What Are Your Recipe Preferences?

[kitchenmage]

There's nothing more frustrating that recipes where something just can't work and it would have been obvious if someone had bothered to try even once. Oven temperatures that leave cake either dry or raw, for example, aren't as rare as they should be. Cookbooks need "technical editors" who actually prepare everything in the book exactly as written; I cherish the ones that clearly have been and get frustrated as @^$!* with the ones that haven't.

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While I completely agree with you, I just want to point out that no two ovens (and other equipment) are the same. I've baked in 9 ovens this year - and they all did different things to the same recipe. Not to mention that living in different locations and climates will also do wonky things to recipes.. and the weather is an issue..

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Pam, I'll give you that everything varies, but that's not what I am talking about. I've used recipes that had a cooking time of 20 minutes when the dish actually takes over an hour, cookies that only work when the flour is cut in half, and so on. I have done a bit of technical writing and I've always made sure that some human followed every set of steps I've written to make sure that it works and I'm objecting to the sorts of screwups that would have been obvious the first time someone tried to use the recipe.