10 Products for More Sustainable Cooking and Baking; how to reduce your waste and move towards a more environmentally friendly way to create sweet treats.
Are you like me? Are you keen on reducing your kitchen waste and living a bit greener? Are you also a bit rubbish at it, or don’t know where to start?
Let’s fix this.
Today I’m giving you 10 Products for More Sustainable Cooking and Baking. No crazy gadgets or items that will cost more than they are worth, I promise. This list will give you some pointers on some great things to pick up to easily cut down on your kitchen waste.
From paper to plastic to the food itself, let’s try and do our bit to stop filling the planet with rubbish. Here are 10 Products for More Sustainable Cooking and Baking!
Click the links in the title or little paragraphs to shop the products.
1. Silicone Cupcake Cases
Cupcakes are a staple for many bakers. Whether you bring them into the office to appease co-workers or use them to say thank you to someone, cupcakes are an ideal individual treat. As with most individual portions though, this often means more packaging and subsequently more waste.
Silicone cupcakes and muffin cases can alleviate this problem. Instead of using up to 24 little paper or foil cases per batch of cupcakes, silicone ones can be reused time and time again. They are still pretty, still the perfect size, but will save you money and reduce waste. Plus, they’ll prevent that annoying problem of being one or two cases short of a batch!
2. Jars
Not only are jars a pretty and very handy reusable container for leftovers, they are also ideal for shopping. As supermarkets and specialist shops move towards reducing their plastic use, jars can be an ideal way to pick up your dry ingredients. Nuts, seeds, oats, and even dried pulses can be bought from big pick n mix containers nowadays, and using jars will save money and waste from using bags!
3. Recycled Packaging
If you sell your baked goods, or you like to gift them to friends and family, this one’s for you. You might already use reusable containers like tubs or cake tins, which is great! However, if you don’t, you might want to invest in recycled packaging in place of your regular cardboard or plastic boxes. This way, you’re ensuring that previously recycled goods are being put to good use AND that your own packaging will be further recycled once finished with. All hail the endless cycle of the recycle!
4. Bee’s Wraps
Ditch the clingfilm and get yourself some of these. Beeswax coated cotton sheets like these can be used to keep your food fresh and protect them from drying out or soaking up other odours in the fridge. These are a much better investment than rolls of plastic wraps, and can be washed to use over and over again. Plus, aren’t they pretty?
5. Reusable Baking Mats
Greaseproof paper is a blessing when you want to make sure that your cookies, scones or pastries don’t stick to the baking tray. However, using so many rolls of paper and throwing them away after one or two uses (not to mention all the wee bits you tear off to fit neatly on your trays) is a bit wasteful.
Reusable baking mats are becoming increasingly popular. They are ideal for lining baking trays and cookie sheets before you bake. Once you’re done, you can just wash them and use them again. No more paper flapping around in the oven, rolls that are too short for your tray, and most importantly, no more waste!
6. Reusable Piping Bag
Piping bags are the key to creating those luxurious swirls on top of cakes, and what allows precision in the making of macarons. However, it is yet another form of single use plastic for most of us. If you are looking to cut down on your baking-related waste, a reusable piping bag is something you should consider.
They can come in either silicone or cotton fabrics. They can be filled and squeezed in exactly the same way as a regular piping bag, but can also be rinsed and saved to use again another time. It can take a bit of getting used to, but these are definitely worth a try.
7. Glass/Steel Containers
Ditch the plastic. Glass and steel containers look good, they don’t stain like plastic tubs do, and they can help you stop buying cling-film once and for all. Whether you use them to store your homemade fudge or cookies, or you shove them in the fridge full of leftover frosting, they are worth having. Furthermore, when you aren’t baking they are great to use as lunchboxes or to store your ingredients in.
8. Baking Spray
This stuff is just wonderful. While reusable baking mats are ideal for wide baking trays, round cake tins aren’t quite the right fit. For these – to wean you off of that greaseproof paper – you should get yourself some industrial grade baking spray. Aside from saving on paper waste, it will also stop you from faffing about greasing every square centimetre of a tin with butter or oil. Instead you just spray all over the inside of the round cake tin and, once baked, your cake should pop out with no bother.
9. Bulk Ingredients
A simple one that people sometimes forget about. Buying larger quantities of items or ingredients at once is a simple way to consume less packaging – if you use all of the contents of course. For example, I always buy my chocolate chips in large 2.5kg. Dry ingredients like chocolate last ages once opened, so I don’t have to worry about wasting any, and it saves on countless little individual packets or wrappers.
10. Frozen Ingredients
A very simple but underrated way to prevent waste and reduce your carbon footprint can be to buy frozen foods. Berries are the best example. In the depths of winter, berries aren’t grown locally, so if you want to make a fruity pavlova then you’ll have to buy the imported ones, right? Wrong. Not only are frozen bags normally a larger quantity in one bag (see point 9 above), but they are picked and frozen when they are actually in season. This means you can get a taste of summer raspberries in your berry muffins, with no excess plastic or airmiles. Buying frozen also means they will last longer if you don’t need a full quantity of the ingredient all at once!
I hope these 10 Products for More Sustainable Cooking and Baking have given you a bit of inspiration to kick off 2020 in a wholesome way. We don’t all have to start hugging trees and wearing Birkenstocks, but we can all do our little bit to help the environment, and it’s never a bad time to start.
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