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rebouks · 7 months

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Hi Alex!

I don’t think it’s stupid or cheesy to miss someone, I miss you too! Going back to normal after being on holiday is always horrible, especially after this one, and especially having to go back to school, I’m not a big fan! Do you go to school too? I wanted to ask if you did but I couldn’t… it’s nothing personal, by the way, sometimes I just can’t speak to people and I don’t really know why. I thought it was my decision if I did or didn’t before I met you but maybe not. My parents n’ the teachers at school call it selective mutism but I won’t bore you with all that crap.

I can’t see your new teeth but they grow fast so maybe next time! If they don’t maybe you could get some gold one’s like your dad has, unless you don’t wanna look like a pirate lol.. my littlest sister has four teeth now, and I have all my big teeth! I haven’t counted the twins though cos they’d probably bite me if I tried haha!!

Ava is the tiny one with the blonde pigtails! She’s cute but she still sleeps and poops a lot haha, she’s sorta chill though and definitely doesn’t cry as much as Wren and Byrd used to (have you noticed we’re all named after birds yet? I guess my parents thought it was cute since our last name is Finch) Wren’s the ginger one with plaits! She’s pretty funny but she’s super grumpy sometimes and likes to bite and kick (not me though, she loves me) I think it’s cos she’s tired a lot cos she never sleeps at night, kinda like dad.. they’re twins but Byrd is way different, I couldn’t get a picture of him cos he kept running off, he’s crazy like that but he’s super snuggly and loves playing doctor! He likes to pretend to break my legs so I can’t go anywhere then fix them for me haha. Brothers and sisters are fun but they can be a pain in the butt sometimes! We have a cat called Lou too, his full name is Toulouse and he likes to bring us leaves from the garden and scream about ‘em, and he loves stealing food when you’re not looking.

Dad’s been teaching mom how to cook cos she sucks at it (don’t tell her I said that though cos I always pretend it’s not THAT bad) she’s sorta getting better though so I suppose the whole practice makes perfect thing pays off eventually. I got a school project to make a lame volcano that I didn’t wanna do as well, but my parents made me do it anyway.. we all know that real volcanoes aren’t full of baking powder and vinegar though so I dunno if there was much point to it but they seemed to think it was important so I did it anyway, at least I got a picture of it “going off” I guess. No one likes homework, even if it’s supposed to be fun, right?!

It’s cool you set Amber free!! I’m sure she’s happier wherever she is now so I guess you could just think of that when you miss her? The rocks are way cooler anyway! My aunt Aspen has loads of crystals too, sometimes she even charges them in the sun or the full moon.. I keep forgetting to ask her why but I’ll try and remember so I can tell you next time!

Hahaa your poor dad with those birds! I’ll definitely keep the picture cos it’s hilarious, Wren found it the funniest but don’t worry, I’ll keep the picture safe from her sticky hands! I have a hiding spot in the attic for all the stuff I don’t want them touching. I guess birdwatching is sorta fun sometimes but you’ve gotta be quiet (easy for me I guess.. hah!) I’m not sure there’s any other birds round here other than seagulls since we live right next to the sea, those are the ones you can hear the most anyway cos they never shut up! My dad jokes that he used to be a seagull in a past life cos he’s loud and greedy like they are lol.. he’s been building me a treehouse too, I bet that’d be good for birdwatching!! It’ll be super cool once he’s finished but it’s taking ages cos he mostly does it all by himself, I try n’ help sometimes but I’m still too small to carry or lift most things.. I wanna be as strong as him one day, he can build and fix almost anything (he swears a lot during it though haha!) Do you ever think about what you wanna be when you grow up? I don’t really think about that sorta stuff cos working sounds boring, especially if it’s as lame as school!!

I’m ten, by the way! How old are you and when’s your birthday? Mine’s February 22nd. I don’t think I have a favourite food, anything my dad makes is amazing cos he’s a good cook and my mom makes the BEST pancakes! We’re always stuffed after dinner but dad says (lies) that pudding goes in a different part of your stomach so there’s always room for cake haha.. I think I like it best when he makes spicy food but Wren and Byrd hate it so he doesn’t make stuff like that too often. It’s fun to see how much you can eat before your mouth feels like it’s on fire and I’ve decided I’m gonna beat him one day so he better watch out!!!

I didn’t know what to write at first but I guess I sorta ended up writing quite a lot since I had some catching up to do! Are you and your dad on holiday in the tower or are you living there for now? It sorta sounded like you’ve been there a long time, where do you usually live? What kinda stuff does your dad dig up for work? It’d be cool if he dug up dinosaur bones!! I watched something like that recently and they were HUGE!

It’s hard to think of questions on the spot but you can talk about anything you want too! I probably owe you a million answers as well so you can ask anything you want too! I had fun reading your letter and I’m glad we can be pen-pals even if we don’t get to see each other! Maybe next time we meet in person I’ll be able to say something, but writing would still be fun too so I guess it doesn’t really matter, right?

Love Robin c:

ps. I’m keeping the funny photo of you yelling at your dad and there’s nothing you can do about it!!

pps!! I don’t have a way to print out photos yet otherwise I’d have sent some new ones. Dad gave me an old polaroid ages ago but it’s still broken, his friend said he might be able to fix it though so hopefully I can use that next time. Mom said you can have some of our old ones and the ones from her disposable camera whilst we were on holiday for now though so I’ll send those to you as soon as they come back!

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scealaiscoite · 2 years

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*ೃ༄ baking prompts ˚◞♡ ⃗

— “uh, not that i’ve made a mistake or anything- but can you remind me of the difference between baking soda and baking powder?”

— “you eat one more handful of chocolate chips and i’m sending you to the shop to buy more.”

— “i don’t know what you expected when you ate raw cake batter!”

— “wait, you- you’ve got flour here, just let me- “₁ “gah, go away!!”₂

— “vinegar? in a cake?!”

— “how many bags of icing sugar do we need again?”

— “you’re so good at this. how are you so good at this?”

— “so you’re telling me you never baked with your mom as a kid? not even cookies, or fairy cakes?”

— “i told you we needed to let the sponge cool before we frosted it!”

— “this is why it’s a bad idea to bake while winedrunk.”

— “pass me the vanilla, would you?”₁ “god, how much more vanilla could you possibly need?!”₂

— “can we go back to you doing the baking and me doing the eating? pleeease?”

— “look, i swear i’m paying attention. can you just show me one more time?”

— “what on god’s green earth happened here?”₁ “i wanted to make you a cake. it didn’t go so well.”₂

— “you’re not so bad at this, you know.”

#prompts #fluff prompts #soft prompts #baking prompts #baking rp meme #writing prompts #prompt list #writing exercise #dialogue prompts #fluff #fluff writing prompts #rp prompts

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blushcoloreddreams · 1 year

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How to do your laundry 101

Taking care of your laundry is one of those mundane tasks you’ll need to deal with for the rest of your life so might as well learn to do it well and enjoy it. So this is my routine and top tips I gathered since living alone

Sort throughout the week (everyday). Every day I separate my dirty clothes on my hamper into darks and lights on another other side. Before taking them to laundry machine I always check my rewear drawer for any dirty clothes. I usually run 1- 2 cycles in the days I do it, totaling around 4 a week since the apartment building I currently live in has a shared laundry room and I can’t got the machines all for myself but if you have your own, feel free to do it all in one go. First cycle is for every day light or white everyday clothing, second to everyday dark or colored clothes. Cycle 3 for towels and bedding which I’ll run with a normal cycle with hot water to ensure they get a deep hygienic cleaning from body oills, lotions and any lingering bacteria. Cycle 4 is for cleaning cloths / bath mats that. And maybe an extra “cycle”, more often than not, done by hand for any delicate pieces, special fabrics or depending on the dirtiness level, that should be washed on a delicate mode. This regime is more intuitively than definitive, sometimes I’ll merge darks and lights together on a cold cycle specially if they are not heavily dirty. Separations is done to prevent colored clothing to bleeding to lighter clothing but this is mostly a concern for any new clothes with deep coloring like indigo, died denim and reds so be sure to wash them separately on the first few times.

