emmalish

This is the thing that gets me. Even when I'm being sloppy and not measuring properly, things turn out for me. So just where is it that people who "can't bake" are going wrong? What are they doing? Is it not so much a matter of inaccuracy in measuring as possibly not understanding how important certain ingredients are? Are they getting baking soda confused with baking powder? Are they making substitutions and modifications without understanding how the recipe will be affected?

I finally got out of my recipe rut and tried a new one. The Katherine Hepburn brownies. Yum! I used SB cocoa and a Valrhona bittersweet chocolate. When I first opened the oven to take the pan out, the aroma totally reminded me of something I used to bake years ago (can't remember what, but I was having serious flash-backs). Deliciously chocolatey, chewy, and with lots of pecan and chocolate pieces, with just a hint of the cinnamon and coffee flavours.

I hear you on that – and I'll be the first to admit that my slapdash approach means that I almost never get the same results twice. But it's always edible and recognizable as what it's supposed to be. What I'm confused by is people who just can't manage to bake anything – anything edible anyway – ever. Or are too afraid to try. I made this lovely bundt cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. I brought it to work and one of my coworkers asked for the recipe. A month or so later he made it and brought it in – I don't know what he did wrong (or substituted), but it had such an odd aftertaste. One of our other coworkers commented to me privately that she couldn't believe it was supposed to be the same recipe.

I'm with you on this, Pam. I always hear people saying the same thing – "I love to cook, but baking's too hard, I can't be that precise". But like you, I follow recipes fairly loosely. I never measure the vanilla, and I always wing it on the add-ins like nuts and chocolate, or the flavourings like rum or fruit juices/zests. I measure the main ingredients (flour, eggs, baking powder/soda), but I'll fiddle with them if I think the dough is too moist or dry. Yes, sometimes I don't get quite the result I was hoping for, but I've never had anything inedible. Actually, just the other day I made some chocolate muffins, and as I was having a last read-through of the recipe before putting them in the pans, I suddenly couldn't remember whether I added 2/3 cup of sugar (2x with a 1/3 cup measure), or just 1/3. I was pretty sure I'd only filled that measuring cup once, but I didn't want to add more and screw the recipe up the other way in case I had measured correctly. So I just let it go. Yup, I'd only put in half the sugar. But they were still edible – just more chocolatey than sweet. I can never understand how people can NOT bake successfully.

Hee! Yes, I've learned my lesson, David. Next time I'll know better! (seriously, it looked smooth!) But in the meantime, this one is still edible. And again, it pairs beautifully with the lemon sorbet (which I will be keeping a steady supply of in my freezer all summer). Every time I flip through this book, I see another recipe I can't wait to try. The pink grapefruit champagne sorbet sounds amazing. Oh yes, I meant to mention the chocolates I used – Scharffen Berger cocoa and Valrhona unsweetened in the Philadelphia style, and SB cocoa and Guittard bittersweet in the French style.

I made the Philadelphia style chocolate ice cream tonight. I was a little worried about all that unsweetened chocolate, but it all made for a really intense chocolate flavour. I confess I was lazy and didn't put the mixture in the blender before chilling it (it looked smooth!), so there's a bit of a grainy texture, but the flavour is still amazing. I'll know not to cut corners next time I make this. I'll definitely be making this one again! I think I'll try the chocolate sorbet next (although I have three containers in the freezer right now, so I'll need to wait awhile before I try the next recipe).

I'm finding the same thing. Which is a bit of a problem because I'm ending up making the same things over and over again instead of trying new recipes now. But I'm determined to try one of the brownie recipes this weekend. And I gotta say that cherry rhubarb cobbler looks really good! I've been experimenting with ice cream recipes lately – I'll have to make some vanilla to go with this.

I'm eating some right now. It's wonderfully tart with strong lemon flavour – not overly sweet. It's amazing that a few lemons, a bit of sugar, and some water can create such a delicious treat!

I'm also ready to get rid of my old cheap impossible-to-clean waffle iron. Has anyone tried this Krups one?

Mine's like that (Cuisinart ICE-20). If there's room in your freezer, you can just store the bowl in there so it's ready to go whenever you have a craving for homemade ice cream. I'm going to pick up some lemons on my way home from work and make a lemon sorbet tonight. I still have some of the chocolate ice cream left – lemon sorbet with rich chocolate ice cream is one of my favourite combinations.

Contratulations Dorie!! I made the black & white banana loaf on the weekend (that's a healthy breakfast, right?). And I'm in the process of making the madeleines. I mixed up the batter last night, and will bake them when I get home tonight. Fingers crossed! I've had my madeleine pans for a couple years, but I've never gotten around to trying them. I'm a madeleine virgin. Edited to add that I've made the madeleines, and they're delicious (of course). I don't know why it took me so long to try making these. I doubled the recipe and made two pans of larger ones, and one pan of smaller ones. I found that instead of spreading out to fill the mould and then rising, my batter just rose up, so the madeleines are pretty round. Any ideas what could have caused this? The same thing happened at both sizes. Edited again to say that I brought the madeleines in to work today, and there are a lot of yummy noises around me.

