Even the partial dough breadmaking process saves lots of time and effort. And making bread at home saves on your food bill. There's a slight downside, though, most tend to eat more bread when they make it at home - it's so hard to resist, but you can make healthier bread because you can experiment with whole grains to your heart's content.

You also get to control the additives that go into your family's bread. Either type of mixer is very convenient for mixing cake batter or whipping desserts and toppings even potatoes , but a stand mixer has an edge over a hand mixer. You can turn it on to mix and walk away to gather or add ingredients, work on the project or start cleaning up. If you want to be able to knead bread with a stand mixer, it should have a kneading or dough hook; and for whipping - a whisk attachment.

A hand mixer may more readily fit within your budget and is easy to store, but it must be guided through the mixing stage and turned off to add ingredients. A hand mixer does not have enough power to work or mix dough, and is used mostly to mix wet or soft ingredients. If you lack counter space, a hand mixer may be the better choice for you even though its function is limited when compared to a stand model.

If you plan on making several loaves of bread, you would need a larger processor cup , but a cup unit would be sufficient for standard dessert or cake batters. A counter or hand blender can be helpful when it comes to preparing sauces, butter tart, and dessert fillings - mostly soft and liquid foods. Find something that works well for your baking. Now that your kitchen is equipped for baking and you have all the pastry tools and baking utensils you need, your next task is to find great baking recipes to try out.

There's a good variety of baking cookbooks on the market and you can also find lots of recipes from About's Food Guides. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.

Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Featured Video. Rolling Pins. The 8 Best Rolling Pins of Mixing Bowls. The 9 Best Mixing Bowls of Cookie Cutters, Presses, Rosette Makers.

The 8 Best Cookie Presses in A rolling pin helps flatten out and shape everything from pie and pastry crust to cookie dough and biscuits. For a beginner, the roller type is easiest to use and requires less pressure than the rod style. Get a good-quality wood pin and it'll be the only you ever need to buy.

When you're ready to bake your first pie no doubt using the rolling pin above to flatten the pie crust , you'll need a pan to bake it in. A 9-inch glass pie dish is likely all you'll need to start off, although a sturdy aluminum one is great for blind baking and for preparing graham cracker or cookie crusts. For cakes, you'll want to pick up a pair of round 8-inch cake pans.

Most cake recipes make two layers, either 8-inch or 9-inch, which means you'll need two, otherwise, you won't be able to bake both layers at the same time. Sturdy aluminum is best and sticks with pans with sides that are two inches high to give your cakes room to rise.

While the sky is the limit when it comes to the various seasonal, specialty, and other geometric shapes, the place to start for a beginner is with a set of plain round cutters, and maybe a set of fluted round ones. Each set contains various sizes and will help you cut out all kinds of doughs, like cookies and biscuits, not to mention empanadas and ravioli. A dough scraper, also called a bench scraper, is simply a square of stainless steel with a handgrip along one edge.

It's used for working with sticky bread doughs, dividing and lifting portions, and scraping extra bits off your work surface. Dough scrapers are also handy for pulling up delicate pastry dough and transferring it to a pie pan without breaking.

A pastry brush is useful for coating the tops of pastries and pie crusts with an egg wash or milk, or for greasing baking pans with melted butter or shortening. Once upon a time, brushes were made of animal hair, but these days, a better option is one with silicone bristles, which don't fall out and are heat- and bacteria- resistant as well. Offset spatulas, sometimes called cake spatulas or decorating spatulas, feature a narrow metal blade with a wooden handle.

The metal has a pair of bends in it so that the blade sits about half an inch lower than the handle. This makes it easier to frost the center of a cake without your knuckles bumping into the edges. This versatile tool is ideal for scraping every last bit of batter from the inside of your mixing bowl. Get one with a long handle. Often the job at hand is simply to mix some ingredients. There's no need to whisk air in the mixture and breaking out the stand mixer would be overkill.

That's where the humble wooden spoon comes in. It's often suggested as a suitable wrapping for fruit cake before placing it in a tin. It can be used in the freezer as well as the microwave and oven. If you are using it for lining a cake tin, you should also lightly butter or oil the paper before spooning in the cake mix. Useful for so many functions both sweet and savoury, the food processor can also be used for many cake recipes and is good for rubbing fat into flour when making pastry.

Read our review of food processors. For the price, this machine packs a punch, coming loaded with various functions. It's easy to use and does the basics well. It has a neat footprint and its smart design would look good on show in a kitchen. If you like to decorate cakes with marzipan or sugarpaste, then spacers will help you achieve an even thickness. These can be bought from specialist suppliers. People often under or overestimate the size of a teaspoon or tablespoon. Measuring spoons ensure an accurate amount is used.

If you like to use American recipes, it's also worth buying a set of measuring cups to avoid tricky conversions. Read our review of measuring spoons. This cup set looks sleek and fresh. The handles have a non-stick coating, which is great for buttery fingers. Baking recipes often include oil, milk or other liquid ingredients, so a measuring jug is essential for getting the quantities right. As a measuring jug is needed for so many cooking purposes, it's always useful to have one to hand.

It's useful to have at least two large mixing bowls as many recipes require more than one. Choose glass, metal or plastic according to preference but it's worth having heatproof ones so that you can put them in the microwave or over simmering water when melting chocolate. Read our review of mixing bowls.

This nest of bowls is an impressive all-in-one option. The large mixing bowl is 4. Neatly stacked inside, the colander and sieve are big enough to tackle standard tasks. The handles are easy to grip and the set is lightweight.

A palette knife is a long, thin implement with a rounded end. It has a wide range of uses, including smoothing on icing or cake fillings, scraping bowls and cutting butter into flour. Larger palette knives, like this 13in one, are perfect for icing larger cakes as their wide metal edge helps cover more surface area.

A pastry brush can be used to glaze your pastry with egg wash or milk or for brushing filo pastry with melted butter. It's also good for brushing off excess icing sugar when cake decorating. Read our review of pastry brushes. This professional-standard natural brush comes with a super-strong plastic handle for easy cleaning.

The brush is also nice and flat and very affordable. A fine sieve made from metal or plastic is ideal for sifting flour and icing sugar, which is highly recommended when cake-making. Buy It: J. This baking tool certainly comes in handy if you are a big tart fan of fruit tarts.

This pan has a latch that opens so you can remove the sides, making it great for authentic cheesecakes and deep-dish pizza. For most cake recipes, just a round or rectangular baking pan is all you need. Jelly rolls, cake rolls , and pumpkin bars all make the case for having this pan in your pantry, but most cake, brownie, and bar recipes can be made in a rectangular baking pan. If you do have a jelly roll pan, you can also use it for toasting nuts and roasting veggies , but a sheet pan will usually accomplish the same tasks.

While having this kitchen appliance can certainly speed some recipes along, you can also usually get by without one. You can crush cookies and crackers for crusts with a rolling pin, and you can mix up piecrusts in a good old-fashioned bowl with a pastry cutter or two knives. If you're a beginner baker who's just starting out or a master chef looking to declutter , start with this list of baking tool must-haves.

We'll help you set up a baking essentials kit for beginners with 21 pastry tools. Building your essential baking tools and equipment inventory starts here. By Andrea Beck Updated August 18, Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by our editorial team. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.

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