baking: does it come easily to you?

I like the spices of that Greenspan cake! An added bonus being that I have all the equipment already (no need for a stand mixer, and it even uses a loaf pan instead of a cake tin). I'm not a huge fan of lemon sponge, but most of what I've been baking has been chocolate whatever so it'd be a nice change of pace.

The carrot cake looks good! I'll of course have to convert from metric, and I'd still need the cake tins. I'm guessing "full fat soft cheese" is Britishes for cream cheese?

made this recently and it absolutely rules, esp with some raspberry jam. easy to make as well, no stand mixer required.

https://www.food.com/recipe/almond-pound-cake-67538

xpost Lee - get a cheap digital scale that does both oz & grams and you will never have to convert again

and yes, full fat soft cheeze = cream cheeze

oh and cake tins you may be able to convert to something you have using this

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cake-pan-sizes/

i bake almost every weekend now during #Quar for purely reasons of sanity and economics

after years of trawling the internet for decent/average/ok recipes I realized this year that Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home To Yours” book is one of the key goto places where i can always find something that tastes so good & is usually straightfoward to make (not always not-complicated but she lays things out well if they are fiddly)

her book and Mary Berry’s baking bible are my no-fails

and it is v confidence building too, like once you have made a bunch of tasty things it makes you feel good!

that is on my list of books to get, i love her recipes. she made a cookie on a video she did for some publication (it's on the cheese board, i forget) and i put it on my calendar to make for xmas.

i kept making average-ass internet brownies (including fkng gross vegetable oil brownies from kitchn.com that were the worrrrst) and then Dorie was all, girl let me help u, and holy shit I never looked back

she’s the best

if you have 6 hours to spare make her cabbage rolls but follow her recommendation and use savoy cabbage

Someone here should open a bakery called Gang of Flour.

There’s one in West London called Outsider Tart.

Gang of Flour is an awesome name!

I don’t suppose that I should spend too much on cake tins, right?

i don't make cake very often but i got 2 usa pan round cake pans and i love them, great nonstick surface and the metal is thick-ish. i don't think it's worth it to get those cheap thin ones bc the surface wears off and you have to get new ones eventually.

yeah otm
i am into NordicWare but the USA Pans brand are also v good

oh and if you ever decide to buy a bundt pan, dont cheap out, get a good quality heavy one

target has a pretty good supply of basic sizes
restaurant supply places are good too

Valuable advice all around, even if I don't respond directly to you specifically! I will avoid going the cheapo route; as it happens, my neighborhood has more than a few restaurant supply stores, so I'll definitely make a trip when I get my CAKEY INGREDIENTS.

NordicWare was founded and is still based in my home town. The Bundt cake was developed by a local non-Zionist Jewish women’s group; they added the T to distinguish it from/not evoke the fascist German-American Bund.

For Dorie Greenspan's lemon spice cake, the recipe doesn't specify how much zest. Does that mean basically all of the lemon's peel?

anyone have a good skillet cornbread recipe?

yes

lol

2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk/kefir/yogurt/what have you
2 eggs

---

1 turn the oven on full blast
2 put in your skillet

3 beat the eggs
4 combine eggs with the buttermilk
5 combine the dry ingredients
6 now mix all together

7 take your skillet out and put on a burner to keep it hot
8 add plenty of bacon fat or 3 tbsps of another oil to the hot skillet, and make sure it gets nice and hot in the skillet

9 pour your batter into the hot skillet
10 put skillet in the oven
11 reduce heat to 400F
12 bake for about 20 minutes

eat immediately if poss!

I had this very *earthy* American cooking youtube of how to annihilate a beef brisket in a pressure cooker with skillet cooked cornbread, potatoes, beef-gravy and carrots on my youtube history and it has been deleted from history for some reason. I only did my own version of the beef brisket part of the vid which was probably appalling on a healthy eating level, but also good at the same time. I generally do the same thing but do it to the Yorkshire pudding cooking regs where it is somewhat fluffier!

that recipe looks good Tracer Hand

love to see a zero sugar cornbread recipe

For Dorie Greenspan's lemon spice cake, the recipe doesn't specify how much zest. Does that mean basically all of the lemon's peel?

