Wisconsin Cheese Quick Bread

I was watching Martha Stewart Bakes as a break from doing wood work in my living room. I had put all the tools away, swept and was happy with my work. I needed to switch gears so I sat with a cup of tea and watched PBS. I’m not a big Martha fan but I do love baking so I watched. She had a guest chef on from Wisconsin and they made this ultra simple quick bread. Since I love savory over sweet, I thought, “Hey I have all the ingredients for this dish! I’m going to make this right now!” Off to the kitchen I went to get out all the ingredients and start grating the cheese.

Changing the recipe for cake 2

After reading Shirley O. Corriher’s book, CookWise, to find out what went wrong and how to fix it, I had a renewed sense of joy for baking.

I would use lard, which has more air bubbles. Modern day ‘vegetable shortening’ is not something I trust at all. Too much worry about GMO besides other factors. I would cream the lard and sugar together for a minimum of five minutes to incorporate more air. Use less Baking Powder so the cake would not

Researching mistakes on cake 1

After my first cake which had fallen in the center (both 8 inch rounds of cake), and was tough, I had to find out what went wrong. My mother had sent me a book that could help me find, understand, and fix my errors. Baking, after all, is a fine art of careful step-by-step instruction with precision. I’m the shoot-from-the-hip person and I have to learn to slow down and be more precise and careful. It can be done. I will bake 100 cakes if I needed to

CookWise saves my hinder

In our family we love to cook, and Harold McGee is a hero of ours. He’s the Mr. Science of cooking. His book, On Food and Cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen, is one of the few books I have kept over the years. I used to have over 100 cookbooks and recently paired it down