Set a time for that. I usually do it Tuesday nights and Thursday morning but you might need to do it more often if you got a bigger family, the important thing is to turn it into a routine and not a dreadful task

Dress comfortably cute - I like to put my hair up in a claw clip to get it out of my face when cleaning and so it doesn’t touch anything It shouldn’t. Dressing up a bit always help you romanize what you are doing and feel better about yourself. (Also I’d hate to meet a neighbor in pajamas haha)

Learn how to treat stains - for blood hydrogen peroxide, apply it directly to the stain, spray some water to keep it hydrated and let it there for 10-15 min and throw it in the laundry preferably on cold water. For oil stains I use baking soda and dish detergent, splotch out any excess oil then sprinkle some baking soda to absorb the oil, I’ll let it sit overnight and the next morning I’ll scrub with dish detergent to help breakdown the oils and I’ll put it into laundry in a hot cycle. For all common stains like ketchup, almond butter coffee berries, vinegar and ink first gently take any excess with a paper towel. For any grease food stains I’ll also add a bit of dish deteargent. If the stain is fresh you only need to treat it with oxygen bleach and water and wait for about 15 min but honestly I often only take care of then on the end of the day or the week and that’s why I rely on the soak method a lot specially for these tough stains.I’ll fill a bin or clean sink with hot water and oxygen bleach and let it soak every night, after it just rinse and add it to the wash cycle and if the stain remains don’t put it into the dryer or it can permanently set the stain.

Read the clothing tag whenever you get new clothes to get familiar with the fabric. I usually check it with a care label guide I found on Pinterest.

Choose the right detergent for you. I prefer powder since it’s more concentrated and work as well as liquid ones. And usually I just add a bit of fabric softer since I’m not allergic

Less is more, you don’t need to use the whole pack to clean it better. Excess laundry detergent can not fully dissolve and form excess studs which won’t get rinsed away properly, and makes it harder for the clothes to create the traction needed to wash the dirt off. 2 table spoons per full load is what seems to work for me.

Flip the clothes inside out. The inside of your garment is usually the dirtiest since it comes in contact with your skin and sweat and it also protect the ink from graphic tees. Also flip the pockets inside out to check any items that shouldn’t go in the wash

Use a mesh bag for delicates like bras and lace garments to protect them pilling or tangling with other items in the load

Choose the right settings for the washing. There are usually 3 settings, cottons, delicates and permanent press. Delicates is the most gentle, cotton the most intense. 99% of the time I choose cottons on a normal cycle unless I’m washing delicates that are machine washable. I prefer cold water to prevent shrinking and color fading

Tidy and clean between cycles. The avarage washing cycle is 15 min to an hour while the drying is 30 min -45 min so while you are already in the spirit you can use this time to tidy up around the home.

Don’t forget about the wet laundry so it doesn’t smell weird. If it does add a sprinkle of baking soda and run the cycle again on the hottest Setting

Remove lint from the lint trap in the dryer to avoid if from getting back from the clothes.

Air dry delicates. I use a rack and I lay the garments as flat as I can to prevent the fibers from stretching. I use it for any athletic wear, delicates max rayons or things the label recommends to do so

Tune in while folding the clothes. Sometimes I like to listen to a podcast, audiobook or YouTube video to make it more fun and keep me engaged

#personal #home & lifestyle #home making #femininity #personal development #laundry #cleaning #organization #homemaking

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slaughtervoid · 1 year

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HOW TO MAKE MACARONS

you’ll start by preparing your equipment.

PART ONE: SETTING UP.

get out your metal bowl. get out your mixer, your whipping attachment, your spatula, all those little cute prep bowls you got for mise en place and never used. your kitchen scale, your baking sheets, your silicone mats, your piping bag and tip.

here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to make them forget. every fat that has ever touched them, you’ll wipe away. of course, they’re clean, but this is the trick- they can be cleaner. using white vinegar and a rag or paper towel, give the surface of all your implements a quick wipe. a common pitfall avoided, simple as that.

don’t you wish you knew how to do that for yourself? don’t you wish it was that simple? i wish it was that simple.

PART TWO: MEASURING.

your kitchen scale is your best friend! it’s so much easier to be precise with a friend like this. certainly, you can succeed with volume measurement, but don’t you want to be careful?

here is what you need-

one hundred five grams of almond flour. one hundred five grams of powdered sugar. one hundred grams egg white. one hundred grams granulated sugar. if you have difficulty with dependably whipping egg whites to stiff peaks, one fourth teaspoon cream of tartar.

for this recipe, i’ll be making lavender macarons. isn’t that nice? my mother is allergic. to follow along, measure out one tablespoon of culinary grade lavender.

now we turn to our secret helper, the food processor. for a macaron of the right texture, you’ll want the finest ground almond flour you can get, but it’s so hard to find the fineness you truly need. the easiest solution is to toss that almond flour into a food processor for a minute, and then it will be as fine as you need it to be.

add the powdered sugar to the food processor, too, why don’t you, and get them mixed together while you’re at it. if you’re using lavender, pulse that lavender to a fine dust in a spice grinder or separate in the food processor, then add that to the mix as well.

when i was younger, my best friend lived down the road. we loved each other so much. i’ve met him again now that i’m older. terribly allergic to nuts, now, developed suddenly. i missed him so much. i still miss him. i always will.

sift the almond flour, powdered sugar and lavender mixture through a fine mesh to remove any large fragments. discard the chaff. set aside.

PART THREE: PREPARING THE BATTER.

the technique used in this recipe is called a swiss meringue. it can be used in all kinds of applications, and it’s a handy technique to learn. my mother taught me to cook and to bake; not professionally, just at a basic level. she taught myself and my sister so well that we both had fractions mastered before beginning school! i wish she had taught me more. i wish she had never sent me to school. i wish i had never grown up. to start, add about an inch of water to a small saucepan and bring it to just a simmer on your stovetop.

put your egg whites and granulated sugar into a clean glass or metal bowl, one that rests nicely on the small saucepan without touching the water below. if it suits well and won’t touch the water, you can use the bowl from your stand mixer. as soon as you set it on the pan, start whisking, and don’t stop! your goal is simply for the sugar to dissolve. you can check this by touching the mixture with your fingertips and rubbing them together- do you still feel grains of sugar? i always hate this step. i hate the stickiness of the syrup and the perceived uncleanliness of the raw egg. it makes my skin crawl to touch it, and i keep a towel nearby to wipe my fingers on as soon as i can.

once your sugar is dissolved, you’ll pour the mixture into the bowl of your stand mixer and begin to whip the egg whites. start by mixing on low for half a minute or so; then, if desired, add your cream of tartar, and increase to medium for a minute or two. once it’s white and beginning to promise fluffiness, raise to medium-high or high and whisk until stiff peaks are formed. the best way to know is to watch. the whites will become glossy, the whisk will form streaks. some advise that the middle of the whisk will seem to start to fill. go slowly, at first- it hurts nothing to stop and check every so often. once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll just be able to tell, kind of, when you’re getting there.

i was never good at understanding that, the idea that “you’ll just know”. how could i know unless i knew the signs? how obvious should the change be? will it come to me easily, or will i be left behind?

the ideal stiff peak, when you lift your whisk from the whites, will shoot straight up, possibly with a slight bend to the tip.

