How To Alter Flavour in Recipes
One of the reason I love baking so much is its variety in flavour profile. You simply swap a couple ingredients or infuse flavour into ingredients. Flavours can come from extracts, powder, spices…
There is a couple rules in altering flavours in recipes.
Substituting
Try replacing the ingredient with the your own flavoured ingredient under the circumstance that they are in the same form
This will prevent extra work of figuring out the ratio of ingredients
Ex. Madeleine, the vanilla extract can be exchanged with lemon extract, or any extract!
Ex. Scones, earl grey tea leaves can be exchanged with anytime of tea leaves
If the ingredient comes in similar form, then try to replace the same amount
Ex. Cake rolls, matcha powder can be exchanged with Hojicha powder
Ex. Meringues, vanilla extract can be exchanged with peppermint oil, raspberry oil, orange oil
Oil has a much stronger flavour, so if exchanging from extract to oil, only 1/4 of the extract is needed in oil form.
4tsp of extract = 1 tsp of oil
If the ingredient is in a completely different form, then you need to experiment
Powder exchanged with liquid: Could try putting powder in one of the liquid included in the recipe
Ex. Cake sponge, coffee powder can be added in the liquid (milk, water)
For the powder in liquid method, make sure the powder does not include particle that is the same as the liquid you are adding it to
Ex. Matcha latte powder cannot be used as a substitute as matcha powder to add in milk, as Matcha latte has milk powder in it
Ex. Hot chocolate is NOT the same as cocoa powder!
Ways to Add or Intensify Flavours
Try adding dry fruit
Grind the dry fruit to powder
Could be use to add flavour or even add colour
Try adding tea leaves or fresh ingredients to sugar
Vanilla bean pods that has its beans scraped can be added to sugar. Leave it for 1-2 weeks before using, it really changes your baking game
Lemon peel, or any citrus peel in sugar will infuse the sugar with its citrus note
Citrus notes does not shine or make a difference once baked, so it is best used as toppings
Ex. Crème Brûlée, the sugar topping can have a nice citrus note. It adds a wonderful kick to it
Adding tea leaves; This method takes a bit longer to take effect(2-3weeks) but it is one of my favourite methods
Grind out tea leaves if you want tea leaves to present in your final product, or put the leaves in a tea bag before adding it to the sugar, this way it is easy to further intensity a tea flavour without adding tea leaves
In recipes using tea flavour infused sugar, not only the flavour is shown, but I have noticed that the smell of tea is intensified
If there is not enough time to infuse tea into sugar, you can always seep the tea into the liquid present in the recipe, or boil a tea mixture till it is overpoweringly flavourful and boiled down to a concentrated extract
Try different flours
This is the hardest one to master, as different flour will behave and interact differently with ingredients, but it also can make the biggest different
The easiest change is to change a quarter of the flour to another type and see how it goes
The flavour profile should change, and the texture of the product might be altered
Ex. Madeleines, almond flour can be used to substitute browning of the butter, as almond flour has a slight gritty but nutty flavour profile
Try using flower steeping method
Soak flowers that are used in cooking in oil to bring out the floral flavour
The oil then can be used in recipes that require a liquid fat
