Bakers, professional and amateur alike, aren’t perfect. Sure, they were blessed with the skill and ambition needed to create all of our favorite baked goods — breads, cakes, cookies, pies. But there have to be some secrets sprinkled in with all of the successes, right? I’m sure we’ve all wondered what really goes down in the kitchen before a baker walks out with a tray of freshly baked (and entirely uniform) sweet treats.
Apparently, it seems that most bakers run into the same problems, share similar baking rituals, and hide secrets only pro bakers would be able to actually pull off. We looked at bakers’ confessions from all over the internet (and talked to some in real life) to reveal what really goes on in the kitchen.
Whisper, an anonymous platform, had more than a few confessions from bakers, with some we aren’t really sure how to react to.
“I’m a baker, and I sometimes get jealous of the cakes I make because they’re prettier than me.”
“I’m a baker. I give cookies and junk to my friends to ruin their diets so I can always look good.”
“I own a bakery. Once I had a customer tell me to give her bread for free because she knew the owner, if I didn’t she’d get me fired. I responded, ‘I am the owner and I’ve never met you in my life.'”
Cake Central, forum for all things cake, is home to a thread all about different things bakers do that really only a baker would understand. User Webake2gether started this beautiful thread where we honestly learned so much.
Jinkies: “I have literally sat on the kitchen floor and cried over a cake. Seriously… I’m so ashamed… hanging my head here.”
costumeczar: “I crack eggs straight into the moving mixer, I eat raw cake batter, and I don’t wear gloves for protection when I do isomalt. I’m not a good example for the children. 
“
“jgifford: “I have to be very careful with chocolate anything because if I get one drop on myself it will spread like the plague until it’s on everything! I told my husband one day it’s worse than having a bloody nose.”
kstevens: “I tried a new marble cake recipe and even though I greased and floured the pans, the cake stuck. I was so annoyed with how the cakes looked once I got them out of the pans that I took my fist and smashed them in to the cooling racks. It felt good until I realized what a mess it was to clean up, cake bits everywhere, and that I had to bake new cakes!”
Buzzfeed talked to a real-life pastry chef, Kyle Bartone of Eataly in NYC. He gave the low-down on tips, tricks, and secrets professional pastry chefs keep.
Pastry chefs, apparently, do more math than memorization when it comes to baking.
“I couldn’t recite many recipes from memory,” Bartone tells Buzzfeed, “but I can tell you that pie dough is 3-2-1 [3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and 1 part liquid], choux pastry is 2-1-1-2 [water, butter, flour, and eggs], and so on.”
A couple of the masterminds behind So Yummy’s videos had some confessions of their own.
Lisa: “I always buy whichever butter is the cheapest! There is a quality difference, but I’m not always looking to make a $65 cake!”
Joey: “There’s no shame in making boxed brownie mix. Seriously. Would I prefer to make it myself? Of course. Would it be better tasting and better for you? Well, not by much, honestly. I’ve even spoken to chefs who’ve exclaimed there’s not much use in making brownies from scratch.”
Also Joey: “I’m ashamed of the hours I’ve put in to my baking projects. Once I made a birthday cake for a friend and ended up dipping into the wee hours of the morning. Sadly, the cake flopped. The layers came out far too wonky for my approval and I couldn’t bear the idea of providing this for someone’s birthday. I called it a night, but woke up early to make the entire cake again. Things like this happen more often than I’d like to admit.”
Reddit, the place to go for confessions of all kinds didn’t disappoint.
bakingqueenz: “My main one is that I rarely do not sift flour, cocoa, or powdered sugar. Also I don’t always measure, do a bit by eye, just not baking soda/powder! Learned that lesson.”
Katchkajr: “Never sift, and seldom use a separate bowl for dry ingredients.”
bd2831: “I never buy unsalted butter. I always go a little more on vanilla and salt.”
This last Reddit confession is so lengthy, it can’t even fit here without some paraphrasing:
Basically, this cake maker (iGotYouThisCake) runs her entire business on $1 boxes of cake mix. And no one knows besides her husband (and now the internet).
Crazy, right?
