When browsing through your cupboard looking for your various ingredients to flavour your cakes, you’ll probably have your favourites in classic flavours like vanilla essence or cocoa powder.
 
Different types of flavourings might have different reactions with your batter. That’s why you can’t just add in a bunch of yam into a recipe made for oil essences, for example.
 
But if you’re feeling a little adventurous, try one of these weird baking ingredients. Some that you may already have in your kitchen! Just remember to make sure that.
 

1. Dried Flowers

If you or your family loves making tea, you might very well have some dried flowers with you already. They’re multi-functional by being able to be viewed, brewed and eaten!
 
Not only can you use them as beautiful decorative pieces, you can actually use them to naturally flavour your baked goods as well!
 

 
After shredding them finely, you can sprinkle them on your toppings or mix them with your fillings. You can experiment to figure out what goes well together, but generally, glazes and white chocolate are great complements to pretty much any edible dried flower.
 
Be careful not to just pick up any flower you see, dry them and use them in your recipe. Not only will each flower taste differently and might have some pesticides sprayed on them, many may even be naturally poisonous. Try to stick to either store bought fried flowers or do your own thorough research.
 

2. Mayonnaise

The components of mayonnaise are essentially oil, eggs and vinegar. The oil increases the cake’s moisture too. Besides that, depending on how much mayonnaise you’re using, you can even reduce the amount of eggs you need in your recipe.
 

 
When you have chocolate in your recipe, the vinegar can also function similarly to coffee. It makes the taste of chocolate stronger. So if you have a dry chocolate cake, you can add mayonnaise to make it more moist while making it more chocolatey.
 
Do take note that when coming across mayonnaise in a recipe, it is referring to plain american mayonnaise. Some people may prefer other kinds Japanese mayonnaise which is thicker and does not contain egg whites. This may result in a different outcome than if you were to use American mayonnaise.
 

3. Jalapenos

If you’ve become tired of the normal sweet desserts, try making dessert with jalapenos!
 
There are surprisingly many dessert recipes that use jalapenos. Examples are cheesecakes, cookies, pies, pancakes and even ice cream. Don’t let this spicy pepper fool you, it can go quite well together with other sweet ingredients.

 

 
If you like the Chinese sweet and spicy pork, you will love looking up some recipes on jalapenos dessert recipes. And even if you’re not a fan of sweet foods, there are plenty of even more savoury recipes that use jalapenos to make absolutely delicious snacks!
 
A favourite would be jalapeno poppers, a simple treat of stuffing cheese into a hollowed out jalapeno pepper and either baking or frying them.
 

4. Turmeric

A spice used in many savoury dishes and beloved in curries, turmeric can usually be used in several desserts as well. It’s best used fresh rather than using store bought powders.
 

 
While turmeric actually has a very pungent flavour, this spice is great for getting a nice vibrant yellow in your desserts. Its taste has been described as gingery or earthy, so it can be used to give your sweet desserts more depth in flavour. It can also be used to dust the surface of your desserts yellow if you don’t want icing sugar or cocoa powder.
 
You can use it in pretty much any kind of dessert or baked goods that you want. Cakes, pudding, cookies, pastries, even sorbets. Turmeric has some great health benefits as well such as helping digestion along with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties so it can help build a stronger immune system.
 

5. Curry powder

Spiced cakes and pies are hardly revolutionary, although some people might not have tried them yet. But these spices are usually relatively tame ones like cinnamon, which complements the sugary sweetness desserts usually have.
 
Curry on the other hand is powerful, savoury and heated. Which may come as a surprise when looking at traditionally sweet desserts.
 

 
However, don’t be too quick to turn it down!
 
Just like curry itself, made from the delicate combinations of several ground up spices: it’s all about the harmony in combining various flavours together. Even the simple banana fritter can be brought to new levels of deliciousness by adding some curry powder into the batter before frying or even just sprinkling it on after frying.
 

 
When making your delicious baked goods, don’t be afraid to try out new ingredients and techniques!
 
Taste new and exciting flavours by freshening up your favourite recipes.
 
If you’re interested in trying our newer and more complicated recipes, take a look at the baking classes we have available! We also freshen up our classes every 2-3 months to make sure that you will always be learning fun and trendy new recipes.