Make Cake by the Lake: Cottage Baking Tips

Whenever we go to the cottage, I always have the urge to bake: there’s something about cottage baking that is just relaxing - but because it’s a cottage and you never know what kind of resources are waiting for you there, it requires a bit more planning than your average spontaneous urge to bake!

Trust me, the relaxing bit can go straight out the window if you get there and you don’t have the bowls or pans or measuring cups you need, so my motto (stolen from the Boy Scots) in these cases is Be Prepared.

Over the years, I’ve learned how to save space when packing ingredients, just in case packing for those times when you get there, and you have very limited things to work with and that staying calm in the face of an unknown oven is key!

Baking may result in delicious things, but have you ever noticed how heavy or bulky a lot of the required ingredients can be? I’m talking bags of flour and sugar, oats and containers of baking powder, soda, salt... the list goes on and that’s just the dry ingredients! Cottage packing means there’s limited space in the car, so how do you transport all of that in the most compact way possible? Well, take a look at your recipe: 9 times out of 10, there’s a line that tells you to combine most, if not all, of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. So instead of waiting til you’re at the cottage and have lugged all this stuff with you, measure out the dry ingredients to be combined into a large Ziploc bag: that way you’re saving space and you’ve even saved yourself a step in the recipe!

For the other one time, whatever dry ingredients that need to be separate from the rest (for instance if your recipe calls for you to cream butter and sugar), measure them out into separate smaller Ziploc bags that can be placed inside the larger one! This way your ingredients stay separate, but you won’t be trying to figure out which Ziploc goes with which recipe: this is also where labeling your Ziplocs is key!!!! It’s pretty rare for you to have enough salt measured out that it could be mistaken from the sugar portion, but just for your peace of mind, use the freezer style Ziplocs that have the place for you to label what’s inside - it will save you a headache I promise!

The other biggest concern going into cottage baking is what if they don’t have the pan(s) I need? It’s definitely happened to me where I get to the cottage having assumed they would have a standard pan and because it’s a cottage and I shouldn’t have assumed, they don’t - if this happens, don’t panic! Take a deep breath, and if there’s a grocery store nearby, take a walk or drive over there. In the baking aisle of pretty much every larger grocery store you can find a selection of foil baking pans in all different sizes - these are a lifesaver! They’re sturdier than you would expect so they’re definitely reusable, but they also can be recycled after, which is one less thing for you to pack on the trip home! These days, I buy them in advance to skip the moment of panic at the cottage, but you also have the option of bringing your own pans from home. You just run the risk of forgetting one there, which would be sad!

Somethings are definitely harder to work around than others, like not having an electric mixer, but things like whisks can be substituted for forks, wooden spoons can be substituted for really any kind of spoon, spatulas for your clean fingers... Honestly though, think about your recipes ahead of time and choose the recipe based on the idea that you probably won’t have a lot of tools - there are so many simple recipes that don’t require a lot of fancy equipment that still taste delicious, and no one will ever know the difference! When in doubt, go with your tried and true so you have a better sense of what does and doesn’t look right as you adapt things at the cottage, with a brand new baked good it can be hard to tell!

Since I started using these tricks, cottage baking has definitely gotten a lot easier! I haven’t been in a situation where I couldn’t make what I planned to in a very long time - thank goodness, because cottage baking is so lovely.

Happy baking babes!

#yums