Made “butter tarts” (similar to pecan tarts-with or w/out nuts) for Canada Day party yesterday: my hb’s favorite Canadian dessert. Big Hit!
 | BakingSOS AnswersStranded alone in the kitchen? Ask BakingSOS. Helping Bakers Since 2007. | |
| BakingSOS AnswersStranded alone in the kitchen? Ask BakingSOS. Helping Bakers Since 2007. | |
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Made “butter tarts” (similar to pecan tarts-with or w/out nuts) for Canada Day party yesterday: my hb’s favorite Canadian dessert. Big Hit! Starting to plan what foods to bring to LOTS of upcoming parties: Canada Day tomorrow & all-day-long festivities on the 4th. Fun! Watching the night light up w/ lightning & fireflies. Who needs TV with this spectacle for entertainment?! I contacted my elected officials to help save Ohio libraries and you should too. Find out more: http://bit.ly/B7IJ7 Making peach & blueberry cobbler w/ buttery lemon crust all w/ Splenda for my diabetic dad for Father’s Day. Happy Dad’s Day!! Xoxo @marabakes Thanks! I’m already testing new ideas for the next round of CupcakeCampColumbus 🙂 I hope you’ll be there, too! Patty Jo asks: I have attempted a hot milk cake recipe 4 times. Every time the end result is a heavy, dense, horrible-tasting cake. Any suggestions? BakingSOS says: I have had problems with one of my favorite cake recipes turning out heavy, dense, and even RUBBERY, too. It’s very frustrating, isn’t it? I finally solved the problem by adding more leavening to the recipe to make the cake batter rise more. In the case of my cake recipe, it calls for only baking soda. I added baking powder, and now my cake rises perfectly every time. Here’s the science that makes it work: baking soda is a “base.” It needs and “acid” ingredient in order to start the chemical reaction that makes it work, such as buttermilk, cocoa powder, lemon or orange juice, etc. If you add too MUCH baking soda, though, it will make your cake taste bitter. So if you need your cake to rise more, do NOT add more baking soda than is called for in the recipe. Instead, add baking powder, which contains both base AND acid leaveners. This will help your cake rise without making it taste bitter. How much baking powder should you add? As a general rule, there should be 1 tsp. of baking powder or 1/4 tsp. of baking soda for every 1 C. of flour in the recipe. So take a look at your original recipe, see how much baking soda or baking powder it calls for per each cup of flour, and then add some additional baking powder as necessary to see if your cake will rise better. Good luck! I have some fresh blueberries & GA peaches. . . must be time to make a cobbler. I LOVE Summer! @marabakes Nice blog & food photos. Looks like you have a promising career ahead of you 🙂 Where did you go to culinary school? |
Learning from my mistakes
One of my philosophies I espoused on my home page is this: We can learn from our mistakes.
No matter how much knowledge I have between my culinary education and professional work experiences, there is always room to learn more. . . AND to make more mistakes!
Recently, I took a gamble when buying ingredients for baking projects, and I lost.
I tend to be a purist when it comes to baking ingredients: don’t cut corners, only use the good stuff. Substitutions never taste as good as the best quality ingredients. But when I went to the grocery to stock up on butter during a recent sale (it keeps really well in the freezer), I found that I had actually missed the sale date. So rather than purchasing butter at full cost ($3-4 per pound), I decided to try a less expensive store brand for $2 per pound. (MISTAKE #1!) As it turns out, even though the butter was labeled “sweet cream butter” (which usually indicates it is unsalted), this particular brand was actually salted.
I always use UNSALTED butter for baking. The reason is that most recipes call for salt, and using salted butter would make your product taste too salty. It is possible to substitute salted butter for unsalted butter in a recipe, but then you also need to omit or reduce the amount of salt you use in the recipe.
So I decided that I would try the less expensive, salted butter and hope that I could make the necessary adjustments to my recipes so that it wouldn’t affect the taste adversely.
MISTAKE #2: I–for some inexplicable reason–decided to try the salted butter in my buttercream frosting recipe. I thought that since salt is a flavor enhancer, it might actually make my buttercream taste better. WRONG. I made a big double batch of buttercream frosting for a birthday cake order, but I didn’t taste the butter before I made the recipe. It wasn’t until after the buttercream was completely finished that I tasted it for flavoring and found that it was WAY too salty.
I contemplated making another batch of buttercream using unsalted butter as usual and then mixing the 2 batches together to try to minimize the saltiness of the original batch. But when I tested a small sample of a 50-50 ratio of the two batches together, it was still way too salty.
So I finally decided to cut my losses and throw the salty buttercream away. Talk about learning from my mistakes! It was very frustrating to waste all my time and ingredients by throwing it all out. But better to provide my customers with a quality product than to try to pass off an inferior product and hope that they won’t notice.
Lesson learned: save the salted butter for cooking or toast. Always use unsalted butter in baking!