Best Holiday Biscuit Baking Equipment and Equipment of 2021 | Wirecutter's Review

2021-12-14 09:47:20 By : Ms. sunny xing

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The weather outside may be terrible, but we hope your holiday cookies are enjoyable. The tools you use can play an important role in making your dough bake evenly and the decorations glowing. We spent 200 hours researching and testing 20 kinds of biscuit-related necessities to find the best equipment to make holiday baking fun and easy.

In writing this guide, we sought advice from the famous baker Alice Medrich, the author of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies and the most recent Flavor Flours; Rose Levy Beranbaum, Rose's Christmas Cookies and The Author of books such as Baking Bible; Matt Lewis, cookbook author and co-owner of New York Pop Baking; Gail Dosik, cookie decorator, former owner of New York One Tough Cookie. Wirecutter senior editor Marguerite Preston wrote the first version of this guide. She was a professional baker, which means she spent a lot of time scooping up cookies and more time decorating pipeline. During that time, she had a keen sense of what is practical, what is essential, and what is not feasible.

Simple and cheap, although not unbreakable, these are very strong for glass bowls.

May be out of stock

May be out of stock

*At the time of publication, the price was $38.

These deep metal bowls are perfect for holding rogue dripping water from rotating mixers and daily mixing tasks.

*At the time of publication, the price was $37.

At the beginning of a baking project, the mixing bowl is usually the first thing we take out of the cabinet. Even if you are using a stand mixer and its accompanying bowl, you usually need at least one extra bowl to hold the dry ingredients. If you want to mix several different colors of frosting, a good set of mixing bowls can also come in handy. We recommend simple and robust stainless steel or glass suits.

The stainless steel bowl is lightweight and almost indestructible. After testing seven sets of stainless steel combinations for our best mixing bowl guide, we chose the Cuisinart stainless steel mixing bowl with lid as the best combination. These bowls are durable, beautiful, versatile and easy to hold with one hand, and their lids are tight to store leftovers. Unlike some of the other bowls we tested, they are deep enough to hold splashes from a hand mixer, and wide enough to easily fold the ingredients together. There are three sizes of Cuisinart bowls: 1½, 3, and 5 quarts. The medium size is perfect for mixing a batch of frosting, and the largest bowl should be just right for making standard batches of biscuits.

One of the great advantages of glass bowls is that they can be placed in a microwave oven, which is very useful for tasks such as melting chocolate. However, glass bowls are heavier than metal bowls and therefore more difficult to pick up with one hand, but you might like the extra stability. Of course, glass is not as durable as steel, but our favorite Pyrex Smart Essentials 8-piece mixing bowl is made of tempered glass and is not easily broken. Pyrex bowls are available in four useful sizes (1, 1½, 2½, and 4 quarts) and come with a lid, so you can store a batch of cookie dough in the refrigerator or prevent the frosting from drying out.

The affordable Escali scale is best for most home cooks who want consistent results when baking and cooking. It is very accurate, reads the weight quickly in increments of 1 gram, and has a long time automatic shutdown function of about four minutes.

Most professional bakers swear by kitchen scales. The subtle alchemy of baking relies on precision, and a cup measured only by volume can be very inaccurate. As Alton Brown explained (video), 1 cup of flour can equal 4 to 6 ounces, depending on factors such as the person measuring it and the relative humidity. The scale can indicate the difference between light cream cookies and dense flour cookies-in addition, you can measure all the ingredients directly into the bowl, so you need to clean fewer plates.

After nearly 45 hours of research, three years of testing, and interviews with experts, for our guide to the best kitchen scales, we believe that the Escali Primo digital scale is the most suitable scale for most people. The Escali scale is very accurate and can quickly read the weight in 1 gram increments. It is also affordable, easy to use and store, and has a long battery life. In the model we tested, this scale has the longest automatic shut-off function, so you can take the time to measure. This 11-pound kitchen scale is perfect for all your basic home baking and cooking needs. In addition, it also provides a limited lifetime warranty.

For larger batches, we recommend My Weigh KD8000. It is huge and weighs only a whole gram, but its capacity is 17.56 pounds, which can easily hold a large amount of baking.

This set of sturdy, accurate cups is not unique—you can find several equally good clones on Amazon—but it is the most cost-effective, offering seven cups instead of six.

*At the time of publication, the price was $0.

This classic design is one of the most durable glasses we have found. Its anti-fading markings are clearer than the markings of other glasses we have tested, and the cleaning effect is better than the plastic version.

