Baking tips from Whipped Fantasy

1. Use Room-Temperature Ingredients
   If you've seen it once, you've seen it a thousand times. How many recipes call for room-temperature butter, eggs, and milk? It's a step you should not ignore. Many baked goods start by creaming together butter and sugar, which is made infinitely easier with gently warmed ingredients—if you've ever tried to stick an electric mixer in a brick of rock-hard cold butter, you know why. "If you're going to bake, you've got to either plan ahead or be patient," Saffitz says, adding that she often leaves eggs and butter out on the counter overnight and then begins the project in the morning—they slowly come to the perfect temperature while she sleeps. ____
   kouign-amann-butter
   Leave this baby on the counter for better cookies.

Equally important as room-temperature ingredients are same-temperature ingredients: "Add hot things to hot things, and cold things to cold things," Saffitz says, citing a fussy chocolate ganache as an example. If you pour piping hot cream over chilly chocolate, the cocoa fat can separate, making your sauce look oily and unappealing. That's why many recipes call for tempering a hot ingredient with a cooler one—it ensures that the emulsion won't seize or separate.