How to put your own twist on recipes -baking edition

Remember when you'd just started baking (or maybe you're just in that stage now)? You'd look up a recipe and follow it religiously -I started like that, stressing out if my cake wasn't ready after the x minutes of prescribed time in the oven or if I was a few grams of butter short. Then I started living on my own and cooking for myself daily and all the rules went out of the window. Sometimes you want to make something but you also can't be bothered to bike to the store in the rain/buy an ingredient you will never use again... And sometimes -or is it just me?- you get confident and think you could make the recipe even better!

This little guide is the fruit of a lot of risk-taking and (some) error, and it's my Easter gift to you! Happy baking :)

Pear and almond tart: filling and dough (I changed both!)

-learn to distinguish what's absolutely necessary, what can be substituted, and what you can just forget about without problems. For example, you can't make cinnamon buns (or at least the proper Swedish ones) without yeast, but in most recipes you can perfectly subtitute plant-based milk for regular milk, and if you don't have an extra egg to brush your pie with before baking, it will taste just as good! (the egg just makes it shiny)

-swap baking soda for baking powder: this one's pretty classic and works in most recipes. Just use twice as much baking powder as you would soda. Careful with using baking soda instead of baking powder though, it can give a funny taste to some recipes

-buttermilk = milk + a squeeze of lemon juice/a few drops of vinegar left for 10 mins

-in most cases, you can safely reduce the amount of sugar a recipe calls for -sometimes I even cut it in half. You can also substitute sugar for other sweeteners (look up the analogies online -for example, for every cup of sugar you're only supposed to use 2/3 cup of maple syrup, and so on), as long as it's not crucial that your mixture be a specific consistency. So this would work better for cakes that you pour in a form than for, say, cookies -because then you'd have to adjust the other ingredients so your batter isn't runny.

-as long as you try and keep the consistency balanced, you'll probably be fine. This means that you should try to find a balance between wet and dry ingredients -so if you're adding runny maple syrup instead of sugar, maybe you need to reduce the liquids (water, orange juice, milk etc) that go into the recipe. 

-fat is mostly a wet ingredient -it's usually oil or butter in traditional recipes. In cakes or cookies, you can try replacing one with the other, and it's also usually safe to reduce the amounts a little bit. To balance out the wet/dry rule, you can add other moist ingredients. Many people use apple sauce, or you can use yoghurt, mashed bananas, some nut butter...Keep in mind that no fat at all will probably not taste good at all -you can't have diet cake but you can have cake that's better for you.

Afternoon treat with my mom's apple cake recipe that I modified by using spelt instead of white flour and yoghurt instead of (more) olive oil and orange juice

-this is kind of an obvious one, but I see spices, chocolate chips, dried fruit  and nuts as suggestions, meaning that I'll omit what I don't have/like, swap for different things, and add whatever I think will go nicely with the flavours of whatever I'm making. Obviously, if you're making carrot cake and you don't have any cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg then it won't taste quite like it's supposed to (which is not to say it can't be good in a non-traditional way), but playing around with recipes makes for some pretty great dishes. For example, I made Jack Monroe's pear and almond tart the other day. She doesn't add any spices at all, but I thought the pear would go really nicely with some cardamom, so in went a few shakes of that. It really took it to the next level for me! Similarly, if you're making an apple crumble but you have strawberries instead, just make the swap -or if you're making chocolate cake and you have an orange lying around, you could add its zest to your cake. Or if you're making banana bread and you want to swap the chocolate chips for walnuts, or raisins, or... you get the idea.  

-healthy stuff can taste reallyy delicious, and I've recently started swapping whole wheat or spelt flour for white flour whenever I can. I find that they give a deeper, nuttier and more satisfying flavour to a lot of recipes, and the extra fiber keeps you satisfied for longer. This works better in some recipes than in others, because in some cases you need the gluten from the white flour to bind stuff, but it should work just fine in cookies, cakes, tarts and things where you don't need a particularly stretchy dough, in general. 

Pear and almond tart: the final product. I used spelt flour instead of white, all butter instead of butter and lard, and added cardamom to the filling. 

-baking times can be confusing because oven power can vary a lot. Preheat your oven, set the timer for less than the recommended time if your oven is powerful, and check to see when it's ready. Use the toothpick test (if you insert a toothpick and it comes out clean then it's done) and if the top is starting to brown perilously, maybe reduce the temperature and/or cover with foil while you finish baking. And remember that if you're baking something smaller, it'll bake faster -so if you split a recipe for a big cake form into two small ones, they will be ready in less time than what the recipe says.  

-again, this might see obvious but try comparing similar recipes and combining them. This can help you be flexible while still having some reassurance that the changes you're making will 'work'.

-finally: trust your instincts, and don't be scared. The more you experiment, the more you'll learn what works and get a 'feel' for things. And then you can really free-style your way around the kitchen!