7 Tips to Organize Your Decorating and Baking Supplies
Christine Glade
1: Designate a baking area in your pantry or cupboard and store any baking-specific food items there. Keep dry ingredients together and wet ingredients together. Keep all bottled items together (corn syrup, molasses, extracts) as well as baking-specific spices. Bags of ingredients that tend to slide around, like marshmallows, coconut flakes and chocolate chips, can be stored together in a bin. Many flours and nuts can go rancid if not used quickly, so keep those in the freezer. Transfer all-purpose flour and sugar to separate airtight containers with large mouths that can easily accommodate measuring cups. Open bags of brown sugar can easily harden if not tightly sealed and kept in a (sandwich or quart-size) resealable bag.
2: Use labeled clear bins to store decorating equipment so you can easily identify and pull out the whole bin. Keep icing tips and piping bags, food coloring and meringue or royal icing powder together. It’s helpful to have the containers of food coloring stored in a plastic bag or lidded container in case they leak. Icing gels, sprinkles, nonpareils, sanding sugars and other decorations can also be stored here along with cupcake liners.
3: Keep cookie cutters together. If you have a large collection, group like-shaped cutters together: circles, squares, letters, animals and more. Keep holiday-specific cutters together. Put separate groups into their own containers, either resealable bags or plastic containers, or even link them together with a piece of string and store altogether in a bin.
4: Designate a baking drawer or cupboard. Store dry and liquid measuring cups; measuring spoons; small offset spatulas; small fine-mesh strainers; rolling pins; and any brushes, ice cream scoops (for cookie dough), spatulas, wooden spoons and whisks used specifically for baking.
5: Silicone mats can be stacked and loosely rolled up and secured with a rubber band or stacked and sandwiched between two sheet pans.
6: Nest and stack as much baking equipment as possible and store in a cabinet: mixing bowls, sheet pans and accompanying cooling racks, like-shaped cake pans, tart pans and muffin pans. Use wire racks or vertical dividers to maximize vertical space.
7: Unless you use it often or you have a lot of counter space, standing mixers should be kept in a cabinet.
