Baking

This category holds the baking cupboard essentials within the baking, sugar and desserts department. It covers what makes a dough rise, what flavours and colours it, and the specialist ingredients of Indian and Sri Lankan sweets that a supermarket baking aisle rarely stocks.

Raising agents come first. Yeast proves bread, pizza, naan and pav, while baking powder and soda lift cakes, bhature, pakora batter and dhokla. Citric acid sits there too, used in sherbets, jams and instant dhokla. Cocoa powder covers chocolate cake, brownies and cold coffee.

Flavour is where Asian baking stands apart. Essences in vanilla, pineapple, almond, rose, banana and more give Sri Lankan butter cake and love cake their perfume. Rose and kewra water scent biryani, rasmalai and kulfi. Food colours give biryani rice its yellow and orange streaks and jalebi its glow. Candied peel and tutti frutti go into fruit cake and bread, and edible gum is fried for gond ladoo and panjiri.

Raising agents lose strength after opening, so date the tub and test old baking powder by dropping a spoonful into hot water: it should fizz at once. Essences and flower waters keep longest tightly capped and out of the light.