I Asked for Your Biggest Baking Frustrations. Here's What You Said.
And how I might be able to help. Part 1!
Since I publish recipes for home bakers, I have been more curious about how you all bake … at home! A few months ago — sorry this took so long to get around to — I took to the easygayoven Substack Chat (everyone’s in it and we’re all talking about you there!) to do some reportage. My first question for the EGO community: What is your biggest baking frustration?
You all delivered. Some responses surprised me, and the ones that didn’t are the ones I struggle with too! I went ahead and opened up the question to Instagram Stories as well, but so many frustrations flew in that I don’t have space to address them all here. I’ll do a Part 2 soon!
So here they are, condensed and paraphrased so I can more easily answer them.
“I have no counter space.”
This frustration was shared by the most respondents — and it makes sense! I have worked in tiny Brooklyn galley kitchens with approximately 2 square feet of counter space, so I know the pain. Obviously, my first recommendation is to get a small kitchen work table, maybe one with a butcher block, that can extend your counter or serve as an island, maybe with wheels so you can move it easily when not in use. You could even try getting a fold-out work bench like this that lays flat against the wall when not in use and pops up on supports when you need the extra surface area.
I also recommend getting anything that isn’t completely necessary off the counter tops. Bread basket — find a different place. Fruit bowl, put it on your dining room table. Crock full of utensils? Get a magnet strip or hang them from hooks. Paper towel holder? Get an under-cabinet or under-sink one. Even the appliances I use every day stay in the open shelving under my countertop and I have to take them out and put them back every time I use them. As you work, always be clearing the decks. If the ingredients are already mixed, get them back to their respective homes in the pantry.
“I have no freezer space.”
One response read, “Not having enough fridge/freezer space to chill doughs, especially when recipes ask you to chill on a baking sheet!” I totally get where they are coming from, and trust me, I share a refrigerator with two grown men so I get one shelf of both the freezer and fridge. And guess what? It’s usually too full with food to shove anything inside!
For freezing/chilling cookie dough, don’t use a half sheet tray. Get yourself one or two quarter and eighth sheet trays. You can easily fit a batch of cookie dough balls on one quarter sheet tray for chilling and then place them on half sheets when you’re ready to bake.
Carla Lalli Music recently issued a guidance in one of her Instagram Reels that I keep repeating to myself: “Always be downsizing.” Basically, put ingredients in increasingly smaller containers until they are gone, which frees up more space in your fridge, freezer, cabinets and pantry. Lastly, use your frozen vegetables or throw them away!
“I can’t find the right ingredients/ I don’t want to buy an ingredient if I’m only going to use it once.”
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: Maybe this specific recipe isn’t for you. I try to avoid calling for ingredients that you’ll only use once but, sorry, why are you making a recipe that you’re only planning on eating once? This problem is on the rise partly, I believe, because of the increase in popularity of global recipes and flavors and ingredients — which is great! And keep in mind, just because sesame seeds or tahini or miso or masa harina don’t make appearances in your weekly menu, doesn’t mean that plenty of other people don’t keep those in their pantry all the time.
“I want to use the whole can/carton of *insert ingredient*.”
Now this I get! I wish they sold buttermilk in smaller containers, too. This is something that I try to keep in mind when developing but sometimes using less than the container amount is unavoidable. If you ever want specific suggestions with what to do with specific leftovers, just DM me.
“I want to make a substitution.”
I can’t find where, but I often go back to Alison Roman saying something like: If you want to substitute ingredients in a recipe, you sometimes should just find a new recipe. I am aligned with this paraphrase. Hundreds of thousands, millions, of recipes populate books, index cards, and the internet — most of them free. If you have a genuine food allergy, or dietary restriction, I feel for you. For a long time, there was nothing for you! But in 2025, we have come so far in the dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan, etc. recipe spaces and I think that’s great! You just might not be able to make every viral recipe that comes across your FYP.