Before American cookbook authors gave up the imprecise convention of cups, most home bakers wanted to use measuring cups in their toolboxes. It is worth having a set of metal cheers and a glass liquid measuring cup at the same time: flour and other dry ingredients are stacked together, so a cup with a flat side is most suitable for scooping and leveling, and the liquid itself is horizontal, so it is measured on a fixed line to be transparent The container works best.

In our guide to the best measuring cups, we confidently recommend the stainless steel Simple Gourmet 7-piece measuring cup set for dry ingredients and the glass Pyrex Prepware 2 cup measuring cup for liquids. Both are more durable than other cups, easier to clean, and are the most suitable for storage of the measuring cups we have tried. And they are also very accurate (as far as the cup is concerned).

Please note that Simply Gourmet measuring cups are cloned products or white label products-one manufacturer makes them, and they are sold under different brands at different retailers. There is no “original brand”, but we chose Simple Gourmet cups when publishing the guide because that set is the most cost-effective, offering seven cups (the seventh is a small and useful cup size) instead of the usual six . If the Simple Gourmet set is out of stock when you shop, you can buy the same seven-cup set from KitchenMade or a similar six-cup set from Hudson Essentials or Lee Valley.

These filters are not as heavy as the All-Clad model, but their cost is much lower. For the occasional baker, this is a good setting.

Durable stainless steel material, this durable fine mesh filter can stand the test of time.

A simple fine mesh filter is a great multi-purpose tool that you can take with you when you bake. You can use it to sift flour (it can aerate the flour to prevent the result from becoming too dense, especially when you use a measuring cup instead of a scale), to remove lumps from cocoa, or to mix multiple ingredients at once. If you want to sprinkle icing sugar or cocoa powder (with or without template) on the cookies, then a small filter can also come in handy when decorating.

We did not test the filter, but we did get some good suggestions from other sources. Many of our experts recommend choosing packages that include multiple sizes.

Matt Lewis, the co-owner of Baked, likes the sturdy all-inclusive 3-piece stainless steel filter; he tells us that even in the kitchen of his high-volume bakery, his suit has “withstood the test of time”. But at $100, the All-Clad suit is a real investment. If you do not plan to run the filter through the wringer, you may want to consider purchasing the affordable Cuisinart 3 mesh filter set. The mesh is not as fine as the All-Clad set. Some reviews point out that the basket can be bent or warped, but Cuisinart filters can be dishwasher-washed, and to most reviewers, they seem to hold up well under regular use. If you plan to use the filter occasionally or only for baking, the Cuisinart set is only $13 (at the time of writing) and should serve you well.

Many experts told us one thing to avoid at all costs: the old crank-type flour sieving machine. Such tools are not as load-bearing as large filters. They cannot filter anything except dry ingredients such as flour, and become difficult to clean. Moving parts are easily stuck. As Lewis said, "They are messy, silly, and they are really unnecessary equipment in your kitchen."

This 5-quart stand mixer can handle almost any recipe without beating on the counter. It is one of the quietest models in the KitchenAid series.

*At the time of publication, the price was $430.

A good stand mixer will make your baking (and cooking) life easier. KitchenAid Artisan is the best mixer for home bakers looking for equipment upgrades. We started introducing mixers in 2013, and after using them to make biscuits, cakes and breads as a guide to the best stand mixers, we can safely say that the brand that launched the first table mixer in 1919 is still the best. We have used the KitchenAid Artisan blender in our test kitchen for many years, proving that sometimes you really can't beat the classic. Artisan is not cheap, but because it often provides refurbished equipment, it can be an affordable machine. In terms of money, KitchenAid Artisan's performance and versatility are unmatched.

Breville has nine powerful speeds, can consistently mix thick doughs and lighter batters, and has more accessories and functions than the competition.

May be out of stock

In other words, the weight of the vertical mixer is quite large, and there is a large area on the table, and a high-quality machine costs hundreds of dollars. If you need a mixer to make only a few batches of biscuits per year or to whipped egg whites for royal frosting, you may be able to use a hand mixer. After spending more than 20 hours researching and testing our guide to the best hand blender, we recommend Breville Handy Mix Scraper. It stirs dense cookie dough and quickly beats fine batter and soft meringue, and is equipped with more useful accessories and functions that cheaper mixers lack.

OXO's whisk has a comfortable handle and a large number of flexible (but not fragile) wire loops. It can handle almost any task.

*At the time of publication, the price was $10.