remember those dry ingredients we sifted together earlier? now you’ll sift through that fine mesh again, this time directly into the whipped whites. you can do this in your mixer bowl or a different bowl, whichever works best for you. some people find it easiest to add their dry ingredients in two or three batches, mixing in between; i add mine all at once, and it seems to work fine.

to start, you’ll fold your dry ingredients into the egg whites. using a J-shaped gesture, bring your spatula slowly through the center and turn, then turn your bowl (as much as ninety degrees, as little as twenty- up to you!) and repeat. once everything is evenly incorporated, it’s time for the macaronage.

for me, this is the most effort that goes into making macarons. my arm aches by the time i’m done. don’t worry, it’s unlikely yours will! it’s also the step i love most, because it’s home to a display of unusual tenderness.

i work slowly. i work very slowly, in fact, intentionally, a sort of moving meditation that pains me somewhat to perform.

to macaronage, you will very gently and slowly press the batter up against the side of the bowl in deliberate strokes, turning the bowl as you work, so that once you’ve completed a rotation you’ve formed a flower pattern, each petal the width of your spatula. after each macaronage repetition, tenderly gather all of your batter back to the center of the bowl and start anew.

slowly, so slowly, your batter will become looser and looser, shinier and sleeker. it will fall from the spatula in flowing ribbons. when pulled up the side of the bowl, it will relax faster each time, easing back down more quickly. test often; don’t overmix! when your batter is ready, you’ll let the batter fall from your spatula in a smooth stream, leisurely and without interruption, effortless, forming several figure eights before it breaks.

it’s like a massage. i wish someone would macaronage me. i wish someone would treat me with tenderness and care.

pour your batter into a piping bag fitted with a half-inch round tip.

PART FOUR: PIPING.

you may use templates to pipe your macarons, or you may freehand them. i’ve tried both and i’m never happy. i’m never happy with anything. to pipe, place your piping bag ninety degrees half an inch or so over the center of the template and softly squeeze for about three to five seconds, then release and swiftly pull the bag up with a slight twist. it takes time to master this! your just-piped macaron shell should be well within the borders of the template if you intend for the finished product to be the size of the marked circle.

once you’ve piped as many as will be on the tray, set your piping bag aside and firmly bang the trays against the counter, a few times each. you’ll notice your macarons expand to fill the circles.

here is what i always forget: now you’ll walk away. by this time, typically i’ll be thinking i should preheat the oven, but it’s unnecessary. you have to wait. you have to be good. you have to be patient. set the trays aside. depending on the humidity, you’ll need to let them sit anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour.

i don’t know what to do with myself in this time. i should, by now. i should be able to fill time, i should remember how the recipe goes, but i’m always startled and dismayed to remember my distraction comes with a built-in lull. sometimes i work on other things, like a filling. sometimes i just sit. sometimes i just sit and think. sometimes i sit and think about things i shouldn’t. sometimes i think about things i shouldn’t.

when your macarons are ready, they’ll have a “skin” of sorts. when you gingerly touch the top of one, it should feel dry and not at all tacky. at this point, preheat your oven to 300º F.

PART FIVE: BAKING.

it may take slight trial and error to find the exact perfect cooking time for your oven. mine takes thirteen minutes; yours may take ten, or fifteen. if you try to move a macaron, it should feel neither jiggly nor crisp, merely stand firm, if delicate. a well-baked macaron will separate satisfyingly easily from silicone or parchment once cooled. i am not like a well-baked macaron as far as separation goes.

let your macaron shells cool fully before proceeding with any filling. they’ll keep for a few days in airtight containers at room temperature, longer in the fridge, and wonderfully for months in the freezer.

PART SIX: FILLING.

fillings are the difficult part for me.

you’d think, certainly, that the strenuously detailed work of the macaron shells would be the thing, but it’s not. i’m nearly always successful in the difficult work of preparing delicate, demanding shells, and then when i make ganache i have a breakdown.

maybe i’m just tired, by that point. i’m tired now. i’m tired all the time.

today, i’m making white chocolate and lavender ganache to go with my lavender shells.

you will need two hundred fifty grams of white chocolate (very nice white chocolate, not cheap stuff), two tablespoons of lavender, and ninety milliliters of heavy cream.

i have made this filling far more times than the lavender shells to accompany. it seems like every time i try, the chocolate curdles, or i add food coloring badly and it turns an unsightly brownish gray, or i oversteep the lavender and make it bitter. why is this the part where i stumble? why do i fail at the easiest parts? why am i better at something demanding and unforgiving than the part that should be simple?

add the heavy cream and lavender to a pot, and heat to just barely a simmer. let it sit for a minute, but not too long. pour the heavy cream through a strainer into the chocolate, and let sit for two to five minutes. with a whisk, gently stir the mixture until smooth. if the chocolate isn’t quite melted, microwave for ten seconds at a time, mixing in between, until the ganache is fully smooth.

set aside to cool. it should be ready in about an hour.

why do i make macarons? why is this the work i can do? why does it make me feel like i want to cry, but never actually make me cry? why can’t i cry?

pipe your ganache onto one shell, top with another, and you’re done! i like to use a fluted piping tip- it’s an easy way to make them look fancy. macarons are actually at their best in texture and flavor when they’ve sat in the fridge for a day or so. with age comes beauty!

the finished macarons are always beautiful, delicious, and technically impressive. i never feel like i’ve actually done something worthy of praise. there’s a hollowness in me that swallows up compliments and makes them disappear. i am lonely and looking for something in my kitchen. i don’t know what it is. i dream about being in the kitchen, barefoot, cracking eggs and letting yolks fall to the floor. our chickens have nearly stopped laying. what will i do when they die? when i fail them, and they die? i’ll have to buy my eggs at the store. i’ll have to go out to the store, with all the strangers around me, and grab my carton from the big cold hollow fridge in the big cold hollow store filled with people i don’t know. all looking at me. all knowing what is wrong with me. all knowing about the big cold hollow thing in me. they know that i’m not taking very good care of the chickens. they know that i’m too tired to clean as much as i should.

the best thing about macarons is that they freeze great and thaw quickly. my favorite way to store and serve macarons is to keep them in the freezer and put out what i’ll serve on the counter about a half an hour to an hour before they’ll be served.

i don’t like to go out and have those strangers look at me. i like to stay at home, in my kitchen, making macarons. i like to whip my egg whites to perfect, shiny peaks. i like to be barefoot on my kitchen floor, which is clean, mostly, or in my yard, on the grass, the plush grass, and i cannot be barefoot in the store.

i wish i could always stay at home. i wish i could just make macarons. i wish that was all i had to do, all day forever. i wish i was still learning to bake with my mother. i wish somebody would teach me to bake again. i wish i could stop.

#mine

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crash-bump-bring-the-whump · 9 months

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Taco Soup

Okay this isn't whump but @whump-captain wanted my taco soup recipe so here it is. It's a one pot dish, and it'll feed either three hungry guys for a few days or all my very spice intolerant coworkers for one luncheon if I go easy on the spice

Ingredients: -3 cans of whatever beans you like, go nuts, add more, it's your soup. Maybe go low sodium tho -minced garlic, you know how much you like, measure with your heart, I usually do like 5 cloves -2-3 taco seasoning packets (or cumin, chili powder, onion powder, pepper, garlic salt to taste) -2 bags of frozen bell peppers and onions (or fresh) -jalepenos from a jar if you want em or some other spicier pepper -cooking vinegar OR the juice from your jarred peppers OR tabasco, you just want acidity towards the end if it doesn't taste salty enough or seems like it's Missing Something -lime juice -A good box of chicken or veg stock/broth or like ten boullion cubes. However you make your broth is fine, just make however much you want (we add the broth last, so you can wait and eyeball it. This soup cannot be overcooked, I promise) -Cooked chicken if you want it, I use canned or leftover baked chicken but it's not necessary -Butter or some other fat -if you like it on your tacos, add it tbh. Corn? Fuck yeah. Tomatoes? Sure why not. Live your soup dreams.

