Baking Supplies: Make Your Own

Learn to make your own 5 basic baking supplies for your favorite cookies and treats.  Included is a FREE downloadable PDF with various how-to’s from this baking supplies list.

There are certain things that are essential when considering the creation of a thing as serious as a good cookie.  Chris, from Joybilee Farms shared her grandmother’s secrets in a recent post and I feel it is a must read.

I’m not much of a baker, to be perfectly frank.  Quality baking takes skill and attention to detail and I’m sadly lacking in both areas.  However, I do like to eat cookies and I love wholesome baking supplies.  So, it’s worth it to me to learn to make some of my own baking supplies each month and throughout my DIY year.

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Baking Supplies

FYI, if you’d like the PDF notes attached to this article, we’re happy for you to have them.  You’ll find a few more thoughts on gluten-free flours, as well as instructions on how to make your own butter, herbal sugars, sprinkles and powdered sugar.  No strings attached – it’s just a nice little PDF you can print and tuck into your cookbook.  

Click Here to Download Baking Supplies Notes

Kids in the Kitchen

Also, just a quick note on including the kids: please do it!  There’s nothing like training your children early to be DIYers in the kitchen.  They will have a healthy relationship with food the more they cook with homemade and wholesome ingredients.  Yes, even treats can be healthier and you give your children a great gift each time you sacrifice a piece of your sanity to allow their brand of crazy to kick in in your kitchen.  The truth is, it isn’t your kitchen along – it’s the family kitchen.

Flour

A most basic ingredient for quality cookies is flour.  Now, you can grow your own grain, if that’s your thing but I’m not quite there yet.  I purchase grains in bulk and keep them in my long term food storage.

For cookies, the wheat I use most often is white wheat, though I prefer einkorn.  To make your own flour, you will need a grain grinder.  I have both an electric and a manual one.  There are a number of grain mills on the  market and, I’m not gonna lie, they’re an investment.

Being able to control the quality of my flour (freshly ground flour is far more nutrient dense) and create flour from my wheat storage became important enough to my family’s health that I saved a bit here and there until I could afford a quality mill.  I would suggest you not bother to buy a poorly made grain mill because it will just break on you.  I will never forget the first time I ground my own wheat into flour – I felt like I’d made fire, or something.

To learn more on the benefits of soaking your grains and flours before using them, please visit this link from Cultures For Health.

To learn to make your own sprouted wheat to dehydrate and then grind into flour, please visit this link:  The Nourished Kitchen

Non-Grain Flours

I went through a long phase when I couldn’t eat wheat at all and I learned to make cookies with various other flours.  I would suggest organic, non-GMO ingredients.  Here are a few recipes for gluten free flours to make yourself:

• From Gluten Freely Frugal,
• Natural and Nourished Family,
• Gluten Free Girl
• And a sweet potato flour from Rockin W Homestead

For some more ideas on How to Stock Your Pantry for the Holiday Season from Naturally Free Life, please visit this link.  She might be able to remind you of a few areas you may have forgotten, like herbs.

Fat

Time was I used Crisco for fluffy baked goods; now I wonder how I survived those days.

Quality fat is a life sustaining substance that contributes to our health and quality of life.  Fat is sacred.

Butter is typically used in cookies and it is one of the easiest dairy products to make yourself.  You need high quality cream for good butter.  If you’re stuck with store bought cream, it will all be ultra-pasteurized and, therefore, not really that healthy but will still make a great cookie.  If you have access to milk straight from the animal then you can create a wholesome butter to use in and on everything.

For learning more about making your own butter, please visit this link.

Non-Dairy Fat

Another great fat to use, especially if you’re on a Paleo diet, is coconut oil.  If you really want to make your own coconut oil at home, here you go.  I can certainly highly recommend learning to use coconut oil.  One of my current favorite Paleo cookbooks for families is Danielle Walker’s, Against All Grain.

Sugar

I don’t have cane fields near me and its quite a process to refine sugar crystals.  Here’s a fun article on getting sugar syrup from beets from American Preppers Network – a lot of beets are needed to get a small amount of syrup.

In my opinion, the best and most healthy sugar to make yourself is honey – well, actually, the bees do all the work.  Raw honey, like raw forms of sugar, is only raw when kept under 115-ish degrees.  So, when you bake it, those nutrients that are sensitive to extreme heat begin to die off.  Still, for sugar, this is a healthier option.

To learn how to get ready for keeping bees, please visit this link.

Once you have the honey, learn how to extract raw honey from your beehive, please visit this link.

To learn how to make a delectable vanilla honey, please visit this link.

White Sugar Woes

Please toss out all your table sugar just as soon as you’re ready because it simply has no redeeming features.  Once you wean yourself off of white sugar, it will most likely start to taste metallic and quite nasty.  There are several healthier sugar options out there and I can suggest you try looking at Wholesome Sweeteners.  Check out their sustainable, fair trade practices on their site!

To learn to make your own powdered sugar from organic coconut sugar (or any crystalized sugar), just visit this link.  You can do this with succanat, too, and it makes a great frosting that tastes like maple glaze and makes you supremely happy.

Vanilla

I don’t live where I can grow vanilla beans but we can buy organic vanilla beans and make our own vanilla – easy peasy!

My biggest beef with commercial vanilla is that its tinctured in alcohol and tastes nasty.  I tincture mine in organic vegetable glycerin and make half gallon batches, several gallons at a time.

Here’s how to make your own vanilla from Small Footprint Family.  You can use your spent beans to make the aforementioned vanilla honey.

Sprinkles and Fun Stuff

Did you know you can make your own chocolate chips?!  This is a DIY I can get into.  Here are a couple different recipes to try and each has their own thing to say about how they hold up in baking.

• From Whole New Mom Healthy Chocolate Chips
• Here are some Vegan chocolate chips from The Coconut Mama
• Wellness Mama can show you how to make it in bars
• From Chocolate Covered Katie Healthy White Chocolate Chips

This year we experimented with making our own colored sugars for cookie and cake decorating after reading this post From the Nerdy Farm Wife.  It was so fun and not hard at all – my kids had a blast!

We ended up making several herbal sugars which were both lovely and tasty!  Remember, we’ve included those instructions, as well as the instructions for making your own sprinkles in our FREE downloadable PDF which you can access here.  This is an excerpt from our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead, from The Homestead Kitchen section – we hope you enjoy it!

Special thanks to this Pexels user for the cover photo.