While many experienced bakers might own dozens of baking gadgets and accessories, it’s possible to make delicious baked goods with just a few tools and equipment. If you have at least the following 10 items in your kitchen, you should be well prepared to follow through on most recipes for baked goods.

1. Measuring Cups

Proper measurement is crucial to baking, and even using slightly more of an ingredient than what is required can throw off the entire balance of the recipe. To make these measurements easier, purchase both dry and wet measuring cups—and have multiple on-hand to keep from having to wash the cups between ingredient measurements.

A 4-cup liquid measuring cup is particularly useful as it saves you from having to refill a smaller cup multiple times for certain recipes. It’s also important to have measuring spoons for smaller amounts of selected ingredients.

2. Digital Food Scale

While measuring cups and spoons are useful in baking, a digital food scale can be more precise and effective, especially with more complex recipes. French patisserie and macarons, in particular, require such precise measurements that it’s hardly worthwhile attempting to make them without a digital food scale. This is because these recipes require ingredients to be measured to the nearest gram, which, of course, isn’t possible with measuring cups. The same quantity of different ingredients can also have different weights (e.g., 1 cup of all-purpose flour doesn’t weigh the same as 1 cup of gluten-free flour).

3. Hand Mixer

Stand mixers are effective at mixing large quantities of dough and/or batter, but they can be expensive and aren’t really a requirement for beginner bakers. Instead, a 5-speed hand mixer can be useful in mixing ingredients and help cut back on total baking time as opposed to mixing by hand.

Hand mixers are particularly effective when you need to adjust speeds, such as slowly stirring chunky ingredients into a mixture or quickly whipping heavy cream or egg whites.

4. Wooden Spoons and Silicone Spatulas

Owning a hand mixer doesn’t mean you won’t have use for wooden spoons or silicone spatulas. Wooden spoons, in particular, are good for stirring thick and heavy dough—and they’re obviously much cheaper than hand mixers.

While silicone spatulas are relatively ineffective at stirring, they are especially suited to scrape the remaining bits of dough or batter out of a pan or retrieve sticky ingredients from all areas of jars or other glassware. Moreover, they are useful for folding together dry and wet ingredients.

5. Zester

Lemons, limes, and oranges are versatile baking ingredients—they can be used not only for their juices and whole parts but also the zest on their exterior. Some cake batter recipes, for instance, might ask for lemon zest. You’re best served using a handheld zester, one that is large enough to grate chocolate or cheese, if a recipe calls for it.

6. Flour Sifter

If you produce a lumpy cake batter, it’s likely that you didn’t sift the flour or other powdery ingredients, like cornstarch or cacao powder, beforehand. Sifting flour before including it in a recipe helps to separate particles that could form into lumps during storage and makes it more suitable for light batters. A fine-mesh sieve can also be used as a flour sifter and, as a bonus, can be used to remove seeds from berry purées.

7. Pastry Brush

Although commonly used to grease pans prior to pouring in cake batter, pastry brushes have several applications. They can also be used to remove excess flour from rolled-out dough, moisten cake layers, and wipe away crystallized sugar from the side of a pot when preparing caramel. Flexible and fine-haired brushes are especially effective in distributing milk on top of a pie crust or egg wash/melted butter on top of dough.

8. Rolling Pin

Beyond its primary function of rolling out dough and pie crusts, a rolling pin can also be used to crush crackers, cookies, or other ingredients required in a recipe. Marble rolling pins are preferred for rolling out sugar cookie dough and pie crust because of marble’s natural non-stick properties.

9. Pans

Once you have all the required tools for preparing recipes, you’ll need an assortment of baking pans and trays to bake desserts like muffins, cakes, pies, and cookies. There are several variations that have specific uses, but all beginner bakers should have these five pans: a loaf pan, a cupcake tray, a pie pan, a round springform pan for cakes, and a flat baking tray for cookies.

Springform pans can also be used for cooking deep-dish pizza. Other useful pans include a jelly-roll pan and fluted tube pan, the latter of which can be used to make angel food cake.

10. Oven Thermometer

Unless you own a brand-new oven or one that has been regularly calibrated, the displayed temperature could be slightly off than the actual temperature inside. This can be an issue in baking as, like ingredient measurements, temperatures need to be exact to create a perfect dessert. Oven thermometers are relatively cheap and provide a simple remedy to this problem.