Whisks come in various shapes and sizes: a large balloon whisk for whipping cream, a slender whisk for cooking custard, and a small whisk for frothing milk in coffee. However, for making biscuits, you won't use this tool to mix dry ingredients or make icing, so use a narrow medium mixer. All the egg beaters we interviewed emphasized that those egg beaters that are shaped like tornadoes or have metal balls inside wires do not perform better than simple, sturdy teardrop-shaped models.

After testing nine whisks for our guide to the best whisks, we believe that the OXO Good Grips 11-inch balloon whisk is the best choice for various tasks. In our tests, it whipped cream and egg whites faster than most other whisks we tried, can easily reach the corners of the pot, and provide the most comfortable handle. Our only complaint is that the rubber TPE-coated handle is not completely heat-resistant: if you leave it on the edge of the hot pan for too long, it will melt. But this shouldn't be a problem of making cookies (or many other mixing tasks), so we don't think it's a problem of disrupting transactions.

If you really want an egg beater with a heat-resistant handle, we also like the simple Winco 12-inch stainless steel piano wire whip. Its cost is slightly lower than OXO, but it is still sturdy and well-made. Winco quickly completed the whipping cream in our test, and it was easy to operate around the small pan. The smooth stainless steel handle is not as comfortable as OXO's, but it is still very good, especially for simple tasks such as mixing dry ingredients.

This spatula is small enough to fit in a peanut butter jar, but strong enough to press down on the dough, and flexible enough to clean the edges of the batter bowl.

*At the time of publication, the price was $13.

When baking biscuits, a good, sturdy silicone spatula is essential. It should be hard and thick enough to press the dough together, but flexible enough to easily scrape off the sides of the bowl. Silicone is the material of choice for old-fashioned rubber because it is food-safe, heat-resistant and non-sticky, so you can use a spatula to melt butter or chocolate and mix, and the sticky dough will slip off immediately (in addition, you can throw the spatula Into the dishwasher).

In our guide to the best spatula, we found that GIR Ultimate Spatula is the best in the silicone series. It consists of a single piece of silica gel, so it can be washed in a dishwasher, is easy to clean, and is available in a variety of colors. The small head is slim enough to fit in a peanut butter jar, but it is comfortable and quick to use in a curved pan. It also has parallel edges to scrape off the straight edges of the pot or wok. Although the tip is thick enough to allow the spatula to press down on the dough, it is also flexible enough to slide smoothly and cleanly on the edge of the batter bowl.

This bench-top scraper has a comfortable, gripping handle, and the size is engraved on the blade, which will not fade over time.

You will find bench spatulas in every professional kitchen. They are suitable for everything from trimming rolled dough to scooping chopped nuts to flour for cutting butter into pie crusts-or even just to scrape the surface clean. When you bake biscuits, the desktop scraper can easily accomplish all the above tasks, and it is very suitable for picking up the cut biscuits and transferring them to the baking tray.

For most purposes, we recommend the OXO Good Grips stainless steel multi-purpose scraper and chopper because of its comfortable handle and useful size engraved on the blade. (The measured value printed by the competitor Norpro Grip-EZ Chopper/Scraper is easier to fade.) Cook's Illustrated recommends Dexter-Russell Sani-Safe Dough Cutter Scraper because it is sharper than most models, and the handle of the desktop scraper is flatter to make it more Easy to wedge into rolled out dough. However, Dexter-Russell is not marked with inches. At the time of writing, OXO is also a few dollars cheaper than Dexter-Russell, and desktop scrapers, although useful, are not tools that you should spend a lot of money on.

This tapered pin rolls the dough more efficiently than the handle pin, is suitable for rolling pies and biscuits, and is still the easiest to clean. In addition, it looks beautiful and durable enough to last a lifetime.

*At the time of publication, the price was $13.

Without a rolling pin, you cannot make cut biscuits. If you already own a rolling pin that you like, you don't have to worry about getting a better rolling pin: the best rolling pin is the one you feel comfortable with. However, if you find yourself having difficulty with sticky or cracked dough, difficult-to-handle pins (or temporary pins like wine bottles), or pins with handles rotating in place instead of rolling smoothly, it may be time to upgrade了面。 The surface.