Erm... I'm kinda embarrassed to admit I'm just snacking on peanut M&Ms. So trailer trash...

I'd love to do a side-by-side taste test of them all, but I have a wee little top-of-the-fridge freezer, so I'm going to have to do them one at a time. I was going to make the Philadelphia style chocolate ice cream last weekend, but it calls for unsweetened chocolate, which I didn't have, and I was too lazy to go out and buy some. So by default I made the French style (because I had plenty of eggs for the custard). I picked up some unsweetened Valrhona at CA yesterday, so I can try the Philadelphia style as soon as there's room in the freezer.

I was at Chocolate Arts a couple weeks ago and they had this book on display at the counter. I flipped through it and I just had to have it. All the recipes look amazing. So far I've only tried the chocolate ice cream (French style). It's so ridiculously rich and chocolatey that I can only manage a couple spoonfuls at a time – but in a good way! I'll try the chocolate sorbet next, John.

Thanks capers! After so many years of everyone just looking at me blanky whenever I asked if they'd heard of vareniki or "peh-duh-hay-uh", it's nice to know I wasn't imagining this. Sorry for hijacking the thread...

Thanks so much for this info, rumball. When I was a kid, I was best friends with a girl whose parents were Russian and Ukranian, and they fed me the most amazing food whenever I went there. I vaguely remember being taught the difference between pirozhki and vereniki, but haven't been able to find anyone else since then who has ever heard of anything other than perogies. They also made something called (spelled phonetically) peh-duh-hay-uh. Do you have any idea what that could be? Or am I just misremembering pelmeni? It was a very long time ago.

I was just up at Chocolate Arts on my lunch break, and they had this book on display at the front counter. I did a quick flip-through in the store, and it looked amazing. Gorgeous photography, and all the recipes look delicious. Of course I had to buy it. Even though it's pouring rain here, it makes me want to make ice cream. Now. All my co-workers are very excited.

Well put. The fact that this thread has consistently stayed on the first page of this forum since it was first started says it all.

Congratulations Dorie! You've definitely earned the accolades. I haven't even bothered putting this book away on the shelf since I bought it last year – why bother when I know I'm just going to pull it back out to use it again within a week. No matter what I'm in the mood for, there's a recipe in this book I can try. And I haven't hit a dud yet. Definitely destined to be a classic.

That sounds like a good book to refer to! I have a recipe for oatmeal muffins that I use that has equal parts flour and oats (1c of each). They're yummy, but the teenyest tiniest muffins ever – they hardly rise at all. I want to muck about with that one too and see if I can get a more substantial muffin out of it. I'm happy with the way the chocolate ones turned out (yay! I was expecting to have to experiment for awhile before I got something I liked), so maybe I'll experiment with those proportions in the other recipe.

Thanks for all the pointers, you guys! I made the recipe tonight. It originally called for 2 cups of flour, and I substituted 1/2 cup of the flour with 1/2 cup of rolled oats. This was the only modification I made. I soaked the oats in the buttermilk for about 10-15 minutes while I gathered all the other ingredients together, then combined them with the rest of the wet ingredients before adding to the dry. I'm very happy with the results! All the flavour of the original recipe, plus a nice oaty texture, and they rose beautifully. I may forego the original recipe from now on in favour of this version.

Specifically, I have a question about substituting rolled oats for flour in an existing recipe, but I thought I'd make this a generic thread for other substitutions as well. I have a recipe for chocolate muffins that I love as-is, but I want to make another version that's slightly healthier (so I don't feel quite so guilty about having them for breakfast). I've modified recipes and substituted ingredients before, but I've never done it with rolled oats. Is it a straight substitution with flour? If not, what would the ratio be? Would I need to adjust the liquids at all? What percentage of the flour would you recommend substituting? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that rolled oats will hold more moisture, but I have no idea where I read it. I've been googling all morning and can't find the reference. I understand I've got some experimenting ahead of me – I'm just hoping for advice to help me decide on a starting point.

I made the pumpkin muffins this weekend. I used canned pumpkin (tsk tsk) and have about half the can left, so I'm going to make them again either tonight or tomorrow. As with all the other muffins, straight from the oven they're a bit meh, but let them sit for an hour or so and the flavours and spices mingle and settle and WOW. They have a wonderful pumpkin-pie-like flavour. I'm slowly making my way through all the muffin recipes.

Please tell me you're working on it – I'll be first in line to buy it!

I made the choco-nana loaf again last night. I mentioned upthread that it took forever to set up the first time I made it, and I ended up having to bake an extra half hour or so. So last night I tried using a couple flower nails in the pan to help distribute the heat. Worked like a charm. I only had one banana this time, but it was huge, so I figured it counted as two. I love this loaf – so ridiculously chocolatey. I can see I'll be making this recipe fairly regularly.