Happy almost Celiac Awareness Month.

I am going to start this off with a plug for my gluten-free baking mini e-book series! My first one comes out on Tuesday!!!! It is all wrapped up and I am just finishing up the functionality so that you can buy it here on FrannyCakes.com 🙂 If you don’t have a free download card (I passed out 1,000 of them!), sign up for my newsletter so that you can still get a discount on the ebook! The price is set at $3, and I think you are going to love it!

Now, on to the good stuff.

I am always amazed at how terrified people are in general about baking, and the second they need to be gluten free, baking intsills even greater fear. Well, I am here to tell you that it is not that difficult to adjust. I have 5 simple tips that will help you improve your baking.

1. Don’t expect amazing success the first time you bake gluten-free. There are many more opportunities for a recipe to go wrong when you remove the gluten. Take a deep breath and figure out if you can use a failure as something else. Cookies spreading uncontrollably? Put the dough in a cake pan and make bar cookies. Brownies have too much air? Oh darn it, you just made chocolate cake. Did your cake sink? Slice and macerate some strawberries (or whatever berries you have) and pile them on. Top with whipped cream. And ooolala, you just made a trifle. The bread is hard as a rock? Slice it, toast it, pop it in a food processor with some seasonings and voila, seasoned bread crumbs. Rolling with the punches and learning from what goes wrong is going to help you have those accidents few and far between.
2. Let your ingredients warm up to room temperature. If your ingredients are too cold, you are going to run into trouble with your cakes and cookies. And don’t use the microwave to warm up your butter (it will melt) or your eggs (they will cook). To soften butter faster, cut it into cubes and to warm up eggs, put them in a bowl of warm water for 10 minutes.
3. When adapting a recipe, change one thing at a time. You want to make your grandma’s spice cake gluten and refined sugar free? First take out one, get the recipe right and then change something else. Playing with multiple variables makes your recipe results unpredictable and sets you up for failure.
4. Buy a kitchen scale and make friends with the King Arthur Flour Master Weight Chart. My baking consistency is incredible now that I use a scale. There is never doubt about if I added the right amount of anything (I don’t have to remember if I put in 2 or 3 half cup scoops) and I don’t have to dip the measuring cup a certain way. I just pour ingredients into little bowls until the number on the scale is correct. The chart will help you convert any of your favorite recipes to weight measurements.
5. When in doubt, ask for advice. The internet is full of people who are out there and want to help you succeed. I owe a lot of my knowledge to so many people who have answered questions and given advice. You can tweet me or email me and I will do my best to respond quickly and I know there are many more people with more knowledge than me who do the same.

Do you have any other tips that you consider to be essential for successful gluten-free baking?