In our test of the best rolling pin guide, the timeless maple oilstone wood French rolling pin proved to be an excellent tool and great value. Its long, tapered shape is easy to rotate, so it is perfect for rolling perfectly round pie crusts and more oval biscuits. Compared with the surface of the basic mass-produced rolling pin, the hard maple surface of this rolling pin is smoother, which prevents the dough from sticking together and is easy to clean. Although compared to other similar hand-turned models, the whetstone pin is a sought-after item, but if you are the occasional baker looking for something cheaper (or the whetstone is sold out), please consider JK Adams 19-inch wooden rolling pin. Our 10-year-old tester also found this pin easy to use. However, without tapered ends, JK Adams pins are not as flexible as oilstone pins, so it is a bit awkward to roll out of a round shape. And since the surface of the pin is not as smooth as our main pick surface, in our tests, it needs more flour and more effort to clean it.

Among all the knives we tested, these knives have the strongest structure and can cut the cleanest shapes.

*At the time of publication, the price was $16.

These sturdy and cute cutters can provide you with beautiful snowflakes every time.

For baking with children, the simpler the better, and these plastic cutters are safer and easier to handle.

*At the time of publication, the price was $18.

Especially if you are buying the first batch of cookie cutters, we find it easier (and more cost-effective) to buy a set than to sort the dizzying array of individual knives. For holiday baking, we like Ateco's stainless steel cookie cutter series, whether it is Ateco stainless steel Christmas cookie cutter or Ateco 5-piece stainless steel snowflake cutter set. The shape is clear and elegant. Among all the cutters we tested, Ateco has the strongest structure and the cleanest cut biscuits.

The metal specification of the Ateco cookie cutter is the heaviest of any one we have tested, and the difference is very obvious. Many other metal biscuit cutters (such as those in the R&M Holiday Season Classics 12-piece biscuit cutter bathtub) are made of tin or tin-plated steel, which can easily bend and deform. Although Ateco tools are not impossible to bend, they are thicker and more flexible in our tests because they require a lot of force to bend a little. Each Ateco tool also has more joints than other metal tools, making the Ateco design less likely to break. Tinned knives are also more prone to rust, but after many uses, our Ateco knives still shine.

The Ateco Christmas cutter is the smallest of all cutters we’ve tried. The average size from start to finish is 2½ inches instead of 3½ or 4 inches, but this shouldn’t be a deal-breaking issue unless you’re the same as you The big biscuit made up his mind to hand. If this is the case, please choose the Snow Set or Ateco 10-Piece Stainless Steel Star Knife Set; these sets have knives ranging from 1½ inches to 5 or 7½ inches.

For baking with children, we recommend the Wilton 101 cookie cutter set. This is a big deal, and the variety — from letters to animals to a few holiday pictures — means that it can handle almost any cookie cutting project your child wants. They are plastic, so they are not as sharp as metal knives and can be used to push in cold or frozen dough. But they have a wide upper lip, which allows them to press harder more comfortably (our young tester gave them some heavy blows, which may be excessive, but it was fun for her).

If you don’t have enough space, or if the 101 cutters seem a bit overkill, we also like Wilton’s Holiday Grippy cookie cutters. This set of four plastic knives feels sturdy and we like the silicone handles, which makes them more comfortable to use. The holiday shapes are almost the same as some of the 101-piece sets. They are great for kids, but their diversity is not enough to make them our top choice. In addition to this Christmas-themed suit, Wilton also provides a set of four "daily" knives in the Comfort Grip model.

This cookie scoop is the strongest and the most comfortable to hold. In our tests, it released the dough cleaner than any other product.

*At the time of publication, the price was $16.

If you are used to manually dispensing cookies such as chocolate chips or oatmeal, a cookie scoop may be a game changer. A good spoon sweeps out the contents by squeezing the handle, and easily becomes a consistent, perfectly round cookie dough (or muffin or cupcake batter).

The structure and quality of biscuit scoops vary. We prefer handles with V-shaped handles to those with only thumbsticks, because V-shaped handles are suitable for left-handed and right-handed people and are easier to squeeze. It is important to invest in a good, sturdy spoon, otherwise you will soon experience more frustration and confusion than handmade biscuits. Among the five spoons we tested, the Norpro Grip-EZ 2 tablespoon stainless steel spoon is the easiest to squeeze and the most comfortable. It can release hard dough that is taken out of the refrigerator directly, or it can release sticky dough. Room temperature dough is cleaner than any other spoon.

The quality of OXO Good Grips medium cookie scoops is also very high and has good reviews on Amazon. The squeezing action is smooth and free, the handle is comfortable, and the tool is sturdy and reliable. When we scooped out a soft, sticky dough, the release of the Norpro model was cleaner. Nevertheless, the price of OXO is almost the same as Norpro, if Norpro is not available, this is a good choice. The spoons of these two brands are also available in many other sizes, so you can make giant biscuits or small biscuits according to your needs.

