One late Saturday morning, I wanted to make BBC Good Food’s ‘yummy scrummy carrot cake’ recipe (which I’ll write a review of in the near future insha’Allah). I had all my ingredients but my bicarbonate of soda had expired…at the end of 2011. Still, I really wanted to make it! So I thought I’d ask my question-answering friend google if expired bicarb can be used past its expiry date. My search results listed a really useful page on a website which provided me with a little test that would determine if my bicarb was still usable.
I added a quarter teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to half a cup of very hot water. I was instructed to add a quarter teaspoon of vinegar to this too as some acidity was required to get a reaction. For my bicarb to get the baking green light, I was looking for some bubbles, and hurrah, it bubbled up, and so the carrot cake was made that day alhamdullilah. No bubbles? Time to get rid of your bicarb.
You can run the same test for baking powder too, minus the acidity. So a quarter teaspoon of baking powder added to half a cup of boiling water, and if you see bubbles, then you’re in business.
Happy baking!
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