That being said, if you want to be free make substitutions, you have to understand the role of ingredients first. You don’t want to become one of the infamous NYTCooking commenters. Many ingredients may look and feel the same, but are not interchangeable. For example, Dutch-process cocoa reacts differently from natural cocoa in some recipes, but you’d need to know what to look for in the ingredients list (does the recipe use baking soda or baking powder?) to know if you can make the swap or not.
Bottom line is: The recipe developer wrote the recipe that way for a reason, and if you’re changing it, that’s your right, but then you’re not really making their recipe so you probably won’t get the same result — even if it’s still turns out great!
“I want to troubleshoot/ change a recipe.”
Don’t let me stop you! Here’s my quick and dirty advice.
Learn your ratios. Many classic cookies, cakes, breads have a standard ratio (e.g. for pound cake: 1 part flour, 1 part butter, 1 part eggs, 1 part sugar) that chefs and recipes developers use as a starting point and change from there. These ratios are all over the internet, but I like the book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman.
Learn the role of each ingredient. Every ingredient has one or several roles in a recipe, from adding sweetness and structure to lift and tenderness. Before you change the amount, or replace it with something else, you have to know what purpose it’s serving in the recipe to either change the bake to achieve your desired texture/flavor or so you can replace it with something else and keep everything working in harmony.
Make one change. Like any science experiment, you should only change one variable at a time, whether it’s temperature, bake time, ingredient amount, pan size/shape, etc. Otherwise, you won’t know which change made the difference in the final bake. Okay fine, I don’t always follow this rule — but it’s usually to my detriment!
“Baking is expensive!”
Tell me about it! It is true that butter, eggs, chocolate and vanilla account for probably half of my grocery bill every month — and they’re not getting cheaper. Here’s my thinking: splurge where it makes sense and save where you can.
If you’re making ganache or tempering chocolate — or in any recipe where chocolate is the star — go for the good stuff. It melts better, tastes better, and is less prone to seizing and splitting. For cookie mix-ins, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, it’s okay to use chips (you just won’t get pretty, tasty puddles of chocolate and the cookies won’t spread as much.) I recommend finding bulk chocolate in blocks if you can — it’s typically less expensive than buying the fancy bars or wafers.
Butter. For the most part, I use plain, unsalted American butter. (We can have the unsalted vs. salted debate another time.) I get the cheapest kind at Trader Joe’s. Sometimes, when butter is the star of the recipe, or when I’m trying to make something one-note or vanilla taste very rich, I’ll opt for a European butter with higher fat percentage and better flavor, such as Kerrygold.
Eggs are only going to get more expensive as we gut disease prevention and regulations. If what kind you buy is mostly a personal choice based on your preference: free-range, pasture-raised, cage-free, etc., then stick with that. I find more expensive eggs (like free-range) to have a richer color, less watery whites, and a better taste, so I would use those for pastry creams, custards, French buttercreams, etc. For mixing cookie dough or quick breads, I don’t think you’re going to be able to tell the difference between expensive and cheap eggs.
Many people cannot tell the difference between natural and imitation vanilla— in fact, imitation stays winning taste tests. It is way cheaper than natural vanilla — and has fewer environmental and human rights/labor ethical concerns. Granted, I use real vanilla, but I should start using the fake stuff in cookies, cakes, or anything where I wouldn’t mix in, say, seeds from a vanilla bean or vanilla bean paste.
Right: my very dirty but very affordable oven thermometer...
“My oven sucks.”
Almost every time someone asks me why a baking recipe didn’t turn out, my first question is, “Do you have an oven thermometer?” Most home ovens are off by around 25°F in either direction, which may seem small but can have disastrous effects on a bake: cookies that don’t spread in a too-hot oven, cookies that spread too much in an oven that’s not hot enough, etc. My oven runs about 25 degrees too hot when it’s set to 350°F, and then the difference just gets worse as you go up in temperature. I now know what to set the knob to to achieve what temperature I actually want, which is then confirmed by the very cheap oven thermometer I have hanging from the middle rack.
There are other problems ovens can have, such as hot spots: places where the oven *is getting too hot.* You can check where your ovens hot spots are by toasting several slices of bread on a half sheet tray at 350°F and seeing which ones brown the fastest. This can help you avoid those areas in the future.
