Golden cookies on parchment paper on a baking sheet, straight from the oven

Your first two bakes

Cookies first, scones next

Tested first recipes

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies, King Arthur Baking Your first recipe, about 36 cookies. Uses flour, both sugars, shortening, salt, vanilla, vinegar, baking soda and chocolate chips from the kit, plus fresh unsalted butter and one egg.
Cream Tea Scones, King Arthur Baking The second recipe: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and vanilla from the kit, plus a pint of fresh heavy cream. Dried fruit or chips are optional.

What you can bake in your first month

Chocolate chip cookies

The first recipe, and the fastest way to learn creaming, portioning and pulling a tray at the right moment.

Cream scones

A no-butter dough you mix by hand in ten minutes, good practice for a light touch.

A single-layer snack cake

A simple butter cake in the round pan, served plain or with fruit, that teaches the toothpick test.

Muffins or cupcakes

Once you add the muffin pan, a dozen at a time teaches you to fill cups evenly and check doneness.

Directions to grow into

Open a direction to see what to bake first. Cookies and scones need only the base kit. The other buttons add their pans and ingredients to the kit, and the gluten-free and vegan add-ons swap out the flour or the chocolate chips.

Cupcake bakingSingle-serving cakes baked in a muffin pan, the easiest way to try new cake flavors and simple frosting. The same pan bakes muffins.

Start here

Bake the birthday cupcake recipe in paper liners and test one with a toothpick two minutes before the timer ends, then frost them once fully cool.

Classic Birthday Cupcakes

Cookie bakingDrop cookies, bar cookies and slice-and-bake logs. The base kit covers it, and it is where most people start.

Start here

Make the chocolate chip cookie recipe twice, baking one sheet a minute shorter the second time, and compare the chew.

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cheesecake bakingA rich custard of cream cheese and eggs on a crust, baked low and slow so it sets without cracking. It needs a springform pan and a day's planning.

Start here

Bake a New York-style cheesecake on a day you can leave it to cool slowly in the oven and then chill overnight.

NY Cheesecake

Gluten-free bakingBaking with a gluten-free flour blend in place of wheat flour. Anyone baking for someone with celiac disease needs certified gluten-free ingredients and has to avoid cross-contact with wheat flour.

Start here

Clean every tool and pan, then bake gluten-free chocolate chip cookies with a certified gluten-free flour blend and chill the dough for the full hour.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Vegan bakingCookies and cakes made without eggs, butter or milk, using ground flaxseed, oil and dairy-free chocolate.

Start here

Bake a batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies, using a flax and water mix in place of the egg and oil in place of butter.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Scone bakingQuick, tender breakfast pastries mixed by hand and on the table in 30 minutes, using only the base kit and fresh cream.

Start here

Bake the cream scones, then repeat them with a cup of dried fruit or chips folded in once you know how the plain dough should feel.

Cream Tea Scones

Baking gluten-free for celiac disease

Gluten-Free Foods, Celiac Disease Foundation What is safe, label reading and avoiding cross-contact

Skills to practice early

Measuring accurately

Weigh flour and sugar when the recipe gives grams. A packed cup of flour can hold 20% more than the recipe expects, which makes dry cookies and dense cake.

Creaming

Beating soft butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy traps air that helps cakes rise and cookies spread evenly.

Mixing gently

Once flour goes in, stir only until it disappears. Overmixing makes muffins tough and scones dense.

Reading doneness

Cookies are done when the edges set, cakes when a toothpick in the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, and cheesecake when the center still wobbles slightly.

Managing the oven

Preheat fully, bake on the middle rack, and rotate the pan halfway if one side browns faster.

A smiling home baker sifting flour into a green mixing bowl, a hand mixer beside her — Sifting flour for a cake batter

Your oven is the main tool

Most home ovens run 10 to 25°F off their dial, and that alone explains a lot of burned bottoms and underbaked centers. Leave an oven thermometer on the middle rack and, before every bake, give the oven a full 20 minutes to preheat and check the reading rather than trusting the beep. Light-colored aluminum pans bake more evenly than dark nonstick ones, which brown the bottoms faster; if a recipe was written for light pans and yours are dark, drop the temperature by 25°F. When you buy pans, check that they sit flat on the counter without rocking and that a half sheet pan actually fits your oven with an inch of space around it.

