Baking is always such a lovely idea in theory, isn’t it? The sun gently draping through the window as you lovingly, expertly blend precise ingredients together to make a delicious, moreish cake.

In reality, it often ends with a messy kitchen, a lot of excess batter lying around and baking pots and pans that have seen *much* better days that now need an intensive cleaning which just isn’t quite the baking dream, is it?

However, a chef on Reddit has come to the rescue with their super simple trick to keeping cakes and bakes from sticking to the bottom of pans.

Reddit user /u/jellysnake asked: “Chefs of reddit, what’s your number one useful cooking tip?”

Their post got thousands of responses including one saying: “A master chef told me this in culinary school: “You can always stop cooking. Take it off the burner or out of the oven if you need to. Surprisingly helpful tip.”

Which is incredibly helpful for those of us that get overwhelmed in the kitchen and good advice for life, really.

However, it was a comment from /r/soccermomjane that caught my eye. They said: “pastry chef here, not my best tip but the only one I can think of this early on my day off…flouring pans for cakes is a step not to be skipped but when it comes to chocolate cakes, it looks awful so for dark cakes, I use cocoa powder instead.“

GENIUS.

Another commenter expanded on this saying: ”[flour is] a dry barrier that will discourage adhesion of the baked good, allowing it to rise as it bakes. Butter is fine if rising isn’t a concern, but fats are “sticky” and can actually hold flour-based things down. It’s the same reason you would flour a surface when you’re rolling out or kneading dough.”

This makes perfect sense.

However, if you are going to use cocoa powder, user /u/westorphales warned: “To piggy back on this, DO NOT use sweetened cocoa powder or semi-sweet, as the sugar will caramelize.”

Brb, planning my next big bake.