OKAY SO HERE'S WHAT YOU DO: -Heat up the pot you'll be souping in to medium-high, throw in the butter/fat and let that melt -Then add the (ideally thawed but it doesn't really matter here if you don't have the energy) onions and bell peppers in. Let that get all soft and translucent then add the garlic. -Let that get all warm and aromatic for about thirty seconds to a minute, then if you're crazy and want to cook the peppers do that at this point, then add anything else you want that'll be warm and in the soup. -Add in your meat if you want it in here, it should be cooked already so we're just making the flavors mingle -Add your beans, don't bother draining them. -Add the taco seasoning, mix it in -Add your broth. -Let it simmer like ten minutes, adjust the seasoning as it does and add your lime juice and any other little dashes you want, follow your nose.

It's pretty much done since everything is fully cooked, it's just a matter of warming and seasoning it at this point. You can make it as thick or thin as you want, serve it over rice or anything else that makes you happy, add sour cream or salsa or avocado or guac, if it sounds good on a taco then do it!

#not whump #recipies #recipe #it's a one pot dish bc I hate dishes #and it's super flexible because sometimes you have stuff nad sometimes you don't #the goal is warm and flavorful and full of veg and protein #make it your own i'm not your boss have fun with it #get souped

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 1 year

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Cook Day

Idea idea! Patton invites all the sides to join him in a cooking day. Shenanigans ensue, preferably fluffy ones – diamond-blade

Read on Ao3

Warnings: none!

Pairings: DLAMPR, can be platonic or romantic you choose

Word Count: 2193

Patton invites all the sides to join him in a cooking day. Shenanigans ensue.

"Alright," Roman says, rubbing his hands together as Patton flips through the recipe book, "what are we starting with?"

"Muffins!"

"Excellent. Truly one of the most breakfast foods of all time. What flavor?"

"Blueberry, I think." Patton squints at the recipe book. "Yeah, let's do blueberry. Could you grab the bix mixing bowl out of the cupboard down there?"

"Is it this one? Wait, hold on—oh, god, why are there so many mixing bowls down here?"

"In case we need them, besides, it's an easy thing to tell Janus to look for when he goes to antique stores and saves us from having to find a place for a coat rack with real deer antlers on top of it."

"That's oddly specific." Roman shakes his head, finally producing a white plastic bowl with a black rubber handler. "Is this the bix?"

"Yep! Great, now we need…flour, sugar, oh, just get over here and look," he exclaims when he notices how Roman's not too subtly trying to lean over his shoulder, "you can read too."

"Why, thank you." Roman does indeed peer over his shoulder, taking full opportunity to wrap his arms around his waist in a supportive back-hug. "Alright, so…flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt…do we have a sieve? I don't feel like I've seen it before."

"Um, it should be in that drawer?"

"Oh, this thing! Wait, isn't this a colander?"

"The holes are smaller and it's not designed to drain water as much as it is to, well, be a sieve."

"Is this the things that fancy pastry chefs use to, like…" Roman mimes sieving powdered sugar over the empty muffin tray.

"Yeah, it's the fancy thing."

"Do we get to be fancy with these muffins?"

"We sure do!"

"Oh, they're gonna be so happy they woke up this morning. Let's do it, I'm so hungry already."

"You know, I get why you asked me to do this one now," Remus says gleefully as he holds up the chicken. Gloopy bits of the breading slip off of it like some eldritch slime beast as he puts it on the plate covered in panko bread crumbs. "Both sides, yeah?"

"Yup, that's it. And of course I asked you to help me with this one, you're our resident slime expert!"

"This is remarkably similar to slime, you were right, and it is something I will not be repeating in front of everybody else because I want them to actually enjoy the food we're eating and not be too disgusted by it."

"Thanks, Remus." Patton affectionately bumps their shoulders together as he checks if the oil is hot enough. "Okay, you should be good to start plopping them in."

"Stand back, I don't want any of it to get on you." The chicken sizzles merrily as Remus lays it down in the pan, quickly followed by three more cuts. "I think we should do this in two batches, I don't want to crowd the pan too much."

"Okay. We'll have to be careful with the oil but that should work fine."

"You got the tongs over there? Yeah, you got 'em, great. Do you want me to get to work washing the veggies while you watch this, or…?"

"If you don't mind?" Patton flexes his hands. "I wanna save my hands for the rest of the day since I'm cooking with all of you…is that fine?"

"I wouldn't've offered if it wasn't, Pat-Pat. Scoot over." Remus pats his hip and Patton obligingly steps away from the fridge, letting him reach in and take out a bag of lettuce, a cucumber, a few carrots, and a small container. "Is this the one you were talking about?"

"Yeah, that's them, they should be done by now. You can try one if you want—I know it won't be for everyone but the flavors actually work really well with the salad dressing!"

"So these are just cucumbers in rice vinegar?"

"Rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a bit of honey, yeah."

Remus opens the container and fishes a single slice out, popping it into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. His eyes widen and Patton quickly has to pry the container from his hands.

"They're for the salad, Remus, for the salad!"

"Salad, schmalad, I can have one more now."

"Okay, just one more, then you need to check the chicken."

"Thank you, Pat-Pat."

"Janus, you first!"

Janus grins from the other side of the counter, sauntering over to lift Patton's hand and press a kiss to the back of it. "My dear."

"Okay, no, we're supposed to be cooking, we have an actual job to do." He tries his best to be stern but then Janus winks and he can feel it softening to a pout. "Do you want garlic bread or not?"

"Alright, alright, I'll behave. What do we need to do?"

"The oven's already pre-heating, so we have about—" he checks the timer— "eight minutes to prepare the crust for the pre-bake."

"So we are using pre-made crust."

"Look," Patton sighs, hands on his hips, "I appreciate your culinary standards and while I would love to have the skillset to make a proper pizza crust, I don't have the time or the skills and I want this to taste good, okay?"

"I'm only teasing, sweetie." Janus presses a quick kiss to his forehead before taking the baking sheet from the rack and covering it with baking paper. "Butter before or after?"

"After. It's gotta start to get puffy." Janus unrolls the pre-made crust onto the paper, stretching it to be the proper size and shape just as the preheat timer buzzes. "And you can just put that straight in. That's gotta go for about eight minutes."

He clicks the timer up to '8' and presses START. "Should we prepare the garlic butter and cheese now?"

"Yeah, I'll do the cheese if you do the garlic butter?"

"Sure. Minced, yeah?"

"Uh-huh. And then do we want just mozzarella or mozzarella and parmesan?"

"Both is everyone's favorite flavor, darling."

Patton giggles. "Both it is!"

Logan stands up as Janus slides the garlic bread into the oven for its final baking, passing Janus in the kitchen as Patton sets a pot of water on the stove. He gently sets a hand on Patton's hip and leans down to kiss his shoulder. "Hello, dear one."

"Why are you two being so flirty," Patton mumbles through flushed cheeks, "the rest of them were nice."

Logan chuckles. "You've been working so hard today, is it any wonder that Janus and I want to say thank you?"

"You've been saying thank you already after we've eaten the food. That doesn't explain this." Logan just grins and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. "Okay, okay! Stop, we have work to do."

"You said we had to wait for the water to boil, didn't you?" Logan chuckles and raises his hands in surrender when Patton smacks his shoulder with a dish towel. "Forgive me, I'm done, I'm done."

"Mean."

