I hope you all had a lovely weekend. We made a run for one of our favorite charities this weekend, Kindred Hearts. If you’re in a giving kind of mood, please consider these good people. Sunday, we helped move 3 wonderful dogs onto a new life by driving one leg of their 24 leg journey. Here’s hoping our new friends have loving families waiting for them. Now, on to baking!
Still working with our All About Home Baking cookbook, I’d like to take a moment to talk about one of the chapters titled, “Ingredients–The Inside Story of Baking Success”. This is one of those chapters that might be easy to just breeze through. I agree. I’m a breeze-through-the-boring sort of girl. But, upon closer inspection, there are some wonderful tips that stand the test of time.
The chapter opens with,
“To bake good things–put good things into them! There’s the start of the story. You can’t get light, tender textures and delicate flavors with inferior ingredients.”
One of the things I noticed in the recipe for Basic #1 was that it called for Swans Down Cake Flour. My initial reason for using this flour was because I wanted to try to match the recipes ingredient for ingredient when able. I’ve never used flour designed specifically for cakes. I usually just grabbed all-purpose flour, (although I will admit I’m partial to King Arthur flour and use it in just about all my baking) and go for it. With the first recipe I did notice a difference in the texture of the cake. Pretty cool!
The chapter goes on to discuss the purpose and importance of the key ingredients in cake recipes; baking powder, liquids, chocolate, and one comes away feeling a bit smarter for having read all that. Okay. I came away feeling a bit smarter. Let’s keep in mind, I’m no baker. Just someone who really digs old cookbooks.
So now I’m moving foward to tackle Basic Recipe 2. This recipe is for something called a “Chocolate Fudge Loaf”. Honestly, that doesn’t sound too appealing. Perhaps its saving grace will be chocolate. I’m not sure about the loaf part.
This simple cake will be baked in a relatively small pan and I will use the recommended frosting this time. I will, of course, be using the recommended flour. What sort of home baker would I be if I used less than that? Results to follow. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is a yummy bit of cake.
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An Imbalance of Humours 