A thread about experimental baking could be titled Test Fire.

It is easier to sample eating cooking in progress than baking.

A thread about experimental baking could be titled Test Fire.

It is easier to sample eating cooking in progress than baking.

I do it! I love fucking with baked goods.

Harold McGee knows.

At lunch I read that article (and the recipe) in the dead-trees edition. Made for a sad contrast with my food from Panda Express.

Panda Express.

The name is like a money-back guarantee that your food will suck.

I think it's worthwhile to note that the only real innovations in that whole long article are:

1. Let the dough rest (not even an innovation, the Nestle people just don't talk about it).
2. Make 'em oversized.
3. Sprinkle a little salt on top.

That's it. There's some stuff on the chocolate, but that's pure distraction. Oh, and I noticed that they use cake + bread flour. I swear to god that cake flour (lo-protein) + bread flour (hi protein)=all-purpose (mid-protein). Regardless, I bet most people couldn't even taste the difference between that cookie made with the flour blend and with all-purpose. I mean, shit, it's 40% chocolate, and I'm supposed to be impressed by 11% protein in the flour vs. 12% (or whatever)?

OK, I checked, and there are also some gluten differences among the flours. I still say Big Deal.

Which isn't to say that I won't make it their way. Hell, maybe I'll make two batches using their flour blend for one and all-purpose for the other.

I improv baking recipes. It just takes a little trial, really. I swear there was a thread where this came up not long ago.

Panda Express.

Yup.

Y'd think they could serve some real Panda every now and then too.

It just takes a little trial, really.

I gotta say, mixing, baking, cooling, then tasting a "trial" sounds to me like a recipe for a bad fucking mood.

"How was the flourless chocolate cake you made with unsweetened chocolate?"

"[unprintable] *kick dog* [unprintable]"

The trial stuff is why I like CI. They do it for me.

I can't explain my liking for McGee's stuff that way. No trials. But they are fascinating.

9 made me laugh.

I only bake in certain specific moods. I have to be ready to take on an hour and a half project with good humor.

I like to bake, but I don't do a lot of experimentation with it. There are enough recipes out there that I haven't tried that I don't see any reason to muck around experimenting with old recipes.

People often describe the difference between cooking and baking as something like the difference between art and science, but I think that's wrong. They're both chemistry; it's just that cooking is a chemical reaction that you can fix easily and is easier to save if you screw it up.

I do it! I love fucking with baked goods.

It's just all revelations all the time with you, isn't it?

I still say Big Deal.

Some hardened souls want to drain all the magic from the universe.

Iand I totally condone that! I wasn't criticizing JRoth! Or anyone!

And yes, Panda Express sucks hugely.

Eg-fucking-zactly.

I guess John heard what happened to the dog.

16: Emerson a natty dread mon?

I wouldn't just completely make up a recipe out of the thin blue air, but once you know yer basics--the rough proportions in cookie dough, the rough proportions in a cake, etc--it's not that difficult to switch out ingredients and come up with, say, a lemon cake rather than a chocolate one.

I think that the idea that baking is some tetchy exact science is completely exaggerated. Sure, there are some things, like souffles or whatever, that sometimes go wrong. But I mean, once you know how to whip an egg, you know how to whip an egg, and it's not that big a deal.

Panda Express is good if you like MSG headaches.

Actually, apparently souffles aren't as hard as reputed.

But this:
it's not that difficult to switch out ingredients and come up with, say, a lemon cake rather than a chocolate one.
is just a recipe for mediocrity.

I suppose that sounds snobbish, but it's not like there's something fancy or technical in making, for instance, Cook's Country's devil's food cupcakes. They just happen to be much, much better than any other chocolate cupcakes I've ever had, anywhere.

Cooking at other people's houses is often quite good; I never expect much from other people's baking (except people I know to be very good bakers, obvs., but they tend to be trained).

BTW, 18 to 13.

I think that the idea that baking is some tetchy exact science is completely exaggerated.

Yeah, I agree. I've never invented a baking recipe, but I certainly feel comfortable improvising. I think some baking book authors want to scientize the whole process (it's all a matter of exact chemistry), while also trading on some weird domestic goddess mystique. I have an aunt who just mixes up pies and cakes in her kitchen without ever looking at a recipe, all based on the trial and error of past experience, I guess, and also on just knowing the basics and having a feel for how things work.

I wouldn't just completely make up a recipe out of the thin blue air, but once you know yer basics--the rough proportions in cookie dough, the rough proportions in a cake, etc--it's not that difficult to switch out ingredients and come up with, say, a lemon cake rather than a chocolate one.

