Living on a Dime's today's tips

Today's Tips:

Use chocolate drink mix or cocoa to flour your cake pans when making a dark cake (like chocolate).


Homemade pan grease: 2 parts solid vegetable shortening - 1 part flour. Mix and place in a container. I keep a paper towel in mine that I use to rub it into the pan.


Add 1 tsp. lemon juice in your cake recipe when creaming butter and sugar to make the cake fluffier. If you keep it on hand, you can also use 1 Tbsp. meringue powder to do the same thing. Meringue powder is found in your cake decorating section at Wal Mart.


Another way to lighten a cake is to separate the eggs, beat the whites and fold them in at the end of mixing.


Cream the butter well (5 minutes) when making a cake. This adds air to it and also helps make a lighter cake.


Line the bottom of the pan with wax paper. This is an extra step but it makes it so much easier getting the cake out of the pan and really saves time in the long run. To get the right size of wax paper just set the pan on a piece of wax paper and trace around the pan with the point of the scissors. It leaves enough of a mark for you to see to cut around.