Can you cut a baking recipe in half?!


Question:

Can you cut a baking recipe in half?

I know you can double a recipe, but can you cut it in half? I was going to make cupcakes, but I didn't want to make 24 so I was going to cut the recipe in half. When my mom heard this, she panicked and said you couldn't cut baking recipes in half. Yes/No?

This was what I was going to make, along with the strawberry icing that is linked:
http://southernfood.about.com/od/cupcake...

Additional Details

4 weeks ago
And what about cake flour vs regular flour? Will the world explode or what would happen if I were to use regular flour?


Answers:
4 weeks ago
And what about cake flour vs regular flour? Will the world explode or what would happen if I were to use regular flour?

My answer is as old as the hills: in baking terms, you are as right as is mom. You're just looking at things from two different vantage points.

Mom is trying to teach you not to mess with baking formulas: don't mess = don't screw up. Sound, if a bit rigid. :-)

You can manipulate a baking recipe all you like, as long as *ALL* the proportions are maintained. If you cut everything in half, you'll be fine as long as you don't end up with fractions of things that are not divisible. Like 1/13th of an egg, for instance, to give you someting way-out-with-the-fairies.

Where mom is spot-on is that baking things is not a matter of *recipes* so much as *formulas*: they're very much all or nothing how-tos. You can mess with them if you want: just don't wail and holler if, as a result of your tinkering, you've baked a brick, which, of course, we have all done too, from time to time... :-/

Hope this helps.

Source(s):
prof. patissier.

no you cant there is a reason there is a smaller baking recipe

Yes you can. You should really have no problems. But if in doubt, go to allrecipes.com and find a similar recipe. ON that site you can tailor the recipe to the amount you want.

Yes i cut cupcake recipes in half all the time and they all turn out fine! if anything you'll have extra icing! and 24 cupcakes is a lot of cupcakes so don't worry about it!

Sure you can! Just use half of what you would have used for the full recipe, really easy. Say if you had one cup of milk for a recipe and you wanted to cut it in half, you would just use 1/2 cup of milk instead, etc.

Yes, you can. But you must cut every ingredient in half! The only time that i can think of when you couldn't is if the original ingredient is, like, 1 egg. Then, you will have to just make it and cut whatever you made in half.... sorry.

Hope this helps,
Wyatt123456789

That would be a very easy recipe to cut in half.
Good luck and happy eating.

Yes, you can usually halve recipes w/o much trouble. The rub comes if the original calls for 3 eggs... You need to whisk 1 of them, attempt to divide it in half, then use that half plus a whole egg.

Yes you can. Just divide each ingredient in half. Make sure you get the math right.

As for the cake flour, if you use regular, the cupcakes will be a bit heavier and denser and won't rise as much.




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