Agreed. I guess what got me thinking of this was the NYT article about the woman making up the recipe from scratch-ish vs. the controversy about someone like Cindy McCain taking a recipe and then tweaking some of the proportions and calling it her own. What more than that does any home cook do? If I have an idea for a baking recipe, I find something close and modify it a little. Or, I'll make a recipe and try doubling the amount of coconut the next time or throwing in some nuts. I'm not going to come up with a baking recipe completely from scratch, like I might with a dinner made out of leftovers.

I've invented baking recipes. The key thing is keeping the acid/alkali balance correct. You just need to know which ingredients will cause the balance to shift (watch out for milk), and adjust from an existing recipe's proportions accordingly. For example, I made some cookies with chopped apple, and used the proportions of a sugar cookie recipe except with some baking soda subbed for baking powder. I guessed at the necessary adjustment but it worked fine.

Oh, I did once substitute mayonnaise for the eggs in a sugar cookie recipe out of desperation once, guessing that the science would make it OK since eggs are emulsifiers and contributers of fat and moisture and mayo is all full of emulsifiers and is moist and fatty (and made of eggs), and nobody could even taste the difference. Roxxorz.

Messing with recipes is easy, since most of the bases are the same and you just swap out flavors and adjust for texture, keep the proportions, etc. And I will argue against those food science people that you can't mess with the leaveners. I had this "best cocoa brownie" recipe from Epicurious, but it seemed really dense--no leaveners mentioned in the recipe! I lightened it up a bit with baking soda, and made slightly fluffier, but still chewy brownies. Also, while gluten content makes a difference, not a huge one unless you are making drastically different things (bread v. cake). Plenty of cooking sites say that they swapped in all-purpose for cake, and regular cocoa for dutch process, etc. etc. Experimenting is key, because some recipes are not made to everyone's taste. I usually always reduce or increase the sugar, double the amount of flavoring (say, for lemon cake), etc.

But, you know, I can't imagine coming up with a new mixture of ingredients to make a completely new thing. I wonder who invented the souffle, the flourless cake, angel food cake, pound cake, etc. It seems like it's not that hard if you get the basic principles of food science (add more eggs = dense, whip up egg whites = fluffy). Now that's baking innovation.

Is this the place to mention that my sour cherry pie, in pursuit of a cherry pitter for which I hied me all over the city and back (ending up with two, and some congee in my belly) is, despite having possibly my worst crust ever, pretty fucking good?

I think it just might be.

I ♥ sour cherries, not just for their culinary uses, but also because this particular variety, at least (Montmorency—good name!) looks prettier than Bings, with their cinnabar dullness, or those damn Ranier cherries, which seem to be the only other two one sees around here. Just look at that pellucidity!

I guess I'll soften my stance in 23 to say that, once you've made a recipe, modifying it more to your tastes for the next time around isn't a big deal. And if you've done enough baking, you can even modify the first time if you suspect the recipe is off.

I consider that a wholly different beast from opening the pantry and mixing a cup of this, a tablespoon of that, and a pinch of the other to conjure up something new. Some people can pull that off, but most would get better results with a good recipe. In a way that isn't true with, say, a pan sauce.

"How was the flourless chocolate cake you made with unsweetened chocolate?"

If it was high-quality chocolate, this could be really good.

High-quality unsweetened chocolate is expensive, though.

I've messed with recipes, which is actually mainly what I do for cooking too. And I've made up fillings & sauces, but why screw around with the basic flour-leavening-fat ratios when you have a version that you know is delicious & you don't know what effect screwing around will have?

Speaking of which, this isn't really baking, but related to the last food thread, I present to you, ridiculously simple & easy rice pudding from the Joy of Cooking, which is on my stove right now:

3/4 cup rice
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt.

Combine in saucepan. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low, cover & simmer for about 15 minutes.

Stir in:
4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup sugar

cook, uncovered over medium heat, for 30-40 minutes. Stir frequently, esp. towards the end.

Remove from heat, stir in 1/2 tsp vanilla.

Transfer to bowl--put saran wrap on top if you don't want a skin.

Can't speak for the results this time yet (and I'm hoping you don't really need the vanilla, because I'm out) but I made it a couple of years ago & it was good.

Just look at that pellucidity!

They look disturbingly like maraschinos.

Mmm, cherry pie. Were I absolutely without appetite these days, and were it not too hot to turn on the oven, I would be making a peach-blueberry galette, which is surprisingly pretty and tasty.

I believe Marasca cherries are also a sour variety.

and I'm hoping you don't really need the vanilla, because I'm out

Surely you should add something for flavoring. Amaretto? Grand Marnier? A bit of brown sugar/cinnamon?

