Sunday, March 15, 2009

Cake flour vs. All purpose flour

According to what they are, they are a difference in gluten, which causes the moistness in a cake to change. Cake flour has less gluten while all purpose flour has more.

Cake flour has less gluten in it. Gluten is in wheat flour. It is what gives bread it's texture and structure. All purpose flour has more, while bread flour had a much higher content of gluten. It just depends on the time and the wheat its harvested from.

So i did an experiment. I made four batches of cupcakes. A vanilla and a chocolate, one with cake flour and one with all purpose. We came to the conclusion (my test tasters) the cake flour took away some of the sweetness, took longer to bake and the texture wasn't enough to warrant expensive cake flour in place of all purpose. The all purpose cupcakes were still fluffy and rose well, and they had a sweeter taste. (all recipes were identical in measurements and ingredients except when the cake flour called for a few tablespoons more of itself.) Plus the all purpose had a great crisp outside while having a very moist inside.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

I hacked my Sidekick all by myself!

"One small step for man, one large step for womankind."
I am not putting women down, i am merely admitting that electronics puzzle me. They have rules and laws and names and files that make utterly no sense to me.
BUT! Today i carefully watched a how to video several times pausing to catch up and added new and personalized themes onto my sidekick 2008. And didnt have to pay a fee for them. It was actually easy to ad the ready made ones. Although i have so far failed in adding my personal pictures to them. (But that can be done another day...) I also noticed a link to adding mp3's, so i added a handful of music to my phone. And it still works, it doesnt appear to be worse off for all my additions!
The themes were from sk08themes.com. My favorite so far is colorful venice. Although i got cupcake, beach and tropical themed screens too!

Of course seeing those cupcakes on the screen made me think of baking. So i spent the rest of the afternoon baking chocolate chip cookies. Yumm. I used the chewy version of Alton Browns. They are perfectly chewy and yet not cakey. Now were did half a dozen of them disapear too?