A slice of baked cheesecake on a white plate beside a mug of coffee — A slice of baked cheesecake

What trips beginners up

Expect a few flat, spread-out cookies or a cake that sinks in the middle; both usually come from butter that was too warm or an oven running cool.
Recipes are less forgiving than cooking. Swapping baking soda for powder, or cutting sugar by half, changes the texture, not only the taste.
Your first batches may look homemade. Even shapes come from consistent portioning, which takes a few rounds.
Drop the habit of scooping flour straight from the bag; it packs in too much.
Do not open the oven door every few minutes. Each look lets out heat and can collapse a cake that has not set.
Do not cut a cake or cheesecake while warm. Let cakes cool on the rack and give cheesecake its full overnight chill.
Stop baking two sheets at once until you know your oven; the lower pan usually burns on the bottom.

A hand holding out a yellow plate of chocolate muffins in paper liners — Homemade chocolate muffins in paper liners

Food safety in the kitchen

Do not eat raw cookie dough or cake batter, even a taste from the spoon. Raw flour is not treated to kill germs and can carry E. coli, and raw eggs can carry Salmonella; both are only safe after baking.
Wash your hands, bowls and counters after handling raw flour and eggs, and keep children from playing with raw dough.
Cheesecake, cream-filled cakes and anything with cream cheese frosting go in the refrigerator once cool, and should not sit out for more than two hours.
For gluten-free baking for someone with celiac disease, use certified gluten-free ingredients, wash every tool and pan first, use fresh parchment, and bake on a day you are not also using wheat flour, since flour dust settles on everything.
Use oven mitts that cover your wrists, keep pan handles and towels away from the burners, and pull the rack out rather than reaching into the oven.

Why raw dough is unsafe

Raw Flour and Dough, CDC Why raw flour and raw eggs make dough and batter unsafe to taste

Top-down blueberry scones on a napkin with coffee, fresh blueberries and pink peonies

Where to learn

Tested recipes and a baker's hotline

Large flour mills and test kitchens publish free recipes with weights, photos and troubleshooting notes, and they are the best place to start because the recipes are tested on ordinary home ovens. When a bake goes wrong, a baker's hotline can tell you why from a photo or a description. Follow one source for your first month so its methods and measurements stay consistent.

Free help from a test kitchen

How the kit is put together

The essentials are the pantry staples for the first recipe plus the handful of tools every bake uses: measuring cups, bowls, sheet pans, parchment, a spatula and a cooling rack, and they make up most of a budget start. The recommended tools are where spending can climb, mainly the hand mixer. A scale and an oven thermometer cost little and fix the two most common beginner failures. The add-ons switch on only the pans and ingredients for a direction you choose; the gluten-free flour blend and the dairy-free chips replace their base lines, while xanthan gum and flaxseed are small extras.

Vanilla cupcakes topped with pink frosting and strawberries on a pink tray — Frosted vanilla cupcakes

Chocolate chip cookies cooling on a wire rack, seen from above

Gather the bake

Pantry staples, pans and a few tools

The first sixteen lines are the base kit: the pantry staples for the cookie recipe and the tools every bake uses. The next four are recommended, the add-on lines join when you switch on a direction, and the cookie scoop is for later. Clicking a card selects it in the kit, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out.

Unbleached all-purpose flour

Essential · Pantry staples

The base of nearly every cookie, cake, muffin and scone in this guide.

budget

Gold Medal Unbleached All Purpose Flour, Baking Flour, 5 lb Bag

4.8(1.2K)

$4.29

Baking

Your first two bakes

Directions to grow into

Skills to practice early

Your oven is the main tool

What trips beginners up

Food safety in the kitchen

Where to learn

How the kit is put together

Gather the bake

Unbleached all-purpose flour

Granulated sugar

Light brown sugar

Baking soda

Double-acting baking powder

Fine table salt

Pure vanilla extract

Vegetable shortening

Distilled white vinegar

Semisweet chocolate chips

Measuring cups and spoons set

Mixing bowl set

Half sheet pan

Parchment paper

Silicone spatula

Wire cooling rack

Digital kitchen scale

Oven thermometer

Electric hand mixer

9-inch round cake pan

12-cup muffin pan

Paper cupcake liners

Confectioners' sugar

Natural unsweetened cocoa powder

10-inch springform pan

Certified gluten-free all-purpose flour blend

Xanthan gum

Ground flaxseed meal

Dairy-free semisweet chocolate chips

Spring-release cookie scoop