"Yes, I know, I'm terribly mean to you, dear one." He heeds the warning glare and takes down a bag of pasta from the shelf. "This one, correct?"

"Yeah, that's it. I'm going to wash the zucchini, could you get the spices out?"

"And the olive oil?" Patton nods and he sets the large bottle on the counter. "May I have the zucchini when you're finished?"

"As long as you stop looking at me like that."

Surprisingly, the rest of the cooking goes off without a hitch. Patton adds the pasta to the salted and boiling water as Logan begins to sauté the zucchini, tossing it in the pan in a way that would make most chefs envious. He checks in every so often about how much of the various spices he should be adding, whether the zucchini is tender enough, where the balsamic vinegar went. The pasta boils away merrily, steam curling up from the pot to the top of the stove as Patton sits on the stool he'd brought in at the beginning of the day. Logan hums under his breath as he works, the oil sizzling in the pan.

"Here," he offers as the pasta nears the end of its timer, "come try one?"

"Could you bring it over? My knees—"

"Of course." Logan scoops up a chunk onto the edge of his spatula, holding his hand under it and bringing it over. "Careful, it's hot."

Patton tries it and nods. "Yeah, that's good."

"Wonderful. Do you want me to finish up here while you have a rest?"

"If you don't mind?"

"Of course I don't, dear one. Take a break, you've earned it."

Patton taps the top of the lemon bars as Virgil peers over his shoulder. "Yep, they look good!"

"Great. Lemme bring 'em out and we can put the powdered sugar on."

They reach in and take out the large glass container, peering inside. The visible surface of the bars has a slightly paler yellow, the edges lightly browned. They set it carefully on the counter as Patton brings over the sieve and powdered sugar, holding them out.

"Would you like to do the honors?"

"Do you mind?"

"Nope, not in the slightest!" He waves at them encouragingly. "Go on!"

The powdered sugar falls in measured sprinkles as Virgil taps the sieve against their hand, methodically covering the whole tray. "Thanks for being so accommodating with this, by the way, Pat. I, uh, I know you've had a lot on your plate today so it means a lot."

"Virgil, I wanted to do the cook day, and if doing it with you meant we had to take breaks, then yeah, I was happy to do it. Besides," he continues, leaning on Virgil's shoulder, "I've been craving lemon bars for, like, two weeks."

They chuckle. "Okay, then. I'm sure the others will love them."

"I hope so too! Knife?"

"Yeah, lemme just get these out of the tray and onto the board." They take the parchment paper and carefully lift the bars from the glass, careful not to tear anything, and set the whole thing on a cutting board Patton slides into position under them. "Great. Now, how big do we think?"

"I think it's probably better to cut them smaller so that there isn't a mad scramble for seconds."

"You sound like you speak from experience."

"No, we're thinking about fun things and happy times today, no terrible ones."

"Deal, but you gotta tell about it tomorrow."

"Sure."

+1.

"Those are delicious," Roman mumbles, his mouth still half-full of lemon bar as Virgil sticks the remaining ones back in the fridge, "you guys did a great job."

"Why, thank you." Patton nods to Virgil. "They did all the work, really."

"Nuh-uh, Pat, don't you go selling yourself short."

"You've done wonderfully all day, dear one," Logan adds when Patton starts to protest, "this has been a lovely day. All the food has been delicious and you've been…well, I can't think of the word."

"Logan's right," Remus says, grinning with powdered sugar all over his mustache, "this was a lot of fun! We should totally do it again once everyone's got the spoons."

"I'm glad you guys had fun." He fiddles with the handle of his cane. "I just—I love cooking for you guys so much and I wanted you guys to see what it felt like."

Roman reaches over and ruffles his hair. "You're too sweet, Patton-cake."

"Hear, hear!"

"Guys," Patton says—he does not whine—as the rest of them make vague noises of agreement, "stop it!"

"But you're so cute when you're all blushy," Roman coos, reaching out to cup his face in his hands, "isn't he?"

"Oh my goodness, knock it off!"

"We don't have to cook anymore," Janus purrs, sidling closer on the couch, "so what's stopping us?"

"Do you have any idea how many dishes we have to do?"

"Oh, I got 'em," Virgil calls helpfully from the kitchen, "Remus, come help!"

"Wait, no—"

"Guess that leaves the four of us," Logan says softly, sitting on the coffee table just in front of Patton who is dealing very well with the three of them suddenly doing whatever this is, "whatever shall we do to pass the time?"

"Anything else!" Patton buries his face in his hands. "Literally anything else!"

"You look cute enough to eat," Janus whispers, chuckling when Patton shoves his shoulder weakly, "doesn't he?"

"Guys!"

"Do you really want us to stop?" Roman nods when Patton mumbles out a yes, softening and reaching out to pull him into a cuddle. "Just relax, then, Patton-cake, you've done so much today."

"Here, give me your hand," Janus murmurs, "they're sore, yeah?"

"Yeah." He hums sleepily when Janus starts massaging his hand. "Thanks."

"You can close your eyes," Logan adds when he notices Patton's energy going down, "you've done enough for today."

As he drifts off there on the couch, he thinks that he can't wait for the next cook day.

General Taglist: @frxgprince@potereregina@gattonero17@iamhereforthegayshit@thefingergunsgirl@awkwardandanxiousfander@creative-lampd-liberties@djpurple3@winterswrandomness@sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes@iminyourfandom@bullet-tothefeels@full-of-roman-angst-trash @ask-elsalvador @ramdomthingsfrommymind@demoniccheese83@pattonsandershugs @el-does-photography @princeanxious@firefinch-ember@fandomssaremysoul@im-an-anxious-wreck@crazy-multifandomfangirl @punk-academian-witch@enby-ralsei@unicornssunflowersandstuff@wildhorsewolf @thetruthaboutthesun @stubbornness-and-spite @princedarkandstormv @your-local-fookin-deadmeme @angels-and-dreams@averykedavra @a-ghostlight-for-roman @treasurechestininterweb @cricketanne @queerly-fluid-fan @compactdiscdraws@cecil-but-gayer@i-am-overly-complicated@annytheseal@alias290@tranquil-space-ninja @arxticandy @mychemically-imbalanced-romance @whyiask@crows-ace @emilythezeldafan@frida0043 @ieatspinalcords @snowyfires@cyanide-violence@oonagh2@xxpanic-at-the-everywherexx@rabbitsartcorner @percy-07734@triflingassailantofmyemotions @virgil-sanders-the-gay-emo@cerulean-watermelon@puffed-up-bees@meltheromanstan@joyrose-fandomer@insanitori@mavenmush@justablah65@10paradox10@uhhh-hi-there-i-am-nervous@cutebisexualmess@bella-bugatti-frogetti-baguetti @ultrageekygirl

#dragonbabbles #sanders sides #fic #patton sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic remus #janus sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #virgil sanders #logan sanders

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robbybirdy · 1 year

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81. Baking therapy on a budget Ft. Genshin Characters: Mika

Hey, every birdy. This recipe is probably going to be one of my favorites. They are so simple and so versatile. And just fun to make.

Before we start talking about the recipe and how much fun it is, I have to talk about one of my favorite characters. Mika is one of the cutest characters in the game. But, i have a reason why I think he is one of the cutest characters. He reminds me of my birb, Smokie. And I am not the only that thinks that Mika looks like a cockatiel. There are so many memes around the internet saying the Mika is a birbie. He says that he isn’t that picky and will eat pretty much anything. Which is so much easier to talk about then a character that is picky.

We are going to be making some Pudding Sugar Cookies.

Looked in my pantry and saw that I had two pudding packets. 2 different types of pudding, one pumpkin spice and one banana cream. Picked them out and thought that they were the same flavor. But the fact that they were just one each, meant that I couldn’t make pudding, because we usually need two packets of one flavor so that everyone can get some pudding.

