Like our fleeting youth, summer is almost over.

THANK YOU dead lady

handletheheat.com

This is SO important.

this is on my obligatory reblog list

THIS IS VERY COOL FOODY AND SCIENCEY

Source: beth_thefirstyear on Instagram

I have four muffin tips for making bakery style muffins at home.

Tip number one:

Rest your batter for 15 minutes in your mixing bowl after you make it. This is