Gleep

HI everyone. I'm so sorry for posting and then dropping off of the face of the earth. We've had birthdays, a vacation and a case of the martian death flu! Anyway, here's my recipe if anyone's still interested. 9 oz sifted cake flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 8 oz unsalted butter, room temperature 14 oz sugar 4 large egg yolks 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 cup sour cream 4 large egg whites Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare your pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Cream the butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy and light in color. Add the sugar and continue to mix until fluffy and light. This step takes about 5 minutes. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, being sure each is well incorporated before adding the next one. Add the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream, beginning and ending with the flour. Be sure the mixture is completely blended after each addition. Scrape the sides of the bowl, and beat for 1 minute. In a separate bowl, with clean beaters, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the batter with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth with a rubber spatula. Bake in the preheated oven. The top of the cake should be nicely browned. Test for doneness with a skewer or a toothpick. The tester should come out dry. An 8 in round takes about 45 minutes, I rarely use a timer so this is my best guess.

I had a tasting tonight with Sarah's cake and the cake that I use for my standard butter cake. Fifteen people tasted and rated each cake. They tasted each one plain and with a chocolate glaze on top. I had them use a 1 - 5 scale for taste, texture and appearance. The cake I've been using had a higher rating in all categories. My cake had an overall rating of 4.75 and Sarah's had an overall rating of 2.5. Sarah's cake was easy to put together but it didn't seem to have the flavor and texture that I'm looking for. Several tasters noted on their sheets that the flavor reminded them of corn bread. One taster also thought the texture was reminiscent of corn bread. Also, I was a little disappointed in the shrinkage in Sarah's cake. When they came out of the oven, they had a nice height but by the time they had cooled they had shrunk quite a bit. Is this normal for this recipe? I'm going to try to post pics of the cake. They're not the best pictures but hopefully they'll give you an idea of the difference in the two. The first one will be Sarah's and the second one mine. So should I post the recipe that I use? Is anyone interested in trying it?

Inspired by the best of threads last year, I subjected my friends and family to lots of tastings for different flavors. I had a handful of butter cakes that I liked but wasn't sure which to consider the best. After doing a tasting with five different cakes and 30 different tasters, I had a clear winner and have been using this one exclusively ever since. This weekend I am having a get together with about a dozen of my original tasters so I will make my standard cake and Sarah's. I'll report my results and if the one I use still wins, I will submit that recipe for you guys to test.

I just made a couple cherry pies this morning. We have a sour cherry tree in our back yard so my friends and family always look forward to this time of year. I love Nick Malgieri's "Once a Year Cherry Pie" recipe. It's in his book "How to Bake" or you can find it here.

I've been reading this topic with some interest. As a child I thought it was a treat to go to the fast food places and actually looked forward to it even though the majority of my diet was made up of my great grandmother's fabulous home cooking. As I grew into my teen years I realised that when I ate at those places I wasted an opportunity to eat something that I really enjoyed and all but stopped frequenting the fast food chains. Now I have a two year old and Burger King and McDonald's have these elaborate indoor play areas. I've found that a lot of my friends find it a convenient place to take their children so they can have a break from cooking and their children can play. They often want to meet at one or the other so that the kids can play together. I spent months trying to convince them that it was just as easy to pack a picnic lunch and go to park but no one was interested. Finally after several terrible lunches at Burger King, I discovered a small diner nearby. Now we stop there and get two good lunches complete with sweet potato fries and go on to BK to play with our friends. We still get the convenience but the food is so much better! The management at BK doesn't mind as long as we buy something like a soda. I did try one of the new chicken sandwiches recently but found it to be no better than their other products. One other thing that I want to mention is seeing Alton Brown at the Cooking Show in Raleigh last weekend. During his second demo he was picking on Rachel Ray. It was all good natured and he said that she is a really nice person but in the middle of his jokes an audience member shouted out that he was just jealous because she had a BK commercial and he doesn't. He responded that he was actually offered the commercial first but thought it would be hypocritcal to accept since he had gone on record saying that until we eliminate the phrase "Biggie size" from our vocabulary that we are doomed to be big fat slobs.