Mis en Place

The trick to a speedy and accurate recipe is to have all the ingredients ready, pans prepared, and the oven preheated before you start. Called "Mis en Place", its a French term for pre-assembling your wet and dry ingredients. It helps so that recipes can be assembled quickly and easily and helps to prevent your leaving something out.

Have you ever started a recipe and had one of your lovely darlings call out "Mom I NEED you". You then find out that what they needed was to tie a shoe or reach the crayons. I recently had this happen to me. After I took care of that dire moment I came back to find that I couldn't remember if I had already added the baking soda. Hmmm what should I do? Start over? Add the baking soda again if in fact I already had? What would you do? Of course I threw it out and started over.

I now read my recipe twice and pull out all my ingredients that I will be using. I also premeasure everything before I start to add and mix. I have also learned that cleanup is much easier and faster if I clean as I go. Put away your ingredients when you are done measuring them wipe counters and rinse measuring cups and spoons when done that way they can easily go right into your dishwasher. Before you know it your kitchen is clean and your cake, pie, or cookies are in the oven baking and you can sit and rest before it comes out of the oven instead of cleaning your mess.