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rushthatspeaksis the question of just what you will do to avoid having to go to the store.
Some people go to the store. Some people don't make that recipe. And some people substitute to the point of possible insanity. For better or for worse, I substitute, and I'm kind of starting to wish I could revise my brain.
You see, it went like this: I wanted to make a carrot cake. Last night at my usual baking time (c. 2 am), I discovered we had no brown sugar, and also we had no molasses (molasses + white sugar = brown sugar to all intents and purposes). This neighborhood doesn't have an all-night supermarket. Carrot cake with only white sugar would be less complex and mellow and dark-tasting, which is not the point of carrot cake, so no.
No problem. Just get up in the morning and go buy brown sugar, right?
Of course in the interim I had an idea. Sigh. And this demonstrates the lengths to which I will go to avoid shopping.
The recipe (from Cook's Illustrated) said:
Grease and flour a 13" x 9" baking pan. I do not have such an object. I have a 9" round pan. Sit down and calculate volume of pan they want, assuming 1 1/2" depth, versus volume of pan I have of same depth, which is meant to be filled only halfway up. I will have too much batter, but not ludicrously, so okay.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Easy. Done.
Mix 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves in medium bowl. Check. I throw in 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, too, because I can't figure out why there isn't any.
Peel 6 to 7 medium carrots and use Cuisinart to grate them. This necessitates the usual struggle with the grate-y bits of the Cuisinart but works out eventually. Carrots grated and dumped into bowl, Cuisinart wiped down: check.
This is where there begin to be issues. I am now meant to put into the Cuisinart four eggs, 1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar, and 1/2 cup brown sugar and whiz them together for about twenty seconds. Then, with the Cuisinart staying on, I am meant to pour 1 1/2 cups of canola oil down the feed tube slowly so it emulsifies.
See above re: no brown sugar. After I side-eye the recipe for wanting me to make sugar mayonnaise, I process the eggs, white sugar, a large dash of vanilla because this is a cake, people, come on, and the oil. Yup. Sugar mayonnaise. Okay then.
Then I put 1/2 cup more white sugar and about 1/4 cup water into a tiny saucepan and put it over medium-high heat, because the flavor profile of caramel is pretty similar to the flavor profile of brown sugar, only if anything even more complex and interesting, right? This is the point where, if there had been anyone around, someone should maybe have tried to talk some sense into me. So I wait and wait and wait, because I always forget how long caramel takes to stop faffing about, and then I turn the Cuisinart back on (in hopes that thorough blending will keep the eggs from curdling, on the principal of Italian meringue), forget to grab a funnel, grab a funnel, pour the very hot sugar syrup down the funnel into the feed tube, burn myself badly on the pad of my index finger, and get spun sugar all over the kitchen. Sigh.
When things calm down somewhat I examine the substance in the Cuisinart, which didn't curdle. Huh. It looks familiar. I taste it.
I have independently reinvented vanilla pudding. If it weren't gritty due to the portion of unmelted sugar, it would be very good vanilla pudding indeed. Well, pudding cake is a thing. I scrape it and the dry ingredients into the bowl of carrots and mix it all together as well as I can while holding a can of cold soda in my dominant hand. Which is certainly more efficiently than I can scrape the batter into the pan. Possibly because the pudding had a substantial volume increase over the mayonnaise, there is way, way more batter than necessary, instead of just a little more. I end up filling the pan to the very top, as I don't really have the motor control to stop pouring. I only hope it doesn't rise too much, but carrot cake is usually pretty dense. It's meant to bake 35-40 minutes, but my oven runs hot, so I plan on half an hour and decide to come back in fifteen minutes to turn it.
Fifteen minutes later: that. That is. A carrot souffle, that's what that is. The top edge of the cake has risen at least four inches vertically from the top edge of the pan, in that beautiful classical souffle dome I can never get when I want it. I tiptoe away and try not to bang around when I swear about my finger.
Fifteen minutes after that: the dome has set in place. The middle is not just liquid but raw. Gah. I am concerned about its prospects of actually setting.
Half an hour after that: I have to take it out. The edges are burning. It's basically solid except this one tiny spot in the middle top. Good enough. By this point my girlfriend has turned up, so I get her to pry it out of the pan. It doesn't want to. It pretty much comes in strata. She also kindly saws off the most burnt edges. My wife gets home, so I make her frost it (a massive quantity of leftover cream cheese frosting was the entire reason for carrot cake). It will never win any beauty contests, but the frosting makes it appear edible.
Verdict: tastes fine. Tender, fluffy, soft texture with spicy, complex, true carrot cake flavor. Frosting masks bitterness of burnt patches nicely. Everyone likes it. My finger really fucking hurts, and I feel as though I have wrestled an alligator.