This moderately priced crepes has the effect of baking delicate and hearty biscuits as effective as twice the price, and is less likely to bend at high temperatures than cheaper models.

*At the time of publication, the price was $10.

A high-quality baking pan can improve the quality of biscuits without spending a lot of money. If you choose a fringed pan, it can also be used as an excellent universal pan for many other cooking tasks, such as roasting vegetables, toasting bread, and browning granola.

After baking several hours of biscuits, pissaladière and sweet potato fries for our best bakeware guide, we believe that the Nordic Ware natural aluminum commercial baker's half is the best choice for baking all kinds of biscuits. It is made of thick aluminum and has no warpage in our tests, even at high temperatures. Its baking effect is equal to or more uniform than other sheets we tested. After six months of heavy use, its performance is still very good.

If you like frameless biscuit chips for baking biscuits, we recommend Vollrath Wear-Ever biscuit chips. The short end of this thick cardboard has two raised handles for easy rotation in the oven. It bakes all our biscuits very well, if a bit slower than other biscuits. We still think the overall value of the Nordic Ware half-sheet is higher, but if you don't want rims, then Vollrath will not disappoint.

You can use parchment paper for a variety of purposes, from making cookies to lining cake pans to baking nipple paper.

By far, the best and easiest way to prevent biscuits from sticking to the pan is to lay a simple piece of parchment paper on the pan. It's cheap, you can cut it to fit your baking (or cooking) projects, and you can slide it onto the cooling rack along with the baked goods. Then you can put a new sheet of paper on the next pan and put the next batch in the oven.

The non-stick Silpat baking mats have received a lot of hype, and they are very suitable for certain projects, especially sticky projects like toffee. But their smooth surface will change the way the biscuits are baked, and when you clean them, it may be difficult to remove all the grease. They are also expensive, so you may not want to buy more than one pair, which will limit the speed at which you can move from one batch of biscuits to the next.

We did not find any significant differences between the parchment brands, so just buy any ready-made products at the local grocery store. If you are concerned about the environmental impact, Beyond Gourmet produces high-quality unbleached parchment paper.

The oven is safe and designed to fit half a baking tray. This rack is stronger than other cooling racks we have seen. Its tight grid pattern will not allow the biscuits to bend or fall.

*At the time of publication, the price was $20.

The cooling rack will help your biscuits cool quickly and efficiently, and it can come in handy when you decorate. The 12 x 17 inch Sur La Table stainless steel cooling grille is the best rack we have tested. It is very suitable to be placed in half a baking tray, when you drizzle glaze on the biscuits or dip them in chocolate, this is a convenient arrangement, because the excess part will drip into the baking tray without Gather at the bottom of the biscuit. It is one of the few shelves we have found that can be cleaned in the oven and dishwasher at temperatures up to 450 °F. In addition, the Sur La Table shelf is stronger than most other shelves we have tested, and its tight grid pattern (as opposed to parallel lines) will not allow the biscuits to bend or fall. Because it is very durable, the shelf will not bend in the middle when placing the cake layer.

The offset spatula is a great multitasking tool, from decorating cookies and cakes to simply removing things from cookie sheets.

When decorating cookies, a small offset spatula is convenient and inexpensive. Its shape makes it better at spreading icing sugar or chocolate evenly on biscuits than a butter knife. But it is also a good multitasker, and it does a good job of taking things out of the cookie table. When you are not baking cookies, you can use a spatula to spread mustard and mayonnaise on the sandwich. Real Simple praised the small Ateco Offset Spatula, writing: "Try it once and you will call it indispensable."

Ateco pastry bags are made of high-quality plastic and are slightly sticky to help prevent the bag from slipping out in your hands.

*At the time of publication, the price was $7.

DayMark bags can be easily rolled in the distribution box. They are extremely strong and sticky on the outside.

If you want to be interested in your cookie decoration (video), now is the time to graduate from the Ziploc bag. The piping bag and a set of techniques (and of course some exercises) will enable you to draw smooth, precise lines with royal frosting or chocolate. For holiday cookie decorations, disposable plastic piping bags are a good choice because they are easy to clean and you can use multiple frostings of different colors at the same time. Among the few bags sold for home bakers, we like the 10-piece Ateco disposable soft decorative bag (18 inches).