Panda Express sucks hugely

You want to make Panda Express look good? Try eating where I ate this evening: "Asian Chao" at Hartsfield Airport. If that place went out of business, the demand for corn starch and canola oil would drop to levels that ethanol and biodiesel would become economical substitutes for fossil fuels.

I can't imagine coming up with a completely new recipe for something cooked that would a) work and b) not start out with some other recipe as a base to work off of. I mean, it's all been done. And I doubt the lady in question received the chocolate chip recipe as divine relavation.

OK, I checked, and there are also some gluten differences among the flours. I still say Big Deal.

You know what makes a difference between a good cake and a great one? Cake flour. (I am thinking of handmade genoise cake with from-scratch butter icing &etc.)

But I mean, once you know how to whip an egg, you know how to whip an egg, and it's not that big a deal.

On the other hand, what B said... except in the case of bread. Bread: the McManus of food.

max
['Thousands of experiments later, he discovered he had made Wonder Bread.']

I ♥ sour cherries

You cutesy-emoticon sour cherries, eh?

Okay, who kidnapped w-lfs-n, and just what are they asking for in terms of ransom money? I'm willing to organize a funding drive, if it will help return young Ben to the fold.

I've ♥ed things before and I'll do it again, Lord willing.

You know, sometimes Epicurious recipes seem needlessly complicated and trying too hard to be gourmet-y. Maybe because most of the recipes are from Gourmet. But it's my go-to place because it's online and I can search by ingredient or dish really easily. What recipe resources do people use? Should I be subscribing to Cook's Illustrated?

Ben believes in hope and the Power of Love.

There's this, BL, but you can't view the recipes anymore. (I can, through the power of wget, but you can't.)

Thanks a lot, Ben. So helpful.

No prob.

43: I rarely use Epicurious recipes straight; I almost always modify them using techniques I've learned from Cook's Illustrated. So i think my answer to your final question is obvious.

You might consider skipping the actual paper subscription and instead subscribing to the website, which gets you all the content from the magazine from the first issue til now. The downside, obvs., being that once you give up the web scrip, you've got nothing (except what you've downloaded, of course).

Cherries.

(except what you've downloaded, of course)

The power of wget compels you! The power of wget compels you!

Okay, not to push the panic button, but the situation is now sounding rather dire. Apparently w-lfs-n is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome: he's begun to close all letters and emails with the generic "Luv Ya'."

Once, in a drunken response to a good-natured drunken challenge from another guest at a neighbor's house, I whipped up a dessert that was completely improvised. However, although it involved flour and leaven, it was not exactly a baked dessert (it was a kind of crepe with apple-calvados filling). I pretty routinely improvise variations on baked desserts, e.g. taking the basic building blocks of one recipe (say, for a cobbler crust) and add another flavor or substitute one kind of fruit for another.

I once went on a kick of improvising recipes for individual upside-down cakes, using only the rudiments of other recipes. I've done the same with jelly rolls. In all of these cases, while the result was edible, I can't honestly say that the resultant "recipes" were worthy of wider dissemination.

I was once party to the devising of, but not the actual execution of, a modified frangipanish tart—but the actual executor of the plan was an experienced improviser on baked goods.

43: My usual strategy (for non-baking projects) is to read the class of epicurious recipes that I'm interested in. So, for example, if I wish to make ceviche, I will read about 12 different recipes to figure out what makes a ceviche a ceviche, the rough proportions and flavors that people use, what steps have to be done and what can be omitted, and then I'll do my own thing. I do this mostly because many online recipes are full of reviews that say, essentially, 'this was really good, I'd make it again, except that I substituted half the ingredients and doubled the other half and then made it low-fat.'

54: This is what I did to develop my recipe for kik alicha. There are way too many conflicting recipes in existence, but a survey of them gives a good sense of what is necessary to make kik alicha.

I carve nature and recipes at the joints.

and then made it low-fat.

Call me crazy, but I'm presumptively suspicious of any and all efforts to make it low-fat. Just put down that bag of Doritos, and then go ahead and use real butter and cream when you actually make stuff at home.

Word, Mary Catherine. I had a roommate who made "banana bread" but took out all of the good stuff and added flax and protein powder crap. I do not get purposefully "healthy" snack food.

You're not crazy, MC, you're right-thinking, because the truth is, low-fat versions of things meant to be high in fat, generally taste like ass.

Okay, who kidnapped w-lfs-n, and just what are they asking for in terms of ransom money? I'm willing to organize a funding drive, if it will help return young Ben to the fold.

Just hold tight. I predict we'll be in Ransom of Red Chief territory within a few days.

