Vocabulary Spotlight on: Baking

In the listening lesson “Chocolate Apples!” I tried baking for the first time in a long time! Let’s look at some of the vocabulary I used in more detail:

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 ingredients are all the different kinds of food used in a recipe. In the recipe for chocolate apples, the ingredients are:

*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:

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.

Tagged as: cooking, food