Last tip: I usually recommend baking one sheet of cookies or one tray of muffins at a time on the middle rack. I find that taking up too many racks, or too much space on a rack, blocks air and heat flow and I would rather just take the time to bake them in two batches.
“I don’t have time.”
If you’re cooking even one meal at home every day, you’re doing great, sweetie. Most people need to cook in their kitchens to get through the week, but baking has been relegated in the minds of Americans to something that happens at a bakery, supermarket or factory — or the kitchens of home bakers with lots of experience. Baking nutritional staples like bread is seen as time consuming and inconvenient, and baking sweets is seen as superfluous or just for special occasions. Because of that, I would venture to guess many people treat baking as more of a hobby than they would cooking.
Baking used to be my hobby! Sadly, because I do this full-time now, even I struggle to find the time to bake for personal fulfillment or for events with friends and family. That being said, plenty of people find solace in baking projects spread out over a weekend, or the care and feeding of a sourdough routine.
For everyone else, getting together an arsenal of recipes you know you can whip up quickly would be a good start. Here are some of my quick faves on EGO: pumpkin ccc’s, best-ever brownies 2.0, mini cornbreads, one giant pop-tart, fig cardamom financiers, cheddar shortbreads, butterscotch chocolate cornflake treats, everything bagel puff pastry bites, olive oil zucchini bread, sesame honey cookies, lemon ricotta olive oil cake, pumpkin whoopie pies, classic pumpkin bread, best banana bread.
“Dishes suck.”
Yes, they do. I have started to consolidate bowls in several of my cookie recipes because, to me, there’s really no need to mix dry ingredients separately there. Just mix the leaveners, spices and salt in with the sugars, butter and eggs and make sure there aren’t lumps. Then you can add the flour (along with mix-ins) straight from the container at the end.
Want fewer dishes? Use fewer measuring cups! Using a scale, and the provided metric measurements available on many recipes nowadays, isn’t just more accurate — it also saves sink space.
Another tip (and one I’m guilty of not always following)? Clean as you go. It means less time spent at the end of the recipe when you’re exhausted and just want to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Plus, there are less dishes in your way when you bring a giant bowl or pan over to wash. Also, get yourself a nice dish rack. It will save your marriage even if you’re single like me.
“What’s the best way to mise en place?”
That brings me to mise en place, or “putting in place”. It means chopping what needs to be chopped, peeling what needs to be peeled, measuring all ingredients out into various containers, etc., before you even think about starting to mix or cook. This is what pros do so that 1. the cooking process is streamlined, 2. prepared ingredients come into play exactly when they are needed, and 3. they don’t forget anything.
If you are constantly forgetting to add ingredients, or even if you just prefer to measure first and mix second, then sure, use extra bowls and cups to get your ingredients organized. For me, FOR ME, I find that the only mise-ing I need to do is to put all the ingredients out on the counter. Running back and forth from the pantry/fridge after every step isn’t a good use of time, and it prevents me from accidentally omitting an ingredient.
All that said, it’s important to still READ THE RECIPE FIRST, because you could have some ingredients that need to be prepped and ready to be added at exactly the right time. For example, when making caramel sauce, heavy cream and butter need to go into molten sugar in the moments right after it reaches that deep amber color but before it burns.
“I don’t have a stand mixer.”
Our forbears survived without stand mixers and still kneaded bread, whipped up airy meringues, and more without the use of any mixers, let alone stand ones! Start with getting a good electric hand mixer (I have this cordless one.) Ever since getting it, I lug out my stand mixer less and less…. You’ll be surprised by how much you can do with it!
The only thing I would really, really want a stand mixer for is when I’m pouring hot molten sugar into Italian meringue buttercream for instance, or when Swiss meringue buttercream requires 10-plus minutes of beating the meringue so it can cool down before you incorporate the butter. It also helps when you’re incorporating fat into an enriched yeasted dough. I’m sure I’m missing examples but you don’t need a stand mixer to bake at home!