Baking with AI
Using Perplexity to help me write, adjust, and bake recipes.
Moving from very humid Houston to high and dry Boulder, has thrown my self-taught baking game upside down. To compensate for the lower air pressure and far less moisture here, I have to make many adjustments to ensure the structure, moisture level, and flavor of my baked goods works out.
Initially, this was overwhelming, and the calculations to adjust every recipe felt tedious, plus there is a significant level of guessing, baking, testing, revising, repeat, because adjustments for varying levels of altitude are unspecific, suggested ranges, such as add 1-3 tablespoons of flour for added structure.
One day, I realized, I could make this far easier on myself by pasting recipes into Perplexity and asking how it suggested I adjust them to be made at 5400 feet of altitude.
BAM! Easy and quick recommendations for adjustments in ingredients, bake temperature and time, in seconds.
While the AI recommendations weren’t perfect, I was able to rely on my baking knowledge, and use Perplexity’s recommendations as a much quicker guide.
Being able to do this, even as a way to double-check my hunches on how to adjust my recipes, gave me much more confidence, much faster. I quickly was able to bake all of my usual favorites just like at sea level, rather than stick only to recipes designed specifically for altitude.
And this opened up a new door for me: I realized that not only could I use AI to help me make adjustments to existing recipes, I could also use AI to help me write, troubleshoot, and adjust my own recipes, as well as quickly calculate the nutrition facts of my recipes.
I had only ever written one cake recipe before, my orange olive oil cake. I wrote this recipe in Houston, after going to dinner at Nobie’s. They serve an olive oil cake with a distinct flavor, a fluffy and full-of-moisture crumb, and a crispy sugar crust that is absolutely incredible. It’s the best dessert I’ve ever had at a restaurant. And, I needed to be able to make it at home, or at least come close.
I wrote that recipe by googling multiple olive oil cake recipes, combining elements I liked from many, and then baking, testing, adjusting, and baking again, and trying to figure out by taste what the unidentified flavor in their cake must have been. I saw plenty of recipes for olive oil cake with lemon, but I decided the flavor must be orange. After multiple trials, I ended up with a recipe that is on par with Nobie’s, and I’m very proud of it. It’s not the same, but it’s a keeper and a family favorite.
One day I went to make my olive oil cake in my new CO home, and I needed to adjust it for altitude, and as I opened up Perplexity to help me do so, I got curious, and wondered what Perplexity would say if I asked it to write me a recipe for Nobie’s olive oil cake.
MARSALA WINE! It gave me the secret ingredient to the flavor in Nobie’s cake. Just like that. I couldn’t believe it. I had tried to figure that out for ages, and still got it wrong, and Perplexity gave it to me in seconds.
I asked it to write me a recipe to mimic Nobie’s olive oil cake, and while their real recipe is not available to the public, Perplexity spit one out. I asked again, it gave me something different. Each time I asked, it gave me a different recipe, and once it even left out the signature marsala wine. I picked the one I liked the look of the best, asked Perplexity to adjust it for altitude, bought some marsala wine, and got to baking.
Perplexity did not tell me how to make the marsala syrup for the cake, nor how to apply it, so I made a simple syrup with it, and when I pulled the cake out of the oven, I flipped it over, poked holes in the cake with a skewer, and poured the syrup on. Then I flipped it back over to serve because I had put caster sugar on the top before baking to give me that delicious crunchy sugar crust.
My first round was a mess. I could tell the Nobie’s flavor was there, but my cake needed a lot more moisture, structure, and flavor. It was cracked, it was underdone in the center. I adjusted the recipe based on my own baking knowledge, baked it again, and it was beautiful, delicious, and very close to my Nobie’s experience.
What I learned through this experiment:
I need to be careful when asking AI to write me a recipe from scratch, many measurements including bake time were off.
If I can’t put my finger on a specific secret ingredient, AI just might be able to tell me what it is.
While this was a much faster recipe writing process, it took away the creativity that gave me my first orange olive oil cake recipe, which honestly is better than my Nobie’s copycat. I would have been hung up on marsala wine and never thought to use orange if I had used Perplexity from the start.
I would in general write fewer recipes without AI helping me streamline that process, because it can feel daunting.
Using AI has opened up a whole new world of baking for me, and I’ve since used it to help me adjust, write, and double-check many recipes, also relying on my baking knowledge and instincts. And these adjustments aren’t only for altitude, it’s also helpful when I want to stick to specific goals with the food I make for my family, or scale a recipe up or down.
I can ask for recommendations in how to adjust my recipes to add more protein, minimize sugar, add fiber, etc. And while I have thought of things like adding protein powder, egg whites, and greek yogurt to up protein, or substituting fruit or zero calorie sweeteners to reduce sugar, it’s given me some new ones such as adding oat fiber powder to increase fiber without sacrificing taste.
AI has helped me write some great breakfast recipes for my picky kids, too, and I’ll share my health(ier) chocolate chip muffin recipe I wrote that AI helped me troubleshoot, at the end of this post. My goal was to include protein, fiber, healthy fats, and less sugar, than traditional muffins, while remaining tasty. This recipe took a *lot* of test baking because using sugar replacements is tricky, and AI wasn’t very helpful there. But eventually, I figured it out. My girls love these muffins and they’re easy to pair with some eggs and/or fruit on rushed mornings before school. Remember, my muffin recipe is written for altitude, so you might plug it into Perplexity and ask how to adjust it for where you live.
And just a heads up, when asking AI to calculate nutrition facts, it can be off. I figured this out by doing it the hard way and calculating a recipe by hand, and compared it to what Perplexity said. It was close, but I learned that being more specific about brands and also using the “math” setting instead of the default “focus” setting, will yield a more closely-accurate calculation within about 10 calories and within a couple of grams for the rest of the measurements. It will, however, like with different recipe suggestions every time you ask, give you slightly different nutrition facts calculations each time you ask.
Overall, I find AI to be a very helpful tool to streamline and significantly speed up my baking and recipe development process, in conjunction with my knowledge and experience. It’s like having a little “co-writer” or someone to double check with, with the strong caveat that it is not foolproof.
