Baking Cheat Sheet

Your cookbooks show you what to bake. This shows you exactly why a batch goes wrong, and how to fix it before it happens again.

• Texture charts for both brownies and cookies, showing the exact ratio of butter, sugar and flour behind fudgy, chewy or cakey.
• A troubleshooting chart for the problem in front of you right now: sunken center, dry crumb, no crackly top or cookies that spread too thin.
• The real baking temperature for every texture, in Fahrenheit and Celsius, plus how to adjust when you bake at altitude.
• Ten common mistakes that quietly ruin a batch, most of them fixed in under a minute once you know what to look for.
• Step by step technique for a bakery style crackly brownie top, and for cookies that stay soft days after baking.