Inspiration & Resources for the modern homemaker
We’ve gone through a lot of ingredients over the last year or so during my “Ingredients: Everything You Need to Know” series- their uses, where they come from, etc. And it’s time to start with the all of the spices you might run across. Let’s get started with parsley!
Today, I’m going to explore leavening agents: baking soda, baking powder, yeast, rapid-rise yeast, etc. I suspect the hidden cause of many failed recipes are bad ingredients. Not bad as in ‘spoiled’ or ‘expired.’ Bad as in low-quality or the wrong ingredient. When I started making bread, I had some disasters. One loaf even the ducks at the pond wouldn’t… Read More
Chocolate…who doesn’t love chocolate? [Looks around…hears crickets] I’ve learned a lot throughout my lifetime. As a kid, I learned that mixing cocoa powder into milk does NOT make chocolate milk. As a teenager, I learned that there were multiple different types of chocolate- aka I discovered dark chocolate. Yay! As an adult, I learned that it’s easy to scorch chocolate… Read More
Previously I covered the many types of wheat flour, including: all-purpose, self-rising, bread flour, cake flour, pastry flour; as well as the less common ones: gluten flour, semolina flour, spelt flour, bulgur flour, etc. (See the blog post -or- visit the ‘Ingredients’ page.) However, the other day I got an off-the-wall question about the types of wheat. I had no idea of the… Read More
I bought a grain grinder when I lived in Charleston. The ducks in our front pond (yes, our apartment complex had a duck pond) ate a lot of less-than-ideal loaves of bread. To this day I wonder how a loaf a bread can come out heavier than the combined weight of its ingredients. I had a blast finding grains. Except… Read More
This post is one I was going to research and do later in the year. But…I’m in the middle of creating a new dessert: “Butterscotch Blondie Cheesecake.” And various recipes for butterscotch and cheesecake call for multiple types of dairy products: milk, heavy cream, whipping cream, heavy whipping cream, etc. And I’ve been wondering how much I really, really need… Read More
A little personal background: I have to admit to a prejudice against oil. If a recipe calls for it, I almost always consider substituting butter. I have attempted to overcome this recently. A red velvet recipe called for a cup and half of oil. Yes, seriously. I winced pouring it in. And surprisingly (to me, anyway), the cake was delicious…. Read More
As you have probably noticed, there is a bit of a trend towards trying to make everything healthier. (Could you hear the sarcasm in that?). Thankfully, the medical establishment has changed their mind and now announced that not all fats are from the devil. This is good because butter is vital not only for taste, but for texture. Have you… Read More