Baking Flavoring

When it comes to baking, a little goes a long way with the use of quality flavoring. These ingredients are highly concentrated so only a few drops add intense flavor to your cakes, cookies, yeast products and pastries.

These are alcohol based and can be used in your favorite cookie, frosting or meringue recipes. Professional bakers almost exclusively use emulsions as they won’t “bake out” under high heat.

Pure and Imitation Extracts

While vanilla extract is the most baking flavoring common baking flavoring, it’s far from the only one worth experimenting with. Highly concentrated, these liquids draw out the oils of showcase ingredients like citrus peels, chai tea leaves or birthday cake flour, infusing them into a base — generally alcohol — that makes them easy to add to any recipe.

Pure extracts use real vanilla beans, and they’re usually more expensive than imitation products. Read the label closely to be sure you’re purchasing pure vanilla extract; if it looks too cheap, it may contain sugar or corn syrup. Imitation vanilla contains the natural chemical compound vanillin, but it’s typically made from lignin, clove oil, pine sap and fermented bran.

Imitation vanilla is often preferred for its ability to stand up to the high heat of baking, and it’s also less expensive than vanilla beans or vanilla paste. But a number of taste tests have shown that vanilla beans and paste offer more nuanced flavors than imitation products, especially for uncooked applications like ice cream or panna cotta.

Regardless of which kind you choose, you’ll need to store your extracts properly to make them last. Most will keep for years if stored in a cool, dark place. Some will even develop more complex flavors over time, which can be a pleasant surprise.

Flavor Powders

Flavor powders are ideal when the product you’re adding flavor to must be kept dry, such as a baked treat or dry mix. They’re also great for use in products that are going to be exposed to heat, such as protein powders or other drink mixes. You’ll find a wide variety of flavors and styles when it comes to flavoring powders.

Water based and oil based flavorings are available to help you create your desired flavor profile for any recipe. These powders are not suspended in alcohol so they won’t bake out as quickly as an extract. They also don’t have the same shelf life as an extract, so be sure to keep them in a cool, dark place.

These powders are perfect when you’re looking for a quick and easy way to add flavoring to your recipes. Many of the options available are all natural and derived from fruits and vegetables that have been freeze dried and ground up into a powder. This process retains all of the natural nutrition and flavor that the vegetable or fruit had in its original state.

Savory powders are a great addition to any pantry, they’re great for creating mouthwatering rubs and sauces without the sticky mess of the liquid versions. There are several different options to choose from, like cheese powders, garlic powder, Dijon mustard and even buffalo wing sauce.

Natural Flavors

When we see ‘natural flavors’ on a food label, it may seem like a safe bet that these ingredients are better for you than their artificial counterparts. However, that’s not always the case.

Natural flavorings are derived from plants or animals and are used to create the tastes of foods without actually adding any nutritional value. These ingredients are typically extracted from fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs using a process similar to that of evaporating essential oils. They’re then blended with water or other liquids to create a product that is shelf-stable and suitable for use in processed foods.

Wright says that, as with artificial flavorings, before natural flavors can be used in a food, they must undergo an expert panel evaluation to ensure safety. Once deemed safe, they are added to the FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe list, meaning they do not need to be listed on a food ingredient label.

While most natural flavorings are considered safe for consumption at their baking flavoring intended levels, they can still cause allergies in some people. Because they can contain many different chemicals, it’s hard to know exactly what you’re ingesting when you eat foods that include natural flavors.

Furthermore, it’s important to note that even though natural flavors are sourced from nature, they can still be harmful on the environment. For example, massoia lactone, a popular coconut-like natural flavoring, is derived from the bark of the massoia tree in Indonesia. This species of tree is threatened with extinction as a result of the mass production of this natural flavoring.

Essential Oils

Essential oils are highly concentrated oil compounds extracted from a plant, root, seed, leaf or blossom. In recent years there has been a lot of interest in using them in cooking and other recipes to add flavor and aroma. Most commonly, they are used in aromatherapy as a complementary health practice, but they can also be added to food or drinks. It is important to use only those that are labeled as safe for culinary and cosmetic uses. The edible, food grade essential oils available from LorAnn Oils have been approved by the FDA for use as a flavoring and have been categorized as GRAS (generally recognized as safe).

When adding an oil to a recipe, it is best to add it at the end of the cooking process because they will dissipate rapidly in heat. They should be diluted in a fatty oil such as olive or coconut first before using them for safety reasons and to ensure that they are properly dispersed throughout the dish.

Many of the same oils that are used in perfumes can be used in baking, but a little goes a long way because they are so strong. It is a good idea to start with just a drop or two of any oil and then adjust as needed to suit your tastes and the recipe. Some oils such as wintergreen oil are only appropriate in trace amounts because they can be dangerous or even deadly if swallowed in larger quantities.