Basic Baking Tools

When you make desserts with very different kinds of dough and batter, like cookies, scones, tarts, and cakes, you need just as wide a range of tools. Getting to know the tools that come up often in this site’s baking recipes makes the work a lot easier.

Mixing and whipping tools

• Stand mixer: Convenient for large batches because it spares your wrists. Use the paddle (beater) attachment for mixing ingredients or making dough, and the whisk attachment for whipping cream or making meringue.
• Hand mixer: The most common mixer in home kitchens. It’s inexpensive and easy to handle for small batches, but weight and power vary by brand, so choose one that suits your wrists.
• Hand whisk: It can take the place of a mixer for every step from mixing to whipping, but for heavy work like whipping cream or creaming butter, an electric mixer makes things easier.
• Food processor / blender / immersion blender: For grinding or pulverizing ingredients. A food processor is handy when you need to quickly work cold butter into flour, as with scone dough or pie crust, and an immersion blender is used mainly for emulsifying (blending sauces or creams until smooth).

Measuring and temperature tools

• Kitchen scale: Accurate measuring makes or breaks the result, so it’s the most important tool after the oven.
• Infrared thermometer: For checking that butter or dough is at the right temperature for each ingredient.

Tools for mixing and cleaning up

• Bowls: Light, sturdy stainless steel bowls are a safe choice, but glass bowls, which let you see the ingredients, are good too. A wide bowl is handy for dough you spread out to the sides as you work, like scones, and a narrow, deep bowl for building volume, like whipping cream.
• Silicone spatula: For mixing ingredients or scraping leftover batter off the sides of the bowl. A firm one that’s easy to clean is recommended.
• Wooden spoon: For loosening stiff dough, or cooking sauces in a pan or pot.
• Offset spatula: For spreading cream evenly and smoothing it neatly, used mainly for frosting cakes with whipped cream. They come in straight and offset (L-shaped) styles.
• Bench scraper: For spreading scone or tart dough evenly or cutting butter into small pieces. Having two or so on hand is convenient.
• Cake turntable: When frosting with whipped cream, setting the cake layer on a turntable lets you spread the cream more steadily and evenly.

Sieves, mats, and pans

• Sifter / fine-mesh sieve: Sifting dry ingredients breaks up lumps and catches impurities. That said, coarse flours like almond flour, pistachio flour, or coconut flour, and the flour for tart shells and pie crusts, don’t need to be sifted.
• Silicone baking mat: A reusable mat used in place of parchment paper when baking cookies or scones; it doesn’t flap around in the oven’s airflow.
• Silicone pastry mat: Dusting it with flour and rolling out or handling dough on top keeps things much cleaner. It’s especially useful when working on a wooden table.
• Parchment paper / PTFE (Teflon) sheet: Laid down so the dough doesn’t stick to the pan. A PTFE sheet is reusable and convenient, and for cheesecakes, cutting it to fit the pan and wrapping it around the sides gives a cleaner-baked surface.
• Pans and molds: You don’t always need the exact pan specified; many different pans can stand in as long as they suit the amount of batter. Still, try to avoid old pans whose coating is peeling.

Finishing tools

• Cooling rack: For cooling things once they come out of the oven.
• Pastry brush: Mainly for brushing egg wash onto the surface of dough. A baking-specific brush whose bristles don’t fall out easily is best.
• Rolling pin: For rolling dough out thin, as with tart shells or pie crust.
• Piping tips / piping bag: Fit a piping tip into a piping bag to pipe cream and the like into whatever shape you want.
• Ice cream scoop: For portioning cookie or muffin batter evenly onto the pan, or for decorating neatly with cream.
• Zester / juicer: For zesting or juicing citrus fruits like lemons and limes.
• Stainless steel pot: For cooking sauces or making jam. A copper pot, with its excellent heat conduction, is ideal, but if the price is a burden, a stainless steel pot is plenty.