What does mix mean in baking

As you cream butter, or butter and sugar the best tool is a paddle attachment or flat beaters , the mixture turns fluffier and paler, a direct result of beating air into it. The answer depends on whom you ask. But three minutes should be sufficient to get reasonable aeration. I get superior creaming when I start with refrigerator-cold butter cut into tablespoon-size pieces. During the first minute of creaming, the butter is still too cold to blend with the sugar.

The purpose of this critical step is to grease the flour with the fat and to prevent the formation of gluten, which would make the pastry tough. Starting with cold butter is key. Many tools will do the job of cutting in butter—two table knives, a multi-bladed pastry cutter, or your fingertips—but those that do it quickly and without warming the butter are best.

A whisk is such a useful mixing tool because its wire tines multiply a single stir in the mixing bowl many times. As a result, a whisk is faster and more efficient at blending ingredients and incorporating air.

For jobs like beating egg whites or whipping cream—incorporating lots of air—a balloon whisk a large whisk with tines that flare into a balloon shape is ideal. The cream or egg whites stretch between the tines as you whisk, trapping air more effectively.

It blends as if you were stirring with a dozen thin spoons. Folding is the technique used for combining two mixtures with different textures. In some cakes, nuts must get folded into the batter. The challenge with folding is to get a uniform texture without losing volume. Gentle lifting is crucial, as is the right tool. A wide, flat utensil with a large surface, such as a rubber spatula or a dough scraper, works well because you can lift up a large amount of the mixture and spread it across the top.

By doing this repeatedly, turning the bowl and gently lifting up more batter, the mixtures combine without rough stirring, which would deflate your lighter ingredients. Otherwise, the heavy base would deflate the lighter one. Stirring is probably the simplest of all mixing methods. It usually implies using a spoon, a spatula, or another utensil to mix ingredients together, without vigorous motion, until uniformly blended.

Beating is similar to stirring but suggests an electric mixer and more active movement. For example, pancake batter needs gentle stirring to just barely combine the ingredients. It's also easy to move a fork quickly to beat the eggs together.

Read more: California Scrambled Eggs and Avocado. Whisks are a useful tool for lightly beating something, says an article from the esteemed Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Think of light foods, such as a meringue, where you want to create a foam, but the ingredients aren't very heavy. Some recipes are simple enough that you can get your hands in there and mix things up without any equipment. However, if you're going to do so, be sure to wash up before. The opposite end of the spectrum would be an electric mixer, where you barely have to move a muscle.

Electric mixers are useful for mixing large amounts of ingredients or when preparing multiple batches of a certain type of food. You can also beat some foods with electric mixers since most of them have a variety of speed settings. Mixing would use a slower speed, while beating is performed a lot faster.

Nutrition Cooking and Baking Baking Basics. Andra Picincu is a certified nutritionist and personal trainer with more than 10 years of experience. Her mission is to help people live healthier lives by making smarter food choices and staying active. In her daily life, Ms. Picincu provides digital marketing consulting and copywriting services as well as nutrition counseling.

She owns ShapeYourEnergy, a popular health and fitness website. In , she launched a local nutrition office and partnered up with local gyms to help their clients take the steps needed to better health.

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