49: I can testify on behalf of recipes 3, 4, & 12, as regards cherries. I've also enjoyed non-cherry recipes for 7 and 13. I wanted to have 7 tonight (Garlicky Lime Sauce with Cilantro), but I can't find the tenderloins that I swear are in my deep freeze. I've been storing up for the impending birth, so it's pretty full right now.

54: I've done exactly that, for instance for conch fritters.

You cutesy-emoticon sour cherries, eh?

A heart is not an emoticon.

Thousands of experiments later, he discovered he had made Wonder Bread

The WSJ did a great piece on WonderBread around the time of the bankruptcy of International Brands, the makers of Wonder Bread, Ho-Ho's, etc.

Basically, IB reformulated WonderBread to become more shelf stable, so that they could replenish the stores less frequently and save on distribution expense. According to the WSJ, this came back to bite them because the bread displays ended up looking really uninviting about a week into the delivery interval, so sales began to drop. But worse yet, the bread was actually staying fresh longer in the consumers' homes. It turns out that a non-negligible proportion of bread demand was to replace spoiled consumer inventory, i.e. when you buy a fresh loaf because you've let the last 1/4 or 1/3 of the loaf go bad.

The father of an acquaintance of mine was an executive at IB, and the friend said his father had confirmed the basic thrust of the story.

the truth is, low-fat versions of things meant to be high in fat, generally taste like ass.

Cook's Country has a regular feature of lower-fat versions of things, but their goal is to reduce, not to achieve any particular goal. So their slice of lemon pound cake went from ~540 calories down to ~330. Still reasonably decadent.

I haven't actually made enough of these to judge their overall success rate, but the 1-2 I've made were fine.

Man, the thought of Wonder Bread is squicking me out.

A heart is not an emoticon.

True enough. And the heart is not really a lonely hunter, strictly speaking.

Yeah, Belle Lettre, I have very little patience for "healthy" versions of stuff that is supposed to be a nice little treat. If I make a tasty blueberry crisp, for example, using regular flour and and oats, please don't ask me if the recipe can be duplicated using ancient effing artisanal grains.

If I make a tasty blueberry crisp, for example, using regular flour and and oats

Why would you make a blueberry crisp for a horse?
/Samuel Johnson

low-fat versions of things meant to be high in fat, generally taste like ass

Now, now, let's not get all crazy. There's not a damn thing wrong with substituting milk for cream in quiche, say. It won't taste like the quiche you're used to, but that's a challenge to reorient your palate.

Why would you make a blueberry crisp for a horse?
/Samuel Johnson

The triumph of hope over experience, naturally.

Maybe MC is Scottish.

It won't taste like the quiche you're used to, but that's a challenge to reorient your palate because it'll taste like ass.

Maybe MC is Scottish.

They do say there's none more Scots than the Scots abroad.

At most I substitute 2% for whole, or half and half for heavy whipping, mainly because I am too lazy to walk 3 blocks to get little pints of things just to make pudding, but that's rare and I feel bad about it. It doesn't taste bad, but I think "not the same." So yeah, adjusting the palate, but also, expectations. Sometimes, you really think "but it could have been better with ___." Since I mostly bake/cook when I entertain, I generally go all the way. These past couple of weeks I've been eating on my own and it is sad, sad, sad. Like cereal twice a day sad. I need to go back to cooking well for one.

Maybe MC is Scottish.

Certainly not. Though I do love a Dundee cake...

72: Wanna fight, wanna fight, eh?

Nah, really, it's a question of whether you want to develop lower fat ways to make some things, or do without them altogether out of some misguided sense of purity. All or nothing? For the birds. It's not like you can't tell the difference between the lower and full fat versions, it's just that after not a very long time at all, less fat tastes perfectly delicious.

Nah, really, it's a question of whether you want to develop lower fat ways to make some things, or do without them altogether out of some misguided sense of purity.

Nah, really, it's that the full-fat versions taste better.

In my experience the recipes from CI's Best Light Recipe are uniformly mediocre. I generally consult both CI and Bittman and meet somewhere in the middle, depending on ingredient availability.

Belle, make quiche. It gives all the satisfaction of full-sized baking but keeps long enough for a single person to eat it all.

Oh yeah. And as good as fresh quiche is, it's even better after it's been in the fridge overnight.

I generally follow the Pioneer Woman's ethos, which seems to be, basically, BUTTER!

77: Whatever you say, honey.

Triple on the advice to Belle Lettre to make quiche: it'll last a few days, good for any meal, warm or cold. And really variable in ingredients, degree of cheesiness or vegetable-y ness.

Or you could make a cherry pie and eat the whole thing in about a day.

Dude, what are you doing up? Mmm, quiche. I make a fantastic spinach mushroom quiche. The last time I made that was for brunch, like, months ago. Perhaps it is time to quiche again.