I was wondering what to do with them and then my parents went to the local library and bought me 3 cookbooks from their booksale. And this recipe came from the Cookbook Taste of Home Cookies. And I found this recipe that used one package of pudding.

The recipe and the measurements will be in the description down below.

You will need:

Butter/margerine

Veggie oil

Sugar

Powdered sugar

2 eggs

Vanilla extract

Package of pudding

Flour

Cream of tartar or vinegar

Baking soda

You will want to preheat your oven to 350 F. Do not grease your baking sheets.

Grab a large mixing bowl and cream together your butter, oil and sugars until the mixture is light and fluffy.

To this mixture you are going to beat in the eggs, the vanilla, and the pudding mix.

Now you are going to add in your dry ingredients: flour, cream of tartar (if you don’t have cream of tartar, you can either omit it or you can add in ¼ teaspoon of white vinegar) and your baking soda. Mix well.

Drop the cookies by the tablespoons 2 inches apart onto your ungreased baking sheets. Flatten with a glass or the palm of your hands and add a bit of sugar on top.

Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes at 350 F. You want the cookies to be lightly browned. Remove to wire racks. And let cool.

These cookies are definitely going to be cookies that I make more than just once. They are so simple and they taste really good. And they are going to have so many different combinations. I wanted to use this recipe with Mika, because it just seemed right.

The only thing that confuses me is the amount the recipe says it yields. I measured out each cookie to be a tablespoon. And the recipe says that it yields 7 dozen cookies. And I was only able to get about 4 ½ dozen cookies.

I hope that you liked this recipe. Feel free to check it out for yourself. See you in the next post. Thank you.

Recipe: Here

Pudding Sugar Cookies - Taste of Home Cookies

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup canola oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 package pudding

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tartar or ¼ teaspoon vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

In a large bowl, cream the butter, oil and sugars until light and fluffy.. Beat in the eggs, vanilla and dry pudding mix. Combine in the flour, cream of tartar and baking soda, gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.

Drob to tablespoonsfuls 2 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Flatten with a glass dipped in sugar.

Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks.

Almonds to Zucchini

#ts3 #simblr #ts3 simblr #baking #baking therapy #recipe #food #Genshin Impact #genshin impact #mika genshin impact #golden finch genshin #mika #mika schmidt #mika cockatiel #cockatiel #birb

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lunarsilkscreen · 8 months

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Megumin - A "Food Wars" Observation.

In Chapter 21 of the manga "SHOKUGEKI NO SOMA" or Episode 10 of the Anime "Food Wars!" (Also Shokugeki No Soma)

The characters are presented with a recette for a small Terine, made of several different vegetables, and the students must follow the recette precisely.

<aside>Recette is French for Recipe and may have some connection to the word "Receipt"</aside>

The series' little sister stand-in; Megumin--Ends up with an oxidized cauliflower, which she reasons would make the end product look and taste bad. So she boils the cauliflower in vinegar in order to clean it up, but this alters the overall taste and PH Balance of the Terrine; and the Instructor and former student--Shinomiya; fails her on the spot.

I had two thoughts about this episode; how it could be done differently. Was Instructor Shinomiya entirely correct, what could have Megumin done instead. And all sorts of thoughts.

What if she just refused? Just like; "Nah, I'm not leaving if you're not gonna give me better instructions." being Soma's Character basically.

Which BTW; Soma is the series equivalent of Neo from the Matrix. This "God" character who can't lose, and defends basically everybody from their own mistakes.

I don't know what the trope would be; Mary Sue? Manic Pixie Dream Boy? Anime Protagonist? (Probably that last one.) Effectively; he's the character that other other characters channel to overcome their hardships. The one criticism I would have about the show is the ease in which Soma overcomes every obstacle; as if there are no obstacles.

Would it have worked if Megumin properly neutralized the vinegar taste with a bit of baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, or just rinsing it out better?

But then I thought; those cauliflowers were the size of the entire terrine. As depicted; would you need the entire cauliflower for this dish? Or was there just tonnes of waste from other students?

And then I thought; Wouldn't a seasoned chef with his own restaurant and profit margins want to impose this kind of restriction in his test?

Then the solution would be to pull the other student's waste out of the trash. Or ask them for extra. Or grab a handful of the oxidized cauliflower, and take the salvageable parts.

I think that's why Chef Shinomiya is such a troublesome and hateable character to the series. He's just fine with the waste here when somebody else (The Academy) is footing the bill.

As if he really is *still* just a student.

As far as the series itself goes; I feel there is room to add this kind of thinking on costs and waste that just isn't present until the main characters reach their senior years; Where only the top students are unfairly challenged in such a way, that costs, waste, and procurement are actually part of their curriculum. (In a way that if they fail these extra instructions, they fail for real, unlike the middling students.)

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merrybrides · 10 months

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RED VELVET CRINKLE COOKIES

Easy classic red velvet crinkle cookies recipe, homemade with simple ingredients from scratch. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside with a beautiful crackled powdered sugar topping.

RED VELVET CRINKLE COOKIES

Prep time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 14 minutes Chill Time: 2 hours

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup Butter Unsalted, Room temperature

1⅓ cups Granulated sugar

3 Eggs Large

1 tbsp Whole milk

2 tsp Lemon juice Or vinegar

2 tsp Vanilla extract

Red gel coloring

3 cups All-purpose flour

1/4 cup Cocoa powder

2 tsp Baking powder

1/4 tsp Baking soda

1 cup Granulated sugar, For rolling cookie dough balls

1 cup Powdered sugar, For rolling cookie dough balls

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and granulated sugar until mixture is light and fluffy.

Add eggs, milk, lemon juice or vinegar,and red gel coloring and mix until smooth.

In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda.

Dump the dry mixture into the wet mixture and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix!

Chill the dough for 2 hours or overnight.

Scoop out small portions of the dough and make small balls. Roll them in granulated sugar first and then, roll in powdered sugar. Place them on a baking tray, lined with parchment paper.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are firm around the edges. Enjoy!

When the cookies cool down completely, store in a container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

VARIATIONS FOR RED VELVET CRINKLES

Add white chocolate chips– They are unbelievably delicious! Stir in 3/4 – 1 cups white chocolate chips in the batter.

Add a cream cheese filling– Use the best cream cheese frosting ever. These make delicious cookie sandwiches.

Add mini marshmallows– For more color and texture.

Add nuts– Such as pistachios, macadamia, or walnuts for a nice crunch.

Add a drizzle on top– Such as white chocolate. Note that this will make the powdered sugar coating disappear.

Dip in white chocolate- Dipping them halfway in melted white chocolate would look so pretty. You could also sprinkle crushed candy canes on the white chocolate for an even more festive version.

TIPS AND TECHNIQUES FOR RED VELVET CRACKLE COOKIES

The powdered sugar on my crinkle cookie disappeared. How to prevent this?

The powdered sugar has a tendency to get absorbed in the cookies after a few hours. One way to prevent this is by rolling the cookie dough balls in granulated sugar and then rolling them in powdered sugar and then baking them.

You will need to add a lot of red food coloring to give these cookies their bright color

I like to use gel coloring since they are more concentrated but you can use liquid food coloring too. You will have to add 4-5 tsp of liquid food coloring though! If you don’t use enough food coloring, your cookies will have a weird brown color.

You must chill this cookie dough!– That makes the dough firm and easier to handle. It also prevents cookies from spreading while baking and the cookies will hold their round puffy shape.

Do not replace butter with oil!– The consistency of the dough will change and so will the flavor.

Use room temperature ingredients– Because this results in the smoothest incorporation of ingredients.

