Baking can feel really overwhelming to pick up.The best way to combat this is to just start. The more you bake, the more you can start recognizing patterns. Overmixing vs undermixing, how long to bake, how many eggs or combining agents, water vs milk, etc, etc. However, the quickest way to improve is to find trusted blogs, recipes, and tutorials. Hopefully you can find this helpful.This page is composed of tricks i have learned throughout my life of baking, but they may not work for you. For instance, when i bake bread, it reacts differently due to the sea level and humidity of my area, unfortunatley i cannot help this. So, if it works it works, if not, their are hundreds of great websites for baking that will be helpful.Anyway, lets get started!
To start off, i am going to lend some of the best advice i ever recieved. When baking a box cake, use milk instead of water, and change the amount of eggs depending on taste. I want to start out with this because 8.5/10 times i am too tired to bake a full cake for guests. However, i will still make changes to the recipe to make the cake taste like it was from a recipe. Here are my tweaks to the recipe.
Exchanging milk for water helps the mix taste richer, it deepens the flavor due to milk containing fat. The best part is, it requires no extra math. You use the exact same number for milk as you would have for water. If you really have time you can use buttermilk. In my opinion, this is a little unecessary, i make my own buttermilk and its not worth it to do, but it will enhance the tast more and give the mix a better density. If you use buttermilk, i recommend using a teensy bit more because its thicker and might dry out your cake a little if you use the same amount.
The common idea is to add one extra egg to your box mixes. This is all depending on preference. Personally, i love baking brownies that are fudgy and gooey, adding an extra egg makes it more cakey and i personally dont like that. For cakes, however, i think it helps the texture be a little heavier and denser.If that is the texture you desire, then by all means go ahead. I will prbably stick to the recipe for this one though.
I love additions. Cinnamon, vanilla, coffee, toffee, all bring your cake to the next level. My favorite thing to do is add coffee to chocolate cakes. Now, you might be saying, "That will make my cake taste like coffee, blah blah blah, i hate coffee that sounds gross." No! That is not the case! Maybe if you add a lot, no shame if you do, but a little tastes fine. It deepens the chocolate taste and makes everything taste like a chocolately heaven. 10/10 recommend. The other additions all depend on preference. I like adding cinnammon to my brownies, when i want a little bit of a different taste. The thing with connamon though, is that a little wont be tasted, a lot will be horrible, and the middle zone is never the same. I cant help you there. How much you add depends on preference, just play around with it. Have fun. Live a little. Gosh.