Bold baking basics: Essential techniques for perfect cookies and donuts

Hi Bold Bakers! As a professional chef, I want to get you into the kitchen and baking with confidence. Now I know a lot of you enjoyed my Bold Baking Basics series, which is really fantastic because I love doing it. But now I have for you a whole brand new series called Bold Baking Basics Minis. This will be available on my website, BiggerBolderBaking.com. They are short videos that will answer a lot of your baking questions. I have a lot of those videos up on my website right now and I'll have new ones launched every single week. Here is a sample for you of just a few. So now we're gonna talk cookies. I'm gonna show you how you can freeze cookie dough and also slice them so you get a nice even bake overall. So what we're going to do is lay some cling wrap on the counter, and then we're going to create a log with our cookies, and then we're very tightly going to roll up our log. You keep on rolling until you've got it covered in cling wrap. And then just on the edges of the cling wrap, where there's extra cling wrap, we are going to roll those onto the counter, and what we're creating is a nice tight sausage of cookie dough. So there you go, it only takes a few seconds and your cookie dough is nice and packaged, ready for the freezer. Now cookie dough freezes really well, and it will last in a freezer for up to 8 weeks. So once you're ready to use your cookie dough, take it out of the freezer and let it defrost a little bit, it always helps when it's still really cold so it makes it easier to slice. Then go ahead and just roll off all of your cling wrap. And then we're just gonna take a nice sharp knife, and then slice the cookies as thick as you want them. Now slicing them like this is much faster than actually scooping cookies, having them in a nice big log. And then also, because they're all the same shape the whole way around, they will bake perfectly even. So then when you're ready to bake your cookies, put them on a tray lined with parchment, and then bake them. And then the result as you can see are perfectly baked cookies. They are an even color all the way around and they're also an even size. So have you ever found yourself in a position while you're baking that you can't find a rolling pin or you don't have one? Well, I am going to show you a fantastic solution. All you need is a wine bottle. And what we're going to do is wrap it up in a bit of cling wrap just so it's nice and clean. And then just sprinkle it with a little bit of flour Power to stop your pastry sticking to it. Go ahead and flour your work surface and then sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of your pastry. As you can see, it works really well. Now I learned this tip because one time I was making an apple pie and I had no rolling pin in the house, so this came in really handy. So there you go, perfectly rolled pastry that is ready to use, rolled without a rolling pin. So, cake donuts. The one thing about cake donuts is that you need one of those cake donut pans, but you don't want to buy a pan just to make one thing. So I'm going to show you how simple you can make a donut pan. So what I have here is a cupcake tin. Now just watch what we're going to do. I'm going to take a bit of aluminum foil. This is a square four inches by four inches. I'm going to put my finger in the middle of the foil, then Crimp the foil around my finger, creating a nice big center, and then what you do is go around the sides and just pull them up, creating a little crevice where your doughnut can bake. Then pop it into your tin. And then just keep on creating that shape, pushing your tinfoil into the sides of the pan. When you're shaping your molds, take your time and just make sure that the sides are big enough to make a nice sized donut. So keep on going, crimping in your sides and making a nice big center. When you're shaping your tinfoil, just make sure that your finger doesn't pop up through the middle. So there you go, in no time at all, you have a homemade donut pan. Now you can make any of those cake donuts that you want. Please let me know in the comments below what other basics you would like to see. As always, thank you very much for being a part of the Bold Baking community and I hope you enjoy this new series.