Use unsalted butter– Because this prevents the cookies from becoming too salty

Do not over-mix the dough– Because it can result in flat and dense cookies.

How do I know the cookies are done? They are done when the cookies are firm around the edges.

WHY DON’T MY COOKIES HAVE CRINKLES AND CRACKS?

There can be quite a few reasons for this. If the cookies are not baked at a high enough temperature the tops will not dry out and crack. If the dough is not chilled, it may not crack either. In addition, the leavening agent (baking powder and soda) may be expired resulting in cookies that don’t rise and crinkle. Lastly, coating the dough in granulated sugar helps to draw moisture out from the cookie to make the tops crack, so don’t skip this step.

#red velvet cookies #christmas cookies #valentines day cookies #cookie recipes #wedding cookies #bridal shower cookies #christmas wedding cookies #wedding gavor cookie ideas

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thetastytable · 2 years

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Half-Baked Harvest: Chili Crisp Butternut Squash Dumplings in Ginger Soy Broth

I made this today and unfortunately was a little let down by it! And it was a time-intensive ordeal, for sure. I made two modifications, which I don’t think much influenced the turn-out and, in fact, probably made it better...: I used sweet potato instead of butternut squash for the filling and substituted sake and rice wine vinegar for the white wine.

If I made it again, I would:

Leave out the curry powder (not sure what that’s doing in there! It doesn’t match the flavor of the broth very well, imo) and maybe use a different filling entirely (mushrooms might work well)

Make my own chili crisp since the one I bought was super salty, albeit tasty, OR cut salt elsewhere in the recipe

I made the unfortunate mistake of using regular chicken broth instead of low sodium broth, so even though I diluted it ~25% with water, it was very salty in combination with the soy sauce and chili crisp. Note that the recipe also called for salted butter and regular soy sauce (I used unsalted and low sodium, respectively), so I can’t imagine it being all that different if I’d followed the recipe.

I would try using thinner dumpling wrappers, which would cook faster than the ones I used. Mine took about 5 mins to steam, which ended up softening the nice sesame crust on the bottoms. I was also afraid of burning the sesame seeds, so I didn’t fry the dumplings for very long before steaming. I might recommend leaving the sesame seeds off and sprinkling on some as a garnish (since they fall off when frying, anyway).

That’s my long-ass take on how I would make this recipe better! I’m trying to continue keeping track of what I cook and what changes I would make in order to keep this blog useful and organized. One of my goals this year is to meal plan and cook ahead more often, and I’ve done well with it so far this week (Lemon, it’s Tuesday! Yeah, I know).

Lastly, not to be too salty (BAD pun, sorry) this early in the new year, but I’ve yet to find a Half-Baked Harvest recipe that doesn’t require heavy modification. I don’t know why they’re all so popular and well-rated! Teighan seems great, but we must have different tastes or methods of cooking.... This is at least the third one I can think of off the top of my head that I’ve tried and disliked.

#japanese #vegan #vegetarian #dumplings #sweet potato #butternut squash #ginger #soup #asian #main dish #food #recipe #obvs only veg with modifications (mentioned in recipe)#made this!

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spooniechef · 11 months

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Gluten-Free Bread (1 spoon)

Things are a little depressing on the wet little island I currently call home. Okay, by "a little", I mean "this country's government is publicly struggling to find loopholes in human rights law". So as you can probably guess, the whole situation is significantly testing all the coping mechanisms for clinical depression that I learned in therapy.

Therefore, sublimation time - sublimation being where you take all that grief, rage, depression, whatever, and you stuff all that energy into doing something positive and constructive. Now, when I got my fibromyalgia diagnosis, gardening was my primary sublimation activity, but we're into mid-November now and the garden's kind of sleepy right now. That means baking is my primary option. I mean, I need gluten-free bread anyway because I need bread crumbs for various recipes I want to try, and gluten-free bread is expensive, so why not just make my own? Particularly when I might get bread that isn't about 35% air bubble if I make it myself?

I'll say this for those of you who can eat gluten - the consistency of the loaf I baked last night (recipe courtesy the Dish By Dish website) is not the same as your bog-standard supermarket loaf. The results of this recipe are softer, spongier, and somewhere on the texture scale between cornbread and cake. That's not to say it's bad, but if you've got issues with the texture of foods, it's a fair warning. Now, here's the thing that gluten-free bread has over regular bread for those of us with more physical disabilities - no kneading required. Hell, it wasn't even all that hard to mix by hand (though I probably still should have used the hand mixer; still, I was sublimating).

So! Here's what you'll need:

2 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon xanthan gum (unless your flour blend already contains it)

1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder

2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup neutral-tasting oil (vegetable, sunflower, etc) or melted butter

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups warm milk or milk substitute (110 F / 40 C)

2 large eggs, room temperature, beaten

Having made regular bread with actual gluten in it, this is an unusual combination of ingredients, and is probably why the consistency is closer to cake / cornbread than actual bread. Still, I figure things like the egg and milk are helping to bind the bread dough in same way the gluten molecules ordinarily would.

Anyway, here's what you do:

Combine all dry ingredients, whisk until well-blended

Add oil, vinegar, and milk, mix for 1 minute or until fully combined

Add beaten eggs, mix for 1 minute or until fully combined (consistency should be close to cake batter)

Add dough to greased 8" by 4" loaf pan, cover with a cloth, let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes, or until it's about doubled in size

Once dough has risen, preheat oven to 350 F (175 C), then bake loaf for 50 minutes, until top is golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack and cooling the rest of the way.

No kneading, remarkably little aggravation, and the only real issue is the number of things to wash up. The result is the sort of bread that probably works best toasted, or as the base for French toast, or turned into bread crumbs for breading things. Then again, almost all gluten-free bread needs toasting or similar to be palatable, and this was nice with butter and jam (in a cakey sort of way) when it was just out of the oven. So all that to say that it was a reasonable sublimation activity that left me feeling a little more accomplished and less helpless in general.

Now I have to go out for the ingredients for cornbread.

#the spoonie chef #recipes #gluten-free #baking

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hasufin · 1 year

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Challenges

My spouse has learned that possibly the most dangerous words said in our house are “So I was watching a video online...”

Now, it doesn’t mean I’ve been radicalized by the algorithm. It means something far worse: I saw a recipe online and thought it was interesting.

Interesting does not mean good. It almost certainly does not mean familiar. It means I see potential and I intend to try it.

One of my favorite channels is Dylan Hollis on Tiktok. He does vintage recipes, mostly from the early 20th century, largely very bad recipes. Stuff that you’re asking “Why would anyone even try this?”. Though a fair number are from the Great Depression and WWII: just people trying to make do with what they had.

Now, in large part his popularity is because he’s outlandish and funny in a way that’s neither mean nor reliant on someone being a complete idiot - it’s a comfortable kind of funny. But it’s also an interesting window on an important but often overlooked part of our culture.

At any rate. Sometimes he pans a recipe in which I see potential. I recognize they’re bad, but I am left with the impression they could be made better. One such was the cheese cookies from the 1980s (the trick, essentially, is to about double the amount of cheese). Now, the key, to me, is making it still be recognizably the thing he made - just improved. That is, when I set out to make the cheese cookies the point was to start with the cheese cookie recipe he used: I had several people pop up with various cheese biscuit and scone recipes, and I’m sure those were fine, but the goal wasn’t “Make an enjoyable baked good which contains cheese”; rather it was “Modify the cheese cookie recipe until I have something which is enjoyable”.