You won't find so many types of disposable pastry bags, but they do vary in quality. For home bakers, Ateco bags are the best choice. Biscuit decorating expert Gail Dosik told us that Ateco bags are her favorite because they are "very flexible" rather than the crumpled bags of Wilton or Cake Boss. It is also worth noting that the outside of the Ateco bag is a bit sticky-non-sticky, but very sticky, similar to Glad Press'n Seal plastic packaging. This feature provides an advantage, especially when you use greasy cream, because it helps prevent the bag from slipping in your hands, which can turn the decoration into a frustrating and messy struggle.

If you decide to take the plunge, a 100-pack pastry bag is definitely a better choice. Our favorite bulk package, the DayMark Piping Pal disposable pastry bag with dispenser box, currently sells for 100 18-inch or 12-inch sizes for about $20, which is only three times the price of 10 18-inch Ateco bags. Although Ateco also sells bags in quantities of 100, it is difficult to find bags at the same price, and the bags do not roll in the distribution box like DayMark bags.

We also considered the Thermohauser disposable plastic pastry bag, and Cook’s illustration (subscription required) was listed as our favorite. They come in a box of 100, but they are more expensive and not as widely available as DayMark bags.

A hundred bags are a lot, but with some pastry tips, these bags can also help beautify things other than biscuits, such as mustard egg filling, mashed potatoes on shepherd’s pie, and even cheese biscuits on appetizers. We This huge box cannot be recommended for everyone, but if you are creative and like to spend time in the kitchen, you may find that a large number of pastry bags have many uses.

The suit has a durable tip and no visible seams. It has all the kinds needed for most basic (and some advanced) decoration tasks.

*At the time of publication, the price was $14.

You can simply cut the tip from the pastry bag (if it is a disposable) to draw a line of any width you want, but if you want to draw anything other than a straight line-or even if you just want to draw Rounder, cleaner lines-you should get a basic set of plumbing skills. If you use thick frosting like butter, these pieces can also allow you to make stars, rosettes, leaves and basket weaves.

After talking with our experts and trying three sets of plumbing techniques, we found an obvious winner: Ateco 14-piece cake decoration set. It actually only has 12 tips, because the total number of pieces includes a plastic coupler and a 12-inch reusable plastic piping bag, but the set still provides all the kinds you need to perform the most basic (and some advanced) decoration tasks. Once the plastic connectors are inserted into the bag, they allow you to screw on the pipe tips from the outside, so you can easily replace them without having to pour icing sugar. The seamless tip ensures smooth icing, and the tip itself is unlikely to rust.

In our tests, the Ateco tips also felt sturdy and difficult to bend. We like that the kit is stored in a hard plastic box because there is no safe place to store them, and the pipe tips are likely to roll away or lose quickly.

This gel pigment is more concentrated than liquid pigments, lasts longer, and produces more realistic and vivid shades.

Food coloring can make cookie decorations more interesting (especially for kids) and more refined, but you can find better options than the watery liquid McCormick sets available in most grocery stores. The best AmeriColor Student Soft Gel Paste Food Color not only provides more color choices than the basic red, yellow, green and blue, but its formula is much more concentrated than liquid colors. As a result, it can last longer, produce more vivid shades, and reduce the risk of discarding your recipes due to too much liquid. In our test, its color is the most realistic color we have tried. They are packed in a squeeze bottle and are easier to use than the concentrated gel in a small jar.

If you are worried about using artificial colors due to allergies or other reasons, you can widely use a set of high-quality all-natural food colors, namely India Tree Nature's Colors Decorating Set. The set contains only three colors-red, blue and yellow, made of beet, red cabbage and turmeric respectively-but they are surprisingly real and vibrant. The set also has some problems: on the one hand, it is expensive, and in the package we received from Amazon, the yellow bottle leaked a little. The color tends to settle to the bottom and needs to be shaken before use. And they do not contain preservatives, so as many Amazon reviewers have pointed out, they tend to become less effective over time. You may not get wild, electric colors from this set of colors, but if you are committed to staying natural, this set of colors is a good choice.

After hours of research and testing of baking equipment and kitchen equipment, if you want to start baking bread, we think you need the following.

Producing award-winning baked goods requires practice, precision and creativity. Here are the pastry tools you need, even for the toughest judges.

Margaret Preston and Kristen Cyr Cressett

Since 2013, we have tested 15 different pans and made batches of biscuits, and Nordic Ware Natural Aluminium Baker's Half Sheet is always among the best.

We think FibraMent-D baking stone is the best universal baking stone for making crispy pizza, crusty bread and golden pastries.

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