Q: What's the difference between baking and cooking?
A: Baking is just one method of cooking. [Other methods of cooking include grilling, steaming, boiling, broiling, sautéing, frying, or barbecuing.]
To bake something = to put the food in an oven and cook it using dry heat, for a period of time. Generally you bake things like bread, cake, cookies, pies, or muffins.
When you bake something, usually you follow a recipe.
To follow a recipe = to do everything the recipe says to do:
The only apple that turned out edible was the one where I followed the recipe exactly!
The ingredients are all the different kinds of food used in a recipe. In the recipe for chocolate apples, the ingredients are:
apples
mini-chocolate bars
brown sugar
water
*In this recipe there were no specific measurements. You can use as much or as little of the ingredients as you want. Usually, a recipe will specify how much of each ingredient to use (for example: 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of water, etc.)
The verbs put and add are often used when baking:
You put the chocolate pieces in the hole, add some water and brown sugar, and then put everything in the oven for an hour!
I put the Caramilk bar in the freezer overnight…
Although it wasn't required in this recipe, often you must stir the ingredients together, or add other ingredients to the mixture while stirring.
To stir something = to mix things together, usually using a spoon and moving the mixture in a circular motion.
Before I put the apples in the oven, I pre-heated the oven. I turned the oven on and set the temperature at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I waited for the oven to heat up to that temperature. When the oven reached 350 degrees Fahrenheit, I put the apples in the oven.
