Hello cake lovers and dinner SOS listeners. I'm Chris Morocco, Food Director of Bon Appetit

and Epicurious and this is Dinner SOS, the show where we help you save dinner or whatever

else you happen to be making. Today we're talking baking and baking cakes specifically.

My colleague, Shilpa Escocovich has been up in the test kitchen for months and months

developing delicious new cake recipes. That's right, many months. I made five cakes and you

can read all about them at bonapetit.com. We'll link to the article in the show notes, but Shilpa,

what have you come here to tell us today? Well, I'm going to tell you my top five tips for successful

cake baking and give you some guidance on how to stock your pantry for any baking project.

Then we'll answer your cake questions. Shilpa, even baking a lot of cakes. So many cakes.

Can you give me like your top five actionable tips and takeaways for the folks back home?

The most important one is using a scale. I don't think that's a surprise, especially coming

from me, especially coming from me, but that is my number one tip when you're baking. I mean,

regardless, whatever you're baking, if you ever thought you can't bake or if you have baked

and it's turned out weird or if it's turned out really well once and then it's been terrible

the next time, basically, if it's inconsistent, you're probably not using a scale. A digital scale

is great because it's accurate. First of all, second, for people who hate doing dishes like me,

it just makes cleanup so much easier. You're not going through. You can literally assemble

ingredients in the same bowl because you can basically like negate each addition and then

like weigh the sort of next ingredient that comes into the bowl. Exactly. It's to be clear. Yes.

You tear the scale out and then you add ingredients. Tear, T-A-R-E means like reset to zero,

negating the weight of the bowl, whatever ingredients are there. Yes. And it's consistent. You

using chocolate chips in a recipe, for instance. Okay. Mini chocolate chips occupy a different

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