Oh, that sounds glorious, PMM. Not a huge cherry fan, but I had Persian yesterday that had them in the rice. Was pretty good. My friend's rice had currants in it, which was also nice, but I preferred the cherries.

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if you like cherries at all, get a bag of frozens, marinate them in brandy, drain and press so they're no longer soggy, chop, and add some to the cupcake batter. (The rest go in the whipped cream that you add on top of the ganache layer just before serving.)

That sounds lovely. I need to sneak into Plei's cupboards apparently.

Sadly I am a crap baker. Baking is very, very specific and I tend to skitter off course from a recipe like Gordon Ramsey after an especially powerful espresso and cocaine cocktail.

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Albino twin fingermonkeys born:

[link]

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Sadly I am a crap baker. Baking is very, very specific and I tend to skitter off course from a recipe like Gordon Ramsey after an especially powerful espresso and cocaine cocktail.

Cass is me.

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I never try to bake anything more complicated than cupcakes. Sometimes I don't even bother with frosting....

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I think I must just have a knack for baking, because I play fast and loose with recipes all the time and it always comes out ok.

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Baking is very, very specific

Yeah, baking is so much different from cooking, it sometimes surprises me that people refer to them as the same thing.

I'm not sure if it's connected or not, but with baking, there's a point where you can't really fix or change what you've done - once the stuff is in the oven and the heat starts to work, there's no way back, you have to live with what comes out. You can determine which temperature and when to turn it off, but that's pretty much it. Cooking is much more flexible, all the way through - adding ingredients, adding more of what's in there in order to make a certain ingredient less dominant, changing textures, ways of preparation, ingredients, temperatures, whatever, all throughout the process.

I like them both, but I'm much more careful to stick to a recipe when I'm baking, and play and goof off and improvize a lot more when I'm cooking.

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I like them both, but I'm much more careful to stick to a recipe when I'm baking, and play and goof off and improvize a lot more when I'm cooking.

Yep, this.

I'm always slightly surprised when I'm reading older books, like Little Women or Anne of Green Gables, and people bake things without really measuring. Like, it's a bunch of flour, a spoonful or so of baking powder, enough eggs to make it a good texture, and so on. The whole "baking must be precise" is so ingrained in me that I really can't imagine trying to bake by feel like that.

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I like them both, but I'm much more careful to stick to a recipe when I'm baking, and play and goof off and improvize a lot more when I'm cooking.

Me, too.

I'm always slightly surprised when I'm reading older books, like Little Women or Anne of Green Gables, and people bake things without really measuring. Like, it's a bunch of flour, a spoonful or so of baking powder, enough eggs to make it a good texture, and so on. The whole "baking must be precise" is so ingrained in me that I really can't imagine trying to bake by feel like that.

I know this is how my grandmother and great-grandmother baked, and the latter used a stove heated by wood, so it's not like she had a little dial she could set to 350 degrees, or what have you. I think they had better instincts about scale and proportion, "measured" in different ways, and paid more attention to how things looked and felt.

I can do this on the smallest scale. I have a good (not purposefully conscious) idea of how much water my pie crust needs, and it does differ from time to time, so I must use some senses (not purposefully consciously), to adjust for humidity, etc. And when I make banana bread, I never measure the banana pulp, and adjust the baking powder (and sometimes the eggs) if it looks "wrong". It's just that they could do it with everything they baked.

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The interpreters at Old Sturbridge Village, who bake in brick fireplace ovens and newfangled tin reflector ovens on the open hearth, estimate oven temp by how long they can hold their exposed hand inside, counting "one potato, two potato" so they get a good approximate idea if it's the right temp yet.

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