Baking Science


With a sprinkling of Baking Science, my kitchen hacks and how-tos will have you on your way to baking consistently perfect desserts every time! Learn How to Make a Water Bath for a Cheesecake, the Baking Secrets of Cocoa Powder, the many Functions of Sugar in Baking, and much more! Get ready to become a baking pro and enter the kitchen with confidence every single time.

Tessa’s Top Baking Tips

These are the three things I wish EVERYONE knew before attempting any recipe.

Measure ingredients with a digital scale

The easiest ingredient to mis-measure is flour. It can be easily compacted into a container or measuring cup without you even realizing.

Too much flour in a recipe can yield results that are dry (instead of moist), dense (instead of light and fluffy), crumbly (instead of moist, chewy, or fudgy), tough (instead of tender), or rubbery (instead of delicate).

Learn the RIGHT way to measure your flour and other baking ingredients HERE.

Use the correct baking pans

I highly recommend using light colored aluminum pans for just about everything. Avoid dark colored nonstick pans as well as most glass pans.

Dark metal pans will dry out the edges of your desserts, often before the center can cook through. Glass or ceramic baking pans will take LONGER to bake most desserts, and can result in gummy textures.

More on this in my Glass vs. Metal Baking Pans article.

Your dessert will NOT turn out the same if you make substitutions

Here at Handle the Heat, we believe butter, eggs, flour, and sugar are magical specimens and should never be replaced (unless medically necessary due to an allergy/intolerance).

We highly recommend making all recipes exactly as written. If you do decide to substitute an ingredient(s), just know the final result won’t be the same in texture and/or flavor.

The Magic of Baking Course You Need

Learn how to tweak your own recipes! No more misses, only HITS coming out of your kitchen. This is everything I WISH people knew before they’d ever bake another recipe again.

You’ll learn HOW and WHY things work (or don’t) so you can consistently create delicious treats every single time.

Baking Videos

Sharpen your baking skills with these helpful baking videos.

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Get Our Best Buttercream Cheatsheet

This free printable PDF contains my best buttercream recipe, my favorite piping tips, and lots more!

All Baking Science Articles