Lately I feel like my cooking has sucked, because nothing tastes good. I made bittersweet chocolate pudding yesterday, thinking it would make me hungry on a hot day, and threw it all out today. Blargh.

83: no more pie left?! Damn.

What I really need is to find the right meat and a giant pan for my quiche Lorraine. I bought some once that was about 2 inches thick and was full of roughly torn chunks of pork with long muscle fibers. Even cold, it was so much better than thin quiche with plain bacon (which I am out of). Perhaps one could make do with some lovely tomatoes from my grandmother's garden.

As the Baron St. Fontanel said: "A woman happy in love--she burns the souffle! A woman unhappy in love--she forgets to turn the oven on!" Or just cooks really badly.

Dude, I am researching res judicata. Come to D.C. for my birthday and make me some pudding.

Oh, there's still about 5/8ths left. But it's only been out of the oven five hours, and one of those it had to cool.

The very helpful woman at the totally crazy kitchen supply store where I got the second pitter informed me that sour cherries should still be available from some people at the ferry building, even if the dudes at the civic center market won't have any after Saturday.

I am researching res judicata too. I am sure you are right, despite traditional definitions. Ok, I will stop doing your work and look at Expedia.

roughly torn chunks of pork with long muscle fibers

Shoulder or the like, braised.

Pancetta also sounds yummy.

Tasted hammy. I defer to your greater expertise, though.

Wev.

I make a fantastic spinach mushroom quiche.

There is but one true quiche, and its name is Lorraine.

Bosh, Josh.

The best quiche I had was with w-lfs-n--that ham and gruyere one from Tartine. The crust was super crumbly and like a burnt croissant, and I don't know how to make it. It was like 5 inches deep. It was awesome.

Ben, if you're still there, can I ask an ignorant question: what is this sour cherries? As opposed to just cherries?

I have no doubt that there are different sorts of cherries, but I've never studied up on them, and I did have one recently that tasted somewhat tart, and I asked (stupidly, innocently): is this a particular type of cherry, perhaps a sour cherry?

I got an amused look. Answer: that's what cherries taste like, in my experience.

I ask because you have been going on about them, and I haven't had fresh cherries much, and I also haven't checked any references you may have given.

95: Does anyone actually laugh at the "quiche lorraine?! I hardly know her!" joke, or should I stop making it.

There is no substitute for Kobe.

Becks, for what it is worth, I tend to think of baked goods in a spectrum from pancakes to cake to cookies, going from proportionally more to less liquid. I mean, your cake isn't going to be >i>wrong. It'll just lean more toward the pancake or cookie side of things.

Leaveners do make it more complicated. But the real solution is to find non-picky eaters.

Ben, if you're still there, can I ask an ignorant question: what is this sour cherries? As opposed to just cherries?

Sour as opposed to sweet, of course.

This is a rough way of sorting them, naturally, and presumably the underripe sweet cherries are also sour, but what can you do? Bing and Rainier cherries are sweet (eat one and see!); Morello, Montmorency, and I speculated above Marasca cherries are sour (eat one and see!).

The sour ones are more suited for culinary purposes; cooking the sweet ones makes for too much sweetness (they're also better for brandying, I think). 'Course I also like eating the sour ones plain, but that's because I'm a big ol' sourpuss myself, and like attracts like.

Pancakes aren't baked, even if they do resemble baked goods in other respects.

Neither are crepes. I made this cake for a friend's birthday, but it wasn't really a cake. Perfect for a hot summer day.

That looks like a good cake.

102: Thanks, just what I wanted.

I'm chiefly interested in fruits for the raw eating, and have disliked some cherries (plain) in the past, but also favor the sour. thanks.

It was delish! Next dinner party, w-lfs-n. Or perhaps for your birthday. You can look just as happy as she did.

She looks kind of tense and frightened.

108: When you're used to seeing women look at you, tense and frightened, it's easy to begin to see all women that way, ben.

Aw, w-lfs-n. You take that back. That is her cute and demure pose. She was also drunk on champagne. See, happy.

Do not comment on how I look, Ben.

Meaning, in the picture.

It's more that I am used to looking at women, tense and frightened.

This past weekend I made non-ham-hock green beans, an orange-cranberry bundt cake and a triple-chocolate cake for a friend's housewarming party. The chocolate cake came out looking weird and lumpy and gross but tastes fantastic. Last night as he took the cover off the cake saver to cut a piece Rah paused and said, "It really does look malevolent. It really does."

"That which is iced may eternal lie and with strange aeons even cake may die," I replied.

It is a mighty good cake, though.

Wait, I just put a picture of myself up. Crap. No law profs here, right?