Next time I will just go buy the sugar.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
Some people go to the store. Some people don't make that recipe. And some people substitute to the point of possible insanity. For better or for worse, I substitute, and I'm kind of starting to wish I could revise my brain.
You see, it went like this: I wanted to make a carrot cake. Last night at my usual baking time (c. 2 am), I discovered we had no brown sugar, and also we had no molasses (molasses + white sugar = brown sugar to all intents and purposes). This neighborhood doesn't have an all-night supermarket. Carrot cake with only white sugar would be less complex and mellow and dark-tasting, which is not the point of carrot cake, so no.
No problem. Just get up in the morning and go buy brown sugar, right?
Of course in the interim I had an idea. Sigh. And this demonstrates the lengths to which I will go to avoid shopping.
The recipe (from Cook's Illustrated) said:
Grease and flour a 13" x 9" baking pan. I do not have such an object. I have a 9" round pan. Sit down and calculate volume of pan they want, assuming 1 1/2" depth, versus volume of pan I have of same depth, which is meant to be filled only halfway up. I will have too much batter, but not ludicrously, so okay.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Easy. Done.
Mix 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves in medium bowl. Check. I throw in 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, too, because I can't figure out why there isn't any.
Peel 6 to 7 medium carrots and use Cuisinart to grate them. This necessitates the usual struggle with the grate-y bits of the Cuisinart but works out eventually. Carrots grated and dumped into bowl, Cuisinart wiped down: check.
This is where there begin to be issues. I am now meant to put into the Cuisinart four eggs, 1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar, and 1/2 cup brown sugar and whiz them together for about twenty seconds. Then, with the Cuisinart staying on, I am meant to pour 1 1/2 cups of canola oil down the feed tube slowly so it emulsifies.
See above re: no brown sugar. After I side-eye the recipe for wanting me to make sugar mayonnaise, I process the eggs, white sugar, a large dash of vanilla because this is a cake, people, come on, and the oil. Yup. Sugar mayonnaise. Okay then.
Then I put 1/2 cup more white sugar and about 1/4 cup water into a tiny saucepan and put it over medium-high heat, because the flavor profile of caramel is pretty similar to the flavor profile of brown sugar, only if anything even more complex and interesting, right? This is the point where, if there had been anyone around, someone should maybe have tried to talk some sense into me. So I wait and wait and wait, because I always forget how long caramel takes to stop faffing about, and then I turn the Cuisinart back on (in hopes that thorough blending will keep the eggs from curdling, on the principal of Italian meringue), forget to grab a funnel, grab a funnel, pour the very hot sugar syrup down the funnel into the feed tube, burn myself badly on the pad of my index finger, and get spun sugar all over the kitchen. Sigh.
When things calm down somewhat I examine the substance in the Cuisinart, which didn't curdle. Huh. It looks familiar. I taste it.
I have independently reinvented vanilla pudding. If it weren't gritty due to the portion of unmelted sugar, it would be very good vanilla pudding indeed. Well, pudding cake is a thing. I scrape it and the dry ingredients into the bowl of carrots and mix it all together as well as I can while holding a can of cold soda in my dominant hand. Which is certainly more efficiently than I can scrape the batter into the pan. Possibly because the pudding had a substantial volume increase over the mayonnaise, there is way, way more batter than necessary, instead of just a little more. I end up filling the pan to the very top, as I don't really have the motor control to stop pouring. I only hope it doesn't rise too much, but carrot cake is usually pretty dense. It's meant to bake 35-40 minutes, but my oven runs hot, so I plan on half an hour and decide to come back in fifteen minutes to turn it.
Fifteen minutes later: that. That is. A carrot souffle, that's what that is. The top edge of the cake has risen at least four inches vertically from the top edge of the pan, in that beautiful classical souffle dome I can never get when I want it. I tiptoe away and try not to bang around when I swear about my finger.
Fifteen minutes after that: the dome has set in place. The middle is not just liquid but raw. Gah. I am concerned about its prospects of actually setting.
Half an hour after that: I have to take it out. The edges are burning. It's basically solid except this one tiny spot in the middle top. Good enough. By this point my girlfriend has turned up, so I get her to pry it out of the pan. It doesn't want to. It pretty much comes in strata. She also kindly saws off the most burnt edges. My wife gets home, so I make her frost it (a massive quantity of leftover cream cheese frosting was the entire reason for carrot cake). It will never win any beauty contests, but the frosting makes it appear edible.
Verdict: tastes fine. Tender, fluffy, soft texture with spicy, complex, true carrot cake flavor. Frosting masks bitterness of burnt patches nicely. Everyone likes it. My finger really fucking hurts, and I feel as though I have wrestled an alligator.
Next time I will just go buy the sugar.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
