Patrick S

Wendy, Have you ever tried the white and yellow butter cake recipes from "Whimsical Bakhouse"? I find them to be exceptional -- moist, flavorful, and with great crumb and slicing properties. I did read the "searching for the best" threads and these recipes did not seem to make it into the discussion. I'd be happy to post or PM these to you if you like to try them! ← Ruth, I for one would greatly appreciate it if you would post these recipes to the Best Yellow Cake/Best White Cake threads.

Hi Patrick, Per my original post, the additives that I object to are artificial flavors (and colors), hydrogenated (or partially-) fats, and extra emulsifiers. I have to stop by the market on the way home tonight, and am planning to check out the ingredients list on a box of cake mix. I'll take notes and post it if you like! ← Thank you kindly for the offer, but that won't be necessary, as I am already familiar with the ingredients in cake mixes.

Well, I know that hot water will dissolve and can hold more lead than cold water, and for that reason it is often advised not to use hot tap water for cooking. But I wonder if that matters if you have copper or PVC pipes? Dunno. . .

Surely you don't try to avoid salt, baking soda, and baking powder -- they are chemical additives as well. Strictly speaking, of course, every cake is a melange of chemicals, since every ingredient is a chemical or an aggregate of many chemicals. Do you mean, you wish to avoid man-made chemicals?

Kathy, I certainly agree that it comes down to personal taste and one's priorities. One of my priorities is to reduce the amount of additives that my family and I consume. ← Ruth, I've always wondered what people mean when they say this. What is an additive? I don't ask sarcastically, I'm just curious what it is in cake mixes that you want to avoid and why.

Yes, they actually have several holes. 5, I think. EDIT to add that if you like White Castle burgers, you can make a decent approximation by cooking some real thin patties over a bed of fine-chopped onion and using a steamed bun.

Fabulous indeed. That stuff makes for an awesome, and easy, lemon tart as well.

What is baffling is that apparently the Mpemba effect has been demonstrated in experiments that eliminate many of the mechanisms proposed to explain it. With respect to frost-melt-layer effect mentioned by Jackal, the FAQ I linked to states: And with respect to evaporation, there are experiments showing that the Mpemba effect is partly due to evaporation, but there are also experiments demonstrating the Mpemba effect even when both volumes of water are in closed containers which prevent the loss of mass by evaporation. The FAQ again: The experiments exploring the role of dissolved gasses in the Mpemba effect also seem to be inconclusive. The FAQ cites a couple of older papers to the effect that the Mpemba effect doesn't appear when using degassed water, but then cites two more recent papers showing the gas content of the water doesn't have an effect. I guess I can add the Mpemba effect to the list of things --like the two-slit experiment-- that remind me that the universe is stranger than I can imagine. Come to think of it, water is just surprisingly weird stuff in general, expanding when it freezes and so on. EDIT to add the missing URL.

Regarding hot water freezing faster than cold water -- yes, under certain conditions. Its called the Mpemba effect. EDIT to clarify that the Mpemba effect is not necessarily hot water freezing faster than cold water, just a warmer volume of water freezing before a cooler volume. In other words, I doubt it could happen if the initial temperature differences are large.

All other things being equal, the hotter water comes to a boil faster.

I definitely agree that burger buns should be soft. A good, off-the-supermarket-shelf bun is the Sara Lee class bakery bun, white or wheat. That's what I used for my last couple of burgers. My favorite is a similar soft bun made by a local bakery.

Tonight I tried Paula's recipe in the molds, and they were even better than I hoped. I baked 8 of them, and starting taking them out one by one, every five minutes, at 1 hour 15 minutes. At 1hr35 min, I took all the remainder out because I thought the crust was optimally dark. Here's the first one out: Here's one of the last ones out: Here's a cross-section of the lighter cannele (bad lighting):

I had some ground beef to use up, and some left-over chili, so I made chili-cheeseburgers. Low-brow, sure, but they were super-quick and turned out (suprisingly) good. I added a few Tb of the chili to the beef, and then topped the burger with it.