I told someone your pseudonym is the best one I've ever come across, and they agreed, Robust McManlyPants.

Oh, but what I originally thought of is that my mother very rarely uses measuring spoons and endeavored with some success to teach us to cup our hands in a certain way and use our creased palm as a measuring spoon. As a kid I thought this was the ultimate hallmark of my mother's limitless genius.

A tactfully suggested cake for RMcMP's next shindig.

Ew, and yet, coooool.

That's a lot of fondant.

A treasure at our house has been a very old Montmorency cherry tree from which we just collected the annual harvest. These photos are from a few years earlier. Unfortunately the tree is struggling and we barely got one whole pie from it this year. Trying to get a couple new ones going is my current #1 priority battle with the deer. I do not care for the cherries straight, but then I lack the sophisticated palate of some. If you leave them on the tree longer they do get a bit sweeter, but then it becomes a race with the birds.

Thanks, Belle! And now sleep for me.

(And, on preview, I want to make a Cthulhu cake, like, so bad. Baking is so much fun.)

I like sweet Rainier cherries, so I must be a philistine.

in pursuit of a cherry pitter for which I hied me all over the city and back

I feel your pain. If you read my blog, you'd have known what kind to get and where to get it, by the way.

cup our hands in a certain way and use our creased palm as a measuring spoon. As a kid I thought this was the ultimate hallmark of my mother's limitless genius.

I'd have loved to have learned something like this. Surely it could work -- builds the instincts and all that. No baking like that in our family. Therefore baking is foreign to me (and also I just don't like sweets very much).

Cthulhu cake? Bah. Make this.

Did I mention that we'll have a bumper crop of plums this year? I'll try to link a pic tomorrow, but it's late.

fruits for the raw eating, and have disliked some cherries (plain) in the past

My experience is not to bother except at the very height of the season - no matter how good they look in the store, wait until the price comes down. I'm less strict with strawberries for some reason - probably just more tolerant for underripe strawbs. But for years I thought I didn't like cherries due to a bad experience with underripe ones as a kid.

Cherries from roadside stands in the Mösel valley in early June are just absurdly sweet (Rainier-looking, but surely not actually that).

126 reminds me that I have a pic of a Myron Cope cake - I should save it for when likely appreciators are awake.

The last few years, AB & I have been "celebrity" judges for a cake contest run as a fundraiser by the local midwives' center. Chocolate, people. Please stop wasting my time with your non-chocolate cakes.

Ben, you are in for a treat tomorrow night. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is not my kind of awesome, but it is indubitably awesome.

And the middle guy made us all twirl around for his drinking song.

121: A treasure at our house has been a very old Montmorency cherry tree

Thanks, JP, cool information and great pictures.

128: JRoth, I just posted, over on a probably dead thread, a seeming incredible Steelers pander from McCain that deserves to blow up in his face. Read the comment at the link, but basically he told KDKA that he would name the Steelers D-line as his squadron mates under interrogation. Trouble is: 1) No one knew the pathetic Steelers D-line of the late '60s, even in Pittsburgh and 2) in his book he said it was the Green Bay Packers offensive line.

He's meta-mavericky!

Lamberts. Or And Lapins.

23: We'll be needing that recipe, JRoth.

I made chocolate chip cookies with less butter than the recipe called for, because someone had used some of the butter I thought that I had. They were still good.

I'm generally not into the "make everything low-fat" movement, but low-fat sour cream is pretty good. It might not work in an actual recipe, but it's fine on a baked potato or nachos.

Does anyone know of a good place to take cooking classes. I'm not good at doing manual things like cooking off of recipes. I need some practice where I get to see it live. There are too many cooking shows now for me to watch them, though I used to watch Julia Child and the Frugal Gourmet. Actually, I also watched Yan Can Cook, although I never attempted the Asian foods when I was 11. (I wouldn't watch that now. I've heard that he's perfectly capable of speaking unaccented English, really American English which means that he's playing up a stupid stereotype.)

Nah, really, it's a question of whether you want to develop lower fat ways to make some things, or do without them altogether out of some misguided sense of purity. All or nothing?

It's not all or nothing; it's 'take a slightly smaller portion.' Or 'enjoy it and don't worry about it because it's a special occasion.' Or 'if you don't generally eat processed foods you can really get away with eating banana bread whenever you make it.'

Like Belle Lettre, I won't have a problem with using 2% or whole milk unless the recipe really needs it.

