Molecular Measuring Spoons (Set of 5)

Set of Five Measuring Spoons

Some cooks like to follow recipes closely and recreate their favourite dishes faithfully every time they make them. Others like to experiment, substitute ingredients, tinker with quantities, or just completely make up recipes as they go along. However you like to cook, there are always times when you need to be precise with your measurements in order to get the results you want.

Baking is one discipline where you really need to ensure that your measurements are accurate. Although the process of combining ingredients to make bread, cakes and biscuits has been used for centuries, recent scientific advances have discovered the science behind some of our favourite foods. 

The interactions that take place between yeast, sugar, sodium bicarbonate and other common baking ingredients have never been better understood. Food technologists have identified the most effective way to combine ingredients to deliver consistent outcomes. From 72-hour fermented sourdough laves to near-instant mug cakes, the thing that they all have in common is the way the ingredients rely on each other to create the overall effect, but it can only work in the correct proportions. 

Using Measuring Spoons in Baking

Yeast and sugar need one another to make bread rise, and it is important to have the right amount of both to get the desired effect. If theres not enough sugar, the yeast will have nothing to feed on, so it will have nothing to convert into carbon dioxide meaning that the dough rises slowly or even not at all. If you add too much sugar, it will overwhelm the yeast and draw liquid out of your dough which will inhibit the yeasts activity and prevent it from rising. Sweet doughs need additional yeast in them to counteract this effect, but you can only make these types of adjustments if you can measure your ingredients accurately. 

There are other ingredients that need to be used in the correct proportions to ensure their chemical reactions work effectively. Bicarbonate of soda is an alkaline powder that needs to be activated by an acidic ingredient such as cream of tartar, sour cream, yoghurt or buttermilk. The reaction causes bubbles of carbon dioxide which make the dough or batter rise. 

Anyone who has used too much baking soda will know that it can give your dish a soapy taste, just as anyone who has used too little will know the disappointment of a flat, dense cake. Having measuring spoons to hand takes all of the guesswork out of baking without having to get out scales or a measuring jug for every ingredient. 

Using measuring spoons in other cooking

When you cook with the same ingredients all the time, you get used to their taste and its easy to adjust the amount you use to suit your preferences. When using new ingredients, seasonings or condiments, it can help to measure them out to ensure that you are adding enough to taste, but not so much that it overwhelms the dish.

This is particularly true when measuring spices that are going to add heat to a dish. It can be hard to tell how strong a curry powder, spice blend or hot sauce is until you taste the end result. Using measuring spoons to get your quantities accurate makes it much less likely that youll end up with a dish thats too hot to eat, or one that is under seasoned. 

These measuring spoons come in five practical sizes including: just a pinch, ½ a teaspoon, 1 teaspoon, ½ a tablespoon and 1 tablespoon. These handy spoons take the guesswork out of cooking with small quantities so that you can cook with confidence.