Organizing Baking Supplies

Hello fellow bakers!

I am back for some baking blogging. It feels so nice to actually be able to sit down, relax, blog and bake for once. I no longer sell sweet treats to the public as I am far too busy being a grade one and piano teacher, but I still do enjoy baking from time to time. I am sure there are plenty of busy people out there as well that find they never have the time to do much baking so I am sure you can relate to my baking woes! I missed out on Halloween cookies this year so I vowed to myself that I would most definitely not miss out on Christmas baking. I am going to kick off my holiday baking early today by whipping up some peppermint mocha macarons (yes, I am extremely excited to make these and yes, a blog post will soon follow!). 

Before I was even ready to think about making macarons I needed to make sure that I cleaned out all of my baking supplies. It was the last few hot summer days when I stopped baking for business and I discovered something horrible. Some of my baking supplies were infested with ants! I could not believe it as some of the wonderful sugar flowers I had spent eight hours working on for a personal cake were being eaten alive (alright I understand that my sugar flowers weren't actually alive, but when you spend that many hours working on something they're like your babies). There were hundreds and hundreds of ants swarming some baking tools as well (which made no sense to me because they were all cleaned and didn't have any ounce of sugar on them). Needless to say, my fiance sanitized all of my baking tools that were attacked, threw away my sugar flowers and got rid of the ants over the next few weeks as I cried on the couch. I am such a baby when it comes to my baking. Surprisingly, none of the ants got into my ingredients, but I was still too worried to use them. I had one last sugar cookie order that a friend had asked me to fill months ago, but I refused to use any of my tools and any of the ingredients that I had. Although the ingredients and tools cost me far more than what the cookies were going to cost, I sucked it up and bought all new ingredient and tools. Needless to say it took me about two months until I was ready to tackle my ant phobias. I had peeked into the ingredients box every now and then to make sure that there were no ants, but I screamed when I opened it. No, there weren't any ants, but the ingredients box was a total mess! So were my cookie cutters, edible dyes and pretty much anything else I used to bake beautiful creations.

I decided that if I was ever going to bake again, I needed to re-organize all of my things. I decided to tackle my ingredients box first. I took a look into my ingredients and realized that although things were messy, I had sealed off all of my ingredients properly. After taking out all of the ingredients and laying them on my kitchen counter, I cleaned out the giant tub that holds my ingredients. I took it outside, hosed it down, sanitized and dried it. I carefully sifted through all of the ingredients to ensure that no damage had been done and placed them into containers. I usually left flours and sugars in the bags that I bought them in because the containers I had bought before were too narrow to even fit a half measuring cup into, but I found this method was too messy. I picked up a tip from a friend to place sugars and flours into large Tupperware containers. So much easier to dig in and reduces the mess almost completely. I continued to label all the rest of the containers I had and I felt so good as I looked into my organized ingredients box.

After the ingredients, I knew I needed to clean out my cookie and cake decoration box. I carefully cleaned off all of the edible dyes and once again sanitized my baking tools. To save room, I also took out all of my decorative sugars out of their half empty containers and put them into plastic Ziploc bags. I also got a cute mini scoop to scoop the sugars out of the bags. Don't worry about not having the little shakers that usually come with the sanding sugars and crystal sprinkles. I find that with sugar cookies, its best to scoop out the sanding sugars rather than trying to sprinkle it on. For cupcakes, it also creates a much nicer effect if you use pinched fingers to distribute the sugars rather than the shaker. My tips also kept shifting every time I opened the drawer and it would make it near impossible to find which tip I was looking for so I put the tips pointing upwards in a measuring cup. I then added some labels to each drawer to make sure that I never have to utter the words "where is that ______?" again. Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to find something when you need it or worse, finding it dirty!

After that, it was time to tackle the cookie cutters. My cookie cutters are probably what frustrated me the most when I was in a hurry. I used to place my cookie cutters into categorized Ziploc bags, but I could never find any of the ones I needed when I needed them. I lost my figure skate cookie cutter for months and it resurfaced when I was re-organizing them again. Turns out that I had categorized the figure skate as a Christmas cookie cutter which does make sense, but I assumed it would be under the 'miscellaneous' category. To avoid this again, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a whole bunch of containers. I carefully re-categorized all of my cookie cutters and placed them into labeled drawers. It took a little bit of time to write down every single cookie cutter that I had, but I am glad I did. Total cookie cutter count: 129. Here is the list:

Characters:

Full Body Hello Kitty
Hello Kitty Head
Large Hello Kitty Head
Mickey Mouse Head
Mickey Mouse Profile

Clothing:

Bikini (2 Pieces)
Chef Hat
Cowboy Hat
Cowboy Boot
Dress
Flip-flop
High Heel Shoe
Jersey

Halloween:

Bat
Cat
Large Pumpkin
Orange Pumpkin
Spider
Witch Hat

Beach:

Seashell
Starfish
Sun
Umbrella

Birthday:

Cake with Candle
Cupcake with Candle

Food:

Apple
Carrot
Cotton Candy/Ice Cream
Strawberry
Martini

Transportation:

Airplane
Car
Motorcycle

Music:

Black Eighth Note
Eighth Note
Guitar

Miscellaneous:

Fairy
Golf Bag
Graduation Hat
Mini Tiara
Teapot

Animals:

Butterfly
Butterfly and Flower Mini Cutter Set (11 Pieces)
Chick
Dog Bone
Fish
Rabbit
Yellow Chick
Unicorn

Flowers and Foliage:

Flower Fondant Cutters (6 Pieces)
Maple Leaf
Sunflower
Tulip

Numbers:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6 and 9
7
8

Shapes:

Circle Set (9 Pieces)
Clover
Egg
Oval
Rectangle
Star (2)

Christmas:

Bell
Blue Snowflake
Candy Cane
Christmas Tree (3)
Gingerbread Man (2)
Gingerbread Woman
Holly Leaf
Large Figure Skate
Mini Figure Skate
Mitten
Ornament
Polar Bear
Snowflake (2)
Snowman (3)
Stocking

Baby Shower:

Baby Bottle
Bear
Bib
Carriage
Fancy Carriage
Foot
Onesie

Wedding/Valentine’s Day:

Dove
Hand
Heart
Joined Hearts
Large Pink Heart
Lips
Mustache
Scalloped Edge Heart
Wedding Cake

I finished off my day of organization by collecting up all of the pans and molds I had and placing them into a large tub. I discovered that I had a mini bunny cake pan and cookie press that I had forgotten about. Spritz cookies at Christmas? Yes please! It was a great day of organization and now I feel much better about starting a baking project. 

Beautiful baking sweeties!