But a couple things to consider:
1) Fat is actually a nutrient. Not having the fat also often means not feeling full, and then overindulging on what's left: sugars, mostly. I can have a few oz. of Greek yogurt and be set till lunch; no-fat, no-sugar Yoplait will hold me for about an hour.
2) Low-fat versions of things are often filled with crap to make them taste like real food. I don't think this is a net benefit for health.
3) There are plenty of things that are actually low-fat on their own that are tasty to eat, and this is what it mostly comes down to for me. If I want a low-fat dinner, there are plenty of things that I can cook that are not lasagna that fit that bill. If I want a low-fat dessert, there are things that are tastier than low-fat cheesecake.

No-fat greek yogurt is still pretty darn tasty.

ts are back!
my thinking is eat anything in any natural combination, even fast food, but limit calories
except the known carcinogens of course

Also, copyrighting of recipes: pro or con?

137: different computer, I'm sad to say. The home laptop was still t free this morning.

Low fat potato chips taste like crunchy cardboard. I don't even like potato chips, but I'll always remember the time I grabbed the wrong bag at the store on my way to some event.

Con copyrighting recipes. Do you want the IP police coming to YOUR HOME and confiscating the dish you lovingly made from a pirated recipe?

con, i even submit one
the only cake i knew how to bake was a plain vanilla cake with raisins, it required condensed milk and two eggs, a vanilla stick
could use some sugar powder for decoration
we used a round bread-maker with a form inserted so the cake always looked like a giant donut

141: well of course I don't. Logical next question: how is intellectual property protection for recipes different from IP protection for software?

143: Baking's less replicable than software?

I knew that behind Tweety's sly rhetorical question lay a fiendish trap!

Software has a lot less sugar and lard, for one thing.

Mmmmm. Lard.

Be careful Tweety. You have Bill Gates in your sights, I know, but when his lawyers are done with this, recipes will by copyrighted and you'll have to sign for ingredients at the grocery. Nobody fucks with Microsoft.

144: well, why? Because the underlying conditions are different in each case? You could quite easily make the same argument for e.g. software ported to different platforms, yet that's still covered by copyright law.

(Why am I making this argument in this thread? Who cares about software when there's baked goods full of fat to be discussed? Mmmm, baking.)

forgot to add 1/4 tea-spoon baking soda, to make the dough raise, if to put more it becomes yellowish, if less it'll be very thin, i also had trouble with raisins sinking all down
i think it was just basic spongecake, so can decorate or add whatever, but i don't remember adding butter into it, or maybe we added, forget

146: eh I've taken those fuckers on before. It's Chuck Schumer I'm worried about.

Anyhow: moving on: GIANT DONUT!

BG: The BCAE has a bunch of decent cooking classes, at various levels. I have some friends who took the super-introductory one, which used a lot of relatively prepared ingredients (frozen chopped onions, for example), but was nevertheless real cooking. Something above that level might be better if you don't have a fundamental fear of the kitchen.

(Why did we have to be discussing this today? It's been too &%^$&%^$ hot to cook for several days now, and it's making me cranky)

giant donut b/c if not put the form, then in the center it would be still raw, but the edges'd start to burn
i think every household had that breadmaker

to

"Mr Tweety, I see that on July eighth you bought lard, white flour, shaved almonds, confectionary sugar, vanilla extract, and poppy seeds at the Thrifty Value Super Grocery. Are you aware that those are the ingredients for the MS almond-poppyseed cookie 3.2 (TM)? Now if you'd just come with us....."

It will be your fault, Tweety. Let sleeping dogs lie.

154: "Officer I get baked, I don't bake! Er, wait, that came out wrong."

Low fat potato chips taste like crunchy cardboard. I don't even like potato chips, but I'll always remember the time I grabbed the wrong bag at the store on my way to some event.

Cape Cod Potato Chips reduced fat chips are very good. They don't leave a grease stain, but other than that I can't really tell the difference between them and the full fat version.

156: no different but the poopin'.

BCAE? I assume that's a Center for Adult Education, but are you talking about the Brookline one or the Boston one?

135 gets it exactly right.

Boston. I know the Brookline one is out there, but I don't have any experience with their courses. The Boston one has been pretty good to me (and has a lot more stuff than the Cambridge one).

If you understand the principles of baking, of course you can invent a baked goods recipe. It's really not that difficult. You just start by baking from the recipes for 10 years, then once you've got the hang of that, you start tweaking the standard recipes, and after 10 years of that, you know enough to begin with the basic principles and invent your own.

And everyone starts making cakes and cookies at 5 years old, don't they? I mean, what else do you do when you're stuck in the house on a rainy day and none of your friends have come round and your mom looks like she's going to kill you slowly if you whine one more time that you haven't got anything to DO.

1) Fat is actually a nutrient. Not having the fat also often means not feeling full, and then overindulging on what's left: sugars, mostly.

This seems to be the message of the Atkins diet book. Seriously, if you replace "fat" with "fat and protein", this is the only message of the Atkins diet book.

