Easy baking tips for the absolute beginner?

It is never necessary to use any electric mixer or appliance to mix the ingredients of baked goods. You can make cakes, muffins, bread, and all manner of baking by hand. The only technology required is an oven or heat source to bake them in. I have baked things in a solar oven, without any technology what so ever.

The only thing that I can reliably bake is beer bread, which is pretty awesome.

3 cups of self-rising flour
2 tsp of sugar
1 bottle of your favorite beer.
Mix together in a bowl until more or less even, then pour into a greased bread pan. Cook at 350F (I think) for 45 minutes. Let it cool some before you try to cut it.
I have experimented with adding cheese and bacon bits, with varying degrees of success. I prefer the flavor yielded by lighter lagers.

Then there’s Awesome Nachos, where you layer nachos, cheese dip, chicken, beans, and some shredded cheddar (I think it’s chips-cheese-chips-chickenbeans-chips-cheese cheddar, but I could be wrong), baked until everything’s run together. May not count as all ingredients are pre-cooked and edible out of their containers.

Most cake boxes come with easy instructions. Many can be mixed with just a wire whisk or a fork. I usually make my bananna bread from scratch but I once decided to try bananna bread cake mix and add real banannas and it worked out alright.

Baking requires you follow the recipe fairly closely. Most of the time when I cook I throw stuff in until it tastes good, but you can’t do that with baking.
See if this link works:
www.tasteofhome.com

Go for organic ingredients.

In cooking there are recipes and there are formulas.

For example if you are making a casserole and you add a little more of one thing and a little less of another and perhaps improvise a bit you still stand a darned good chance of producing something tasty. This would be an example of a recipe, you have some leeway.

Baking, OTOH, is very much a formula. Follow the recipe exactly and you will probably do fine. Once you really get to know your baking “stuff” you can begin to add a bit more art to the science. Until then, stick to the formula.

The main thing is to know the temp. your oven runs.
Mine always bakes hot, so, I have to adjust the baking/cooking time by about 10 minutes.

If a recipe says to bake @ 350 for 18–22 minutes, the item will be done in my oven right AT the 18 minute mark at the latest!

Experiment with your oven…try a frozen pizza…a very good gage for how hot your oven bakes.

When in doubt, grease the pan.
Let whatever you baked cool and solidify before trying to take it out of the pan, or it won’t matter how much grease you used.
Don’t leave the oven light on – its extra heat will screw up your baking.
Putting sheets of metal in the bottom of the oven will change the heat distribution, though I don’t remember exactly how. You can use this to fine-tune your oven’s performance.
The choice of a spot for the rack will affect how your project turns out.
The done-ness of your bread-based projects may be ascertained by sticking a knife (or a toothpick – we don’t usually have toothpicks) into them. If it comes out clean, you’re done.
Edges and extremities burn first, if they are exposed to heat directly. But baking a chicken in a pan will produce even results – usually.
If you’re cooking something directly on the oven rack – pizza, for instance – be sure to put an unloved cookie sheet below it to catch the inevitable guaranteed-to-smoke-you-out drips.
“Self-cleaning,” while not an outright lie, does not describe what self-cleaning ovens do.

no fail pie crust is my go-to basic. It lives up to its name, is really easy, tastes better than pre-made and works well for savory or sweet. I use it for quiche, pasties (meat and potato turnovers for the unititiated) pot pies, etc.

allrecipes.com
This recipe for Golden Rum Cake looked pretty easy:

Ingredients
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
½ cup water
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup dark rum
½ cup butter
¼ cup water
1 cup white sugar
½ cup dark rum

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan. Sprinkle chopped nuts evenly over the bottom of the pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine cake mix and pudding mix. Mix in the eggs, ½ cup water, oil and ½ cup rum. Blend well. Pour batter over chopped nuts in the pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let sit for 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto serving plate. Brush glaze over top and sides. Allow cake to absorb glaze and repeat until all glaze is used.
4. To make the glaze: in a saucepan, combine butter, ¼ cup water and 1 cup sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat and continue to boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in ½ cup rum.

Now you’re making me hungry and have me looking up cake recipes! This one was a county fair winner. Tough compitetion so it must be good.
To Much Chocolate Cake

Ingredients
1 (18.25 ounce) package devil’s food cake mix
1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
½ cup warm water
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mixes, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs and water. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour batter into a well greased 12 cup bundt pan.
3. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cake thoroughly in pan at least an hour and a half before inverting onto a plate If desired, dust the cake with powdered sugar.