― Kaliningrad Oberst (Leee), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 7:41 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago)

is it too late? the answer is "sure"

uh, not the entire peel, forgive me if you knew that. just the yellow part!

Actually that's useful to know! And I haven't gotten the ingredients yet. Basically, the whole lemon has to look a bit naked?

yes you just scrape the yellow then move on to get more yellow, you want as little white as possible. if it doesn't say an amount i would say it's "to taste," if you use some reasonable amount you won't ruin it. probably one lemon or half a lemon.

Thanks, tracer!

yw!

the key is to get coarse cornmeal, stoneground if you can. in the uk i get indian head which is fine. bob’s red mill is great but hard to get over here.

I somehow have only just heard of Alison Roman but I do believe that my cake aspirations will have to wait for this first: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/salted-butter-and-chocolate-chunk-shortbread

i'm just gonna say you're lucky

i'm addicted to making porridge bread.

https://i.imgur.com/WTkQJtY.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/250gT8I.jpg

was gonna ask you about this! i made my third loaf today. i'm ready to move into more different grains and seeds because that's the kind of bread i like. do you just add cooked oatmeal to it and amend the water and flour ratios accordingly? i'm learning this is more forgiving than i thought.

yep just good old cooked oats! i use 50g oats and 200g water per loaf. cook it for about 10 minutes and then let it cool. add it once you're ready to mix everything together for the bulk fermentation. i add about 20g of linseeds (or 40g for two loaves) to the porridge while it cooks. they swell a little and add some glutinous properties to the porridge to help it bind with the dough. and they add some nice crunch and flavour to the bread too. it will add a bit of hydration so you might want to knock your other water down just a little.

it is sooo soft inside and i feel like it lasts so much longer.

that looks amazing

I made Dorrie Greenspan's Lemon Spice cake, and it did not turn out well. Not much rise, tough outer crust, too dense for a sponge, and not much lemon taste. I realized that I used too little stevia (I can never seem to calculate it correctly), but I don't imagine that it led to the density or dryness.

did you use all stevia? no sugar at all?

Correct, just stevia and no sugar, which hasn't been an issue in most of my other bakes when I use the correct amount. (I get the feeling the baking gods are about to smite me.)

i have never baked with a sugar substitute but i thought that it *would* affect rise and texture to substitute. sugar does things with moisture that stevia may not. probably doesn't affect the lemon taste issue.

Yeah sugar is v important for texture. Let's not blame this on Dorie is all I'm saying.

I always assume that a failed bake is my fault!

I do want to try the lemon spice cake again eventually, probably by doubling the spices and lemon juice AND zest, and making sure to calculate the correct stevia amount this time, and measuring the butter by weight instead of using the tablespoon markers on the wrapper. I might make sure to use real heavy cream for this future attempt, since I used almond milk + olive oil the first time.

But for this weekend, I'm going to try that carrot cake. Reviewing the recipe, it looks idiot proof, which I will put to the test.

my puregro cornmeal coarse polenta has arrived, got some buttermilk arriving later. I'm going to do some cornbread this weekend as per Tracer's recipe, not using bacon grease on my skillet though that's one step too far for me!

awesome! please let me know how it turns out. that's my family's recipe. my dad always liked it because it was very simple - 2 of most things.

something i've discovered when making with polenta - the polenta really soaks up the liquid quickly, so do the mixing of wet & dry ingredients no more than a couple of minutes before dumping into your skillet, otherwise you'll end up with a kind of sandy bowl of polenta hunks.

ah thanks for that tip I'll remember that

I'm going to be serving my cornbread with roast potatoes, sausages and onion gravy and steamed greens. Not sure if that is a bit doing it wrong but I'm treating it like it's like a yorkshire pudding finger type food on a separate plate that you can dip and enjoy basically - which seems right!

Idiot proof indeed!

sounds amazing calz. yeah i usually slather mine in butter but my wife will use as a vehicle for essentially anything.