Wait, there's another one. Simple carbohydrates are equivalent to sugars even if they aren't sweet, so avoid them too.

But anyway, that's all you need to know about the Atkins diet book.

156: There is no Olestra in the Cape Cod ones. They fry them and then flash bake them. They're not a low-fat product, so much as one that's lower in fat.

157 cont'd:

In RuPaul's movie Starrbooty, one of the supporting characters is named "Ol' Lestra." Despite explaining that her name means "half the motherfucking calories!" she is the most overweight character in the movie.

Sometimes I love wikipedia so, so much.

Is alcohol a simple carbohydrate? Sometimes it seems simple, but if you drink enough of it the complexities become evident.

I love fucking with baked goods.

Here's a flickr group you might enjoy, then (from here.)

We'll be needing that recipe, JRoth.

Done.

As has been said above, once you have a basic baking recipe, adapting it is really not all that hard -- mostly just adding or subtracting things from the basic dough. My favorite recipe started out as a Joy of Cooking plain sour cream coffee cake and turned into whole wheat blueberry streusel coffee cake. Swap yogurt (plain or flavored!) for the sour cream, whole wheat for white flour (maybe a little less since it absorbs more liquid), toss in blueberries and yum! I've had a few sorry batches of cookies taking this approach, but some pretty damned amazing ones too. Like anything else, willingness to experiment is its own reward.

My favorite recipe started out as a Joy of Cooking plain sour cream coffee cake and turned into whole wheat blueberry streusel coffee cake.

Piracy funds terrorism, Di.

163: Yeah, heartier chips hold up pretty well to the less-fat treatment.

In principle, I'm with Cala's 135, but in practice I've enjoyed a number of reduced-fat recipes/products. Cook's Country's reduced-fat mac-n-cheese recipe uses, among other things, blue cheese to make up for the lost fat; it's really not a sacrifice to eat.

Oh, and BG, reduced fat sour cream does work for recipes (as a general rule). I think the key - esp. for dairy - is that reduced fat can work, but nonfat rarely does.

I've always been a firm whole milk partisan, but organic milk tastes so much better than regular that I prefer 2% organic to whole regular (and organic whole is luscious, but, well...).

Diet coke makes a better mixer.

If you read my blog, you'd have known what kind to get and where to get it, by the way.

Your blog would have told me what store in SF to go to?

And I did get a perfectly great one for $2.50.

organic whole is luscious

Rory went through a phase where she'd only grudgingly and under duress drink anything other than Horizon whole milk. I naturally assumed this was mostly packaging, but she proved to me in repeated side-by-side blind taste tests that she really could distinguish between that and other brands of organic whole milk.

drink anything other than Horizon whole milk

Which is funny because Horizon is really a factory farm that follows the letter of the organics law (we're an Organic Valley family). We used to switch week-to-week based on pricing, and I don't ever recall tasting a difference, but I only drink milk with food, so really subtle differences would be missed unless I paid attention.

In college we played a game where everyone went to the grocery store and in teams, spent a predetermined amount of money on whatever random and unusual ingredients we could find. Then the teams traded groceries and had to come up with meals using all the crazy stuff plus whatever was in the house.

Then, break! Split up to different houses to prepare! And then we all had a dinner party.

Some of the results were more noteworthy than others. I recommend playing this game mainly while drinking: everything seems more edible.

135:

2) Low-fat versions of things are often filled with crap to make them taste like real food. I don't think this is a net benefit for health.

Without reading the thread past this: Ah, we are talking about different things. I wasn't talking about premade lowfat foods, prepared foods. Just what you do in your own kitchen.

We're on the same page, except that I still maintain you can shift your palate from a taste for higher fat content (if you don't feel full, your stomach is trained in a certain way) to lower fat content. Obviously have the fat stuff on occasion. But swinging back and forth between high-fat lasagna or naturally low-fat foods is bound to leave a huge middle ground that I don't see any reason to eschew.

The best quiche I had was with w-lfs-n--that ham and gruyere one from Tartine. The crust was super crumbly and like a burnt croissant, and I don't know how to make it. It was like 5 inches deep. It was awesome.

Yeah, see, this was why I was "meh" on Tartine, even after B asked me if I'd had their quiche. I don't *want* a super-crumbly and flaky crust, I want a nice firm crust. But I realize I'm firmly in the minority on this one.

I'm going to have to stick up for Tartine here. I mean, sure, I imagine there are other bakeries out there just as good and maybe even better. But mmmm, the croque monsieur with smoked ham and asparagus and gruyere on that bread...

While comercial, non-organic milk has some pus in it, it's pasteurized and actually more nourishing than pus-free milk.