10 bowls to bake a cake? My set up is usually a bowl for the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, any spices such as cinnamon) and a big bowl for the whole deal. The wet ingredients go in the big bowl, the dry are added when that's mixed. That's 2 bowls.

This seems like a really silly idea... I still haven't figured out the allure of prep bowls.

I am obsessive about mis en place, but this seems like a bit of a waste...I'd rather just wash the dishes.

Yep, 10 bowls for baking is standard for me. I am often doubling and tripling recipes so it's important that i measure out the ingredients separately that i would use for ONE cake/cookie/etc so that i don't make a mistake. So if i am measuring sugar for a doubled cake it gets placed into two bowls. it sounds wasteful but a heck of a lot less so than when you have to throw and entire something into the garbage because you screwed up.

i like the idea of mise en place, and sometimes i do it, but i have to agree with other commenters that this is wasteful.

I love this advice! Thanks for sharing.

Wasteful and not only that, completely illogical: this "tip" would only allow you to avoid washing the bowl if the item being measured into the prep bowl was "dry" (i.e. flour, sugar, chopped veggies). Juicy, oily or wet things will just soak through the paper, requiring you to wash it anyway AND waste the filter. And if you are indeed measuring a dry ingredient, you don't even need to really wash the prep bowl anyway: just wipe it out with your dish cloth, because seriously unless the bowl was wet to begin with, sugar/flour/whatever doesn't exactly stick or make a huge mess!

This is a huge waste. Even if you compost or recycle it. It also seems stupidly expensive because you don't want to rinse a little flour out of bowl. Sorry, Real Simple, but this seems Real Silly to me.

One way my mom taught me to avoid dirtying dishes when baking is to measure certain ingredients in the lid of the storage container. Set the lid from the shortening on the scale (messy side up) and zero it out, then pile scoops of shortening on the lid until it's the right weight. Once the shortening is used in the recipe, the lid goes back on the shortening tub. It only works for certain ingredients but it's still one less dish to wash.

I find mise en place is important when I'm cooking for company because I lose track when trying to carry on a conversation at the same time. My husband and I have learned to not ask each other questions while we're measuring.

i'm in full agreement with the folks saying this is wasteful. baking mise en place might be helpful if i'm appearing on martha stewart and need to dump my ingredients in on cue, but if i'm in my own kitchen, i can lay out the ingredients in their containers and measure them out from there. but to bake gingerbread and have a coffee filter or bowl set out for each individual spice? that's a waste of time and resources.

Aren't we supposed to be trying to be less wasteful???

Washing and reusing bowls are a much better alternatives to using coffee filters. Not to mention that coffee filters are better for dusting electronics anyway ;)

There are other ways to keep track when doubling or tripling a recipe. For example, pull out all of your ingredients and put the measuring tools in front of each, but put the size that is DOUBLE the original measure to DOUBLE the recipe. For example, put out a 2 teaspoon measure rather than a 1 teaspoon measure. Works perfectly.

With experience, you'll be able to change recipes on the fly while holding a conversation without any additional impact on the environment.

What a waste of coffee filters.

I've never used coffee filters in place of prep bowls, but they are the BEST to use if I want a snack while I'm watching a movie at night and don't want to get any more bowls dirty after during dishes.

Agreed- a waste of filters and a waste of paper. It takes little to no time to wash a few bowls and more than half of ingredients are usually dry and only require a swipe with a dry towel to clean.

You can avoid doing dishes AND being wasteful by eating pizza straight out of the box. Classy, no?

I really hate these tips from "Real Simple" that suggest using a bunch of disposable things to mildly reduce the amount of work you have to do - this one and the recent tip to clean your bathroom using like 15 disposable wipes come to mind. argh.

Wasteful. If I'm using a bowl to hold dry goods I'll just give it a quick rinse and place it on the dish rack. I love mise en place, but this is not a good tip.

I ran across a similar tip from "Real Simple" where they suggested you use butcher paper on your counters and then just throw it away to save time on clean-up. I, like many here, thought it sounded pretty wasteful. I guess this is a case where some people think the time saved is worth it?

One thing I always do for baking is set out a cutting board - I corral all my used measuring cups, spoons, spatulas there to keep the counter less messy, and to act as a spoonrest so I can use my utensils again. Particularly useful if you're making more than one batch, as all your tools are out in one place too.

Another in agreement with the wastefulness here.

FWIW, I canceled my Real Simple sub when they ceased being both Real and Simple. Sad since it started as a great mag.

Wasteful!

Seredipitwaddle, when you throw away the coffee filters, you're also, in a sense, throwing away the water, electricity, gasoline, and raw ingredients used to manufacture, package, ship, and store them. Certainly the waste of water in washing the bowls shouldn't be forgotten, but more is being thrown away than just the filters.

I agree with others: very wasetful. Are we really going to pretend that the end product that can be composted, did not require deforestation or industrial metabolism for its creation? Stop killing our forests for this silly stuff. Real Simple - real stupid.

@Seredipitwaddle just FYI, it won't be wasteful if you use a dishwasher. We have the smallest, cheapest one on the market (it has wheels, isn't that embarassing LOL) and we can always squeeze in a few more bowls. On the shortest setting and if you cancel the dry cycle, it's no more wasteful than if you hadn't added those bowls. Kind of like adding dish cloths to the already planned washing machine load instead of using all those horrid paper towels.

10 tiny bowls is not a big deal to wash. Wasting coffee filters is stupid.

Who curates these articles? Do they even read them? I agree that it's wasteful -- and just plain silly -- to use filters instead of just wiping out a bowl or quickly handwashing a bowl. Totally not simple at all.

Real Simple Magazine: I bought a few of the very first issues from newsstands, but it didn't take long before they ran out of simple ideas and became a magazine for readers who couldn't think of smart ways to spend their money, to delude themselves into thinking they were living simple sustainable lives. NOT! Someone commented "Real Silly." Perfect.

Please, Apartment Therapy and theKitchn editors, please please read the articles thoroughly -- scanning for common sense. It would save your readers alot more time than coffee filters save on dishwashing time. :-)