Now, most recently, he made a WWI Trench Cake which, predictably, was bad. But I couldn’t see anything about it which was actually awful - we’re not talking the asparagus cake (I think it’s German). But the Trench Cake, well, it has all the right elements to be a decent enough tea cake, it’s just... restrained. Which makes sense because it was explicitly made for WWI. That means less spices, less sugar, less oil, butter, and eggs, substitution for cheaper ingredients, &c. So, can I tweak it until it doesn’t suck? Let’s look at it and see what we can do. The original recipe:

WWI Trench Cake

Ingredients

· 1 and 7/8 cups (8oz) flour

· ½ cup (4 oz) margarine

· ½ cup (3 oz) brown sugar

· 2 tsp cocoa

· ½ tsp nutmeg

· ½ tsp ginger

· 3 oz currants

· ½ cup milk

· 1 tsp white vinegar

· ½ tsp bicarbonate

1) Preheat oven to 350°F

2) Rub the margarine into the flour. Add the brown sugar, cocoa, nutmeg, ginger, and currants

3) Combine the milk, white vinegar, and baking soda in a separate bowl and combine.

4) Combine all ingredients and put in a loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven for about an hour.

Now, my first thought was, fuck it, let’s make it chocolate. Let’s do chocolate for real. I increased the brown sugar but 1/4 cup, increased the cocoa to 1/2 cup, eliminated the ginger (which would fight the chocolate). Upped the milk to 2/3 cups, added an egg for richness, and added a tsp of baking powder. I also replaced the currants with chocolate chips:

WWI Trench Cake Chocolate Variant

Ingredients

· 1 and 7/8 cups (8oz) flour

· ½ cup (4 oz) margarine

· 3/4 cup (3 oz) brown sugar

· ½ cup cocoa

· ½ tsp nutmeg

· 1 cup chocolate chips

· 2/3 cup milk

· 1 large egg

· 1 tsp white vinegar

· ½ tsp baking soda

· 1 tsp baking powder

1) Preheat oven to 350°F

2) Rub the margarine into the flour. Add the brown sugar, cocoa, nutmeg, baking powder, and chocolate chips

3) Combine the milk, egg, white vinegar, baking soda in a separate bowl and combine.

4) Combine all ingredients and put in a loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven for about an hour. My intent was basically a brownie loaf. It was... not great, but not terrible. I’d say it came out too dry, lacking in richness, and not as vibrantly chocolately as one might expect. It was like... halfway to a brownie loaf. I felt that it would be improved with a good frosting, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

Moreover, I realized to make it all the way to a brownie loaf, I’d essentially have to abandon the original recipe entirely.

At that point I was thinking about it, and had some insight.

Let’s look at this recipe and what we’re actually doing.

Now, first, look at that weird instruction: rub the margarine into the flour? Well, turns out this is a pretty normal thing for cakes of a certain age. Note that Simnel Cake was a very old thing even in Victorian times - which implies that the roots of this trench cake go back pretty far, too.

Now, in spite of Dylan’s commentary the method isn’t completely daft, and we do still do it - one even observed Amaury Guichon (that Chocolate Guy) using it. If you’re familiar with baking, you’ll know that how you add the fats makes a huge difference in texture. Rubbing the margarine in is sort of splitting the difference between using a pastry cutter for layers, and melting it for a smooth texture. So this is supposed to have something but not flakey layers.

Second, there’s the cocoa. Dylan refers to using a mere 2tsp as the “la Croix” method of flavoring, and that kind of misled me. I thought it was supposed to have a cocoa flavor - except he’s right, 2tsp of cocoa just isn’t enough to be noticeable - especially with the much stronger ginger and nutmeg. So what gives?

My hypothesis is, it relates to the “bicarbonate”. That third part seems pretty weird too, doesn’t it? For one, we don’t typically use sodium bicarbonate - baking soda - in cakes and cookies, as it can impart a bitter flavor. We normally use baking powder, which has a weak acid and is basically self-neutralizing. But in this recipe we’re adding the baking soda to a weak acid - white vinegar (acetic acid). Which, chemically works, but is a roundabout thing to do. It makes sense in context, though.

This hits into what I call the cell phone paradox. See, if you’re, oh, let’s say 14 years old and writing a paper about cell phones, you might go to Wikipedia and read that the first commercial cellular phone service launched in 1973. So, lacking context, you might conclude that obviously by, oh, the late 1990s, cellular phones were commonplace. You’d be wrong, but it’s a reasonable conclusion - this sort of quantifiable facts don’t communicate the very long tail on adoption.

This hits into the history of leavening. It’s not exactly obvious when people really adopted baking powder: baking powder was invented in 1843, an double-actnig baking powder (what we used today) was introduced commercially in 1860. However, cooking is notoriously conservative, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a recipe used during the American Civil War which utilizes baking powder. It’s entirely likely that a recipe published in 1914 - which was clearly using much older techniques - would utterly ignore baking powder in favor of the more familiar baking soda. In fact, it’s interesting that the recipe specifies bicarbonate. I suspect this is because it’s working off an approach which used a slightly older chemical leavening agent: sodium carbonate. Max Miller recently used this leavening agent in his Irish Soda Bread video, and that got me thinking. Sodium carbonate is much harder to work with than bicarbonate, and unlike the rubbing method, we don’t use it anymore - for good reason. However! As Max mentions, it does have other effects, notably here it accelerated the Maillard reaction: baked goods risen with sodium carbonate will brown more than using mor emodern leavening agents. With this in mind, my hypothesis on that anomalous cocoa is twofold. First, being alkaline the cocoa serves to neutralize any excess vinegar, a task at which it succeeds: in neither version so far does the result have any vinegar flavor. The other purpose is to provide color, making the cake as brown as expected. Given that the recipe was certainly compromising on flavor, you need to work hard to make it at least look right. Such a trivial amount of cocoa won’t change the flavor, but it will make the cake more brown. We tend to think of these ingredients very simply today, but it’s worth recalling that often they were playing clever chemistry tricks which are now built in to our ingredients.

Considering all this, I decided to make another loaf which would differ from the original in the following ways:

- Double the amount of sugar. We tend to present this as “Oh, modern tastes have So Much Sugar”, but that’s not exactly true. Cookbooks of this time period had a large number of dessert sauces, and cakes of time would normally have been served with a rich, sweet custard or a sweet cream - and even in WWI, such sauces and custards were sometimes included even in combat rations. not to mention the value of coffee in this context. Nonetheless, modern palates expect a richer, sweeter cake which stands on its own.

- Similarly, and since I was disappointed with the lack of richness in the brownie loaf, I added not one but two eggs. Eggs were a sometimes limited commodity in this context, so I understand why they were not in the original, but they can make this cake much richer.

- I opted to dodge all the clever chemistry tricks: no vinegar, no bicarbonate, no cocoa. Just a teaspoon of baking powder. Since I’m not baking for people who are 120 years old and longing for a tea cake the way their grandmother made, I feel safe omitting the browning effect of both the brown sugar and the cocoa. Without further ado, here’s the improved trench cake recipe: WWI Trench Cake, Improved Ingredients·

· 1 and 7/8 cups (8oz) flour· · ½ cup (4 oz) margarine · 1 cup sugar · ½ tsp nutmeg · ½ tsp ginger · 4 oz currants, or 1 cup raisins chopped · ½ cup milk · 1 tsp baking powder 1) Preheat oven to 350°F. 2) Sift the baking powder into the flour. Rub the margarine into the flour. Add the sugar, nutmeg, ginger, and currants. 3) Combine the milk, white vinegar, and baking soda in a separate bowl and combine. 4) Combine all ingredients and put in a loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven for about an hour. The result?

Pretty good, actually!

It’s rich and moist. While it’s not quite as sweet as a modern “cake” and would not mind some sweet cream or jam, it stands on its own all the same. I intend to have it for breakfast tomorrow.

#food recipe vintage food

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