miladyinsanity

Susan, do you think you can elaborate? My mom's stock always has carrots, and well, the soups she cooks are largely Chinese. I'm loving this blog. I had watercress soup and rice for dinner today.

Lamingtons?

Re the High-ratio thing, if you dig through RLB's blog archives, you'll find a post in which she explains to you which recipes will work using the High-ratio method. For those of us who are exclusively homebakers and use mixes, can you explain why? I know why I don't. I'm not looking for short-cuts, because baking is my hobby, and I'd like to become a skilled amateur. That and I look at the ingredients...Well, basically I started baking partly because I wanted to avoid excess additives--I'm no nutrition nazi, I just think that less is better.

You know, if you had an extruder, you might be able to make some sort of dessert noodles.

I don't understand how using mixes saves any money. The mix part is basically only the cake flour, leavenings, flavoring and sugar. You still need to add eggs and oil. I'd venture to guess that from scratch wouldn't cost any more than cake mix, if you were using an oil-based cake (if using butter, it would cost more). Then again, when I use a mix, I use butter instead of oil so for me it's never a money-saver. Let's see: cake flour $.75/lb (although I can often get it for 40 cents/pound), usually use about 9 ounces, so about 42 cents, sugar $.50 /lb, use about 12 ounces, 38 cents, plus some leavening and flavoring, probably equals about $1.00 or thereabouts. To me that has always been a specious reason for using a mix. Also, for the time factor, it probably only takes 5 minutes more to make a cake from scratch (esp. if using the hi-ratio method) than use a mix. Or maybe that's just me...I use a scale which goes a lot faster than using measuring cups. I'm not saying this to poo-poo using a cake mix, but just that to me these arguments for why one uses a mix don't hold up. ← It doesn't for me either. It's most definitely more expensive for me to use a mix, even if I used European-style butter, organic flour and eggs and sucanat.

Maybe use polenta as the base for something sweet?

Well, no but let me know when you're going to start popping eyeballs so I can leave the room... ← Now here's a contradiction: My brother who can't stand mushy food eats fish eyes.

If they are clear... Maybe they use coconut water to make the syrup?

I totally get this. I refuse to eat chicken skin, especially on barbecued chicken wings. It's just...Ugh. I'll eat okra though.

Has anybody had issues with baking Korova cookies from frozen dough? They are fine when I bake them off the same day I make the dough, but they aren't very sable like from frozen dough. They spread tooooo much and on several occasions turned into tuile-like things--including the one time they turned into one big giant flat cookie thing covering the entire pan.

I stick the bowl of butter and flour into the fridge in between cutting in the butter, which helps if you live in a very hot place, like I do.

I have a brother who cannot tolerate mushy stuff. To this day (he's 16), he will not eat papaya or tofu. It's only in recent years that he's learnt to tolerate rice porridge (he started eating rice when he was 9 months old). Pudding of any sort makes him run in the opposite direction. Then there's my other brother. Who loves papaya, tofu and porridge. We're Chinese, by the way. Kent, I think you're trying to look for answers where there are none, beyond individual taste.

Another fabulous instalment, ChefCarey!

And Fresser is BACK! I'm pigging out on flan. Now I feel kinda sick. Flan is not meant to be eaten quickly, I don't think.

I think I'm afraid of Reefpimp. Anybody with me?

I know nothing, but I'd freeze the baked cakes like Kate said, simply because it doesn't lose much volume after baking, so you wouldn't be saving on that much freezer space anyway, right?

I wonder if you can do the same thing with melted chocolate. But first, I shall try the cocoa thing with Ghirardelli's sweet ground chocolate.

I'm a very ticked off dragon because my not-so-favorite cousin decided to have his wedding dinner on the Sunday before CNY. Tomorrow, we will go to Chinatown. At least, my parents will. I'm limping and have two swollen ankles, so we shall see about me. My mother and I are still discussing what goodies we will make. I'm just the free help. Well, not free. I eat a whole half-sheet tray of cookies in one sitting.

So cute!

Kate, okay, that means that scratch/mix/doctored cakes have the same difficulty level. Thanks for confirming it for me! Though, my younger brother says that with most mixes, I have less bowls to wash--and this is definitely true, LOL. I think it's that some people think that mix cakes, with all their attendant chemicals, are bad, and if they are paying someone for their cake, then it had darn well be from scratch. On the other hand, there are people who expect and want box cakes. Either they know very well what they want or they believe that scratch cakes are inferior to mixes. If you're a bakery, then balancing the two is...Like Kate said, easier to keep it a trade secret. If you're a foodie, well...At some level, you're a snob. There will be things you'll refuse to eat on the principle of it, even though you think you don't want to eat it because you don't like it, which might not be the case. Cakes from mixes are a prime example. And the thing is, bad scratch cakes might well because the baking powder used has aluminium or that the recipe's not well-balanced and has too much of something. They are not thinking, "A mix cake, doctored or not, may well be better than eating a bad scratch cake."

I've found that if you wet the outside of the bread before you reheat in the oven, the crust still gets pretty crisp.

jadenegro, go to RecipeGullet and get Ling's recipe for the brownies. I don't use cake mixes because I don't think it's any more difficult to make cakes from scratch--why I think this I don't know, because I am the lucky baker of at least 2 failed genoises.

In an amazing coincidence, bees and varroa mites and how much damage it could do to the USA's agriculture industry if something isn't done was the essay question in one of my economics papers on Thursday (yesterday for you, but it's Saturday for me already). To make this food related...I love honey? And don't want to pay for 12USD canteloupe?

I don't think I dare to try that, not with my tiny pasta machine.

It's definitely not too cold. It's not Hard Hard. It sort of smushes out? Maybe it's too soft? But it's not splitting out of the four corners.