Oooh…ya gotta try baking your own chicken pot pies…heaven!
@Blueroses pasties have got my pot pie cravings going, only a few more weeks til ‘FBT’ time ( fall baking time ) kicks in again over here! :-D

Knowing when to take your cake out of the oven: that’s essential. The test @Judi mentions just above ^^^ is right. When a cake is done, it pulls away slightly from the sides of the pan; you touch it lightly in the risen center and it bounces back; you insert a wooden toothpick into the center and it comes out without crumbs sticking to it.

The old (before electric mixers) wisdom is that you beat your cake batter 300 strokes by hand. I’ve done it this way. I copied my mother, who tilted the bowl slightly in her left arm and beat in an elliptical pattern with a large spoon in her right hand, pausing from time to time to scrape the sides down and turn the bowl.

A bunch of small things (potatoes, cookies, etc.) piled together are, as far as heat (and suface-to-mass ratio) is concerned, one large thing. Spacing is vitally important for proper temperature regulation.

A lot of cake recipes call for “creaming” butter and sugar together, which is much quicker and less demanding on your arm muscles, but you can do it without an electric mixer

That being said, here is a super-easy Lemon bundt cake recipe that utilizes both a boxed cake mix and a boxed pudding mix.

If you want to be more like a real baker you can try this Lemon bundt cake recipe

If you don’t have a bundt pan, you can make this Lemon pound cake in a regular loaf pan.

You can also use a loaf pan for Banana bread and Gingerbread and Pumpkin bread (note: used regular canned pumpkin, not canned pumpkin pie filling.

Or you might like to try making some easy shortbread

Or a breakfast coffee cake (Note: this recipe calls for sifted flour. When a recipe uses sifted flour, you actually sift the flour right into the measuring cup and don’t tamp it down. You do not measure the flour first (like if it calls for one cup) and then sift it after the fact, because you’ll end up with more than a cup after you sift it. Only sift flour if it specifically calls for sifted flour otherwise just spoon your flour into your measuring cup, but again, do not tamp it down in either case.

Here’s one for a chocolate pudding cake that uses a boxed choclate cake mix and a boxed choclate pudding mix.

Here’s another chocolate pudding cake recipe that is still easy, but uses no boxed mixes, it’s all from scratch.

Or you might like carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

Here’s an easy pineapple upside down cake using a boxed cake mix.

And here’s another easy recipe for pineapple upside down cake that does not use any boxed mixes and is made from scratch.

This one is a little bit more involved (time wise) but well worth the wait. It is German chocolate cake

Or you might like to make a berry crisp

Or even homemade brownies

If you end up having success with any of our recipes, and you end up catching the baking bug, you might want to invest in a hand mixer. It can save you a lot of time and won’t wear out your mixing arm. And if you don’t already have one, get yourself an inexpensive flour sifter. Here is a review/article about buying inexpensive mixers

Another thing that you might want to get, if you do end up loving to bake, is some sturdy cookie sheets that won’t warp in the oven. It can be quite shocking when you’re sitting there waiting for your cookies (or quiche that you’ve set one on top of your sheet) and you hear a loud bang! That’s just your cookie sheet warping. If you’ve set a pie or a quiche on your warp-prone pan, you’re likely to have your dish spill over. Here is a conversation about non warping baking sheets

And here’s a tip, many baking recipes call for baking soda or baking powder. They both have very important functions for making your recipes turn out correctly. If you powder or soda has lost it’s oomph, your recipe will not come out right. If you don’t buy these items, often, you should test your soda and powder before making a recipe. Here’s how to test them

You might also see recipes that call for self-rising flour, one of my favorite cooking show hosts, Melinda Lee, says you should never buy self rising flour at the grocery store, because just like the powder and the soda, you can never be sure whether the stuff still has it’s oomph, and if you buy a whole bag of it and it turns out to have lost it’s ability to rise, then you’re out some money and you have to dispose of a bag of flour. It’s better, and cheaper, to make your own, whenever you need to (a little or a lot, depending upon how much you bake). Here’s how to make your own self-rising flour (just make sure to test your baking powder first).

Have fun and happy baking! Betcha wish you had a replicator, huh?

Well…most of you know that Coloma has a very good brownie recipe.
California farm trails make the happiest brownies. lol

I would give the same advice that @YoBob did – find good recipes and follow them closely until you get a feel for it. You’ll notice with experience where you can play a little and where you can’t.

And now, here’s a delicious and ridiculously easy chocolate cake recipe.

Don’t be turned off by the girl in the dress.

That sounds good, @dappled_leaves, if a bit unusual. By “icing sugar” I presume the author means confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar)? That’s what I always used to use to make frosting from scratch, though now I usually let Betty Crocker do it.

@Jeruba Yes, icing sugar is the same as confectioner’s sugar.

I melted the butter on the stove. Is there a difference in the end result if the butter isn’t melted using heat? Would it matter if I zapped it?

Nope!