10 Dessert Tips for Life In an increasingly fast paced society, knowing some basic tips for preparing desserts would help bring pleasure and decrease the chaos in your life.  Desserts are so important in our culture that they are even considered a food group on the food pyramid.  Despite the fact that Americans are becoming more and more overweight each year, desserts are not escaping from our treasured American lifestyle.  Desserts are a delicate pleasure that we all enjoy.  But often the fact that we are a fast paced culture, baking cookies or a cake does not often seem like fun due to the fact that it is viewed as time consuming.  Well, if you follow some basic tips for dessert preparation, guarantee you’ll enjoy making desserts again! 1. Buy already made ingredients on your list – This is a great tip and saves a lot of time.  Pre-made ingredients include pie crusts, crumbs, baking mixes, fresh or frozen mixed fruit, etc. 2. Have the most common dessert ingredients in your kitchen always – Having the most popular dessert ingredients in your kitchen always will save you a lot of time.  Try to buy the following in bulk: nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, chocolate, etc. 3. Preheat the oven! – Although this is a VERY basic tip, it is probably the most important, especially if you have an old oven.  Ovens can take anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes to heat up.  Who wants to wait for an oven to heat up for 30 minutes?  The trick to remembering this is to turn the oven on immediately after getting all your ingredients together. 4. Use the bottom rack in the oven – Another essential oven tip!  For obvious reasons, using the bottom rack in the oven saves baking time due to the fact that the bottom rack receives the most direct heat.  So, try to squeeze as many baking sheets down there as possible! 5. Bake in multiple batches – You can obviously save time by making multiple batches of a dessert like cookies, cupcakes, etc.  The only thing to be careful of is to avoid eating them in a few days.  Although cookies can lose freshness after a few days, they can go quite a while before not being any good. 6. Always have fruit in the house – This tip is great because many recipes call for some sort of real fruit like berries.  Having fresh or frozen fruit in the house at all times will definitely save a last minute trip to the store to find that essential fruit ingredient.  Frozen fruit will last the longest so definitely buy that in bulk as well. 7. Simplify your favorite dessert recipes – We’ve all prepared desserts that have over 15 ingredients that are supposedly NOT optional.  Find alternative recipes online and after making the recipe once, pay attention to the taste, and find ways to simplify it.  Does it really need walnuts?  Does it really need brown AND white sugar?  Probably not. 8. Let your kids help prepare the dessert – You may have given birth to them so that they could grow into respectful individual human beings, but they can help you bake just like they help with chores around the house.  The best thing about getting your kids involved is that if you find the right repetitive task, they can save you a lot of time.  Also, the best thing about this tip is that kids usually don’t turn you down when it comes to preparing a dessert they can eat! 9. When in doubt, just grab some stuff and GO! – If you weren’t planning on making a dessert, just throw in some ingredients off the top of your head and see what happens!  This is an awesome tip because it allows you to save on time in the sense that you won’t be looking at a detailed recipe with a long list of ingredients and long list of preparation steps.  I use this one all the time when it comes to preparing smoothies.  With a smoothie, you can’t go wrong!  Throw in as much as you want of anything and see what happens.  The only rule to follow with this tip is to put the most of a particular ingredient into the blender that you want the smoothie or beverage to taste the most like. 10. Let go of measuring utensils – This may be the hardest tip yet because it forces you to trust in your abilities.  Some people may fear that they have no abilities and thus do not want to prepare a dish, especially a dessert, free style.  But this is so important when it comes to saving time because when you have to get out a lot of ingredients AND a lot of measuring utensils, it becomes a major time consuming project to prepare something as simple as cookies. So, follow these 10 steps for making desserts and you will be definitely find preparation a lot easier.  It will also run a lot smoother and more than likely you will have fun in the process.  Imagine that, enjoying the process of making a dessert while knowing you will also enjoy tasting it later on!  It doesn’t get any better than that.