To tweak or not to tweak, that is the question...

When I first started baking from scratch 8 years ago, I was too afraid to ever deviate from the way a recipe was written.  The more I baked, the more comfortable I got and that's when my tweaking of recipes started.

What I love about baking, for the most part, is how precise it is if you don't mess with the active ingredients, the only things you *can't* tweak!

Image Courtesy Google.com

Once I learned this, it got easier to adjust recipes to suit my and my family's tastes.  My first major success was with Ina Garten's Carrot Cake recipe.  I loved the ingredients, but didn't agree with the quantity of some of the ingredients.  If you're adding pineapple, why does it have to be in such big chunks?  Why is there so much vegetable oil and sugar in the recipe?  After about four tries, it became my Carrot Cake recipe, as inspired by the lovely Ina.  Just as yummy, but with much more crushed pineapple, and drastically less oil and sugar so it was as tasty and moist as the original.

Now when I bake, I have no hesitation in changing the type and quantity of spices listed or swapping out ingredients like fruits and nuts.