Yes, there are no beans in the chili itself, but they are often added on top. A four-way chili is the three-way with onions, and the five-way is the four-way with beans. ← What MAKES it Cincinnati style? Is it cinnamony like Skyline? I mentioned this once in another thread, and the "YUM'S" resounded. Still can't get a taste for all the cinnamon. ← Cinnamon, allspice and a little cocoa (not to mention the usual chili seasonings, like garlic, chili powder, etc.).

Yes, there are no beans in the chili itself, but they are often added on top. A four-way chili is the three-way with onions, and the five-way is the four-way with beans.

I finally recieved my tin molds in the mail. Before I got the molds, I tried Paula's recipe in small silicone muffin molds. They were delicious, and motivated me to invest in some proper molds. I broke in the molds using the Herme recipe for chocolate canelles that Neil posted way back on page two. I made two batches of 8. On the first batch, I filled the molds almost to the top. That was a mistake -- the canelles expanded way over the top and mushroomed. They did not settle back in to the molds. This batch I baked for an hour at 375. They were still delicious, but not crunchy/chewy enough on the crust. For the second batch, I filled the molds between 1/2 and 2/3 full, and baked for 1 1/4 hours. That resulted in no mushrooming and a nicer crust. When they were done, the canelles filled the mold entirely. Thanks everyone for the tips and recipes! The molds: The batter: The first batch - overfilled: The first batch, mushrooming in the oven: Cross-section of canelle from first batch: Canelle from second batch: Cross-section of same canelle:

Tonight, we made a big pot of Cincinnati-style chili, and served with sharp cheddar and spaghetti (i.e. three-way chili).

The picture below is of a burger I made back at the end of May. The recipe was from that new magazine, the name of which escapes me at the moment, that is published by the same group that does Cooks Illustrated. I can't remember the whole recipe, but it was a leanish beef with S and P, garlic, and a paste made from white bread and a little milk, cooked in a hot cast-iron skillet. Not bad, but not very impressive either. The next time I do burgers, I plan to try a Thai flavor. I'm tired of burgers with wimpy flavor (my apologies to burger purists)! EDIT: Oh yeah, one of the ingredients was bacon grease -- about 3T to a lb of beef, IIRC.

Friday night, we had flank steak beef satay with peanut sauce.

Plus, you don't have to pick/poke out the seeds that end up wedged into the strainer mesh.

<Light bulb appears above head> Fantastic idea!

Search no further than here for the eGullet definitive Sloppy Joe topic. ← Thanks so much snowangel. I clicked on the link but nothing happened. Probably my slower than a snail of a computer acting up. I'll try it again later. ← The link is bad. Try this one instead. Regarding the question at hand, BLT with fresh tomatoes, thick bacon, lots of mayo, and maybe an egg, is hard to beat. A "hot brown" sandwich, with a thick slice of day-old turkey, parmesan/swiss cheese sauce, tomatoe and bacon on toasted bread, is also a contender for my favorite.

I highly doubt that the mixer is to blame for your problem. I've also found that underbeating and too much dry ingredients to whites gives a flat mess. Have you tried increasing the amount of whites a little bit? I don't know that that would fix the problem, but it might be worth a try. I've found in the past that a small difference in the egg white/dry ingredient ratio can make a huge difference in how the cookie turns out. Too much sugar and/or almond makes a too dense, chewy cookie.

Do you mean that there are large voids/air pockets in the cookies? Without a picture, I don't know exactly what the problem is. Are you folding the dry ingredients into the whites very thoroughly? I'm just guessing here, but I wonder if air pockets could be due to incomplete folding.

Last time I checked, that was assault, a criminal offense. As long as Big Lou was given this stuff by someone who recieved it rightfully, I'm not bothered. If Big Lou got the mix from someone who, say, stole it from a warehouse, then I'd be bothered.