Ha! You wish! We aren’t talking about Betty Crocker, were talking about the under used, but tried and true technique of baking your makeup! Yes, that is a thing. No, do not go put your pallets in the stove!

This technique is by no means new to the beauty world, but it is being integrated more and more as the contour craze continues to spread. Below are step-by-step instructions to getting your bake on!

1. Apply primer, foundation, eyes, and brows as you usually would in your makeup routine.

2. Apply concealer under your eyes and upward toward the end of your brows/eye, in a high swooping motion create a half moon below your eye that stops just above your cheekbone. Apply the same amount of concealer to any additional space you’d like to enhance and brighten, like: your forehead, center line down your nose, your widow's peak, or chin. 

3. Using your Æsthetica Beauty Sponge, pat the concealer into the skin until it is completely blended.

4. On top of these same concealed places, pat in heavy amounts of translucent powder with your sponge and let them sit for 5-10 minutes (shorter or longer if needed, this will be based on the oiliness or dryness of your skin, and the warmth of your skin).

5. With a soft brush, dust off any excess powder and blend the edges of the places you baked into the contour on your face.

So what is baking?! While the powder sits on your face, atop the concealer, it works with your body heat to “bake” the powder and the concealer together, and this forges the mix into the creases, lines, and pores of your face to completely dissolve them! It is MAGIC!

FYI: Baking is NOT just for an evening look or meant to be reserved for the heavy or full face makeup wearer. If you’re a CC cream, concealer, and gloss kind of girl at the office, baking will extend the wear of your concealer on those dark under eyes, red nose area, or olive upper lip.

Still a little lost? It’s ok, practice makes perfect! Check out this video, from Huda Beauty (one of our many contour crushes), on how to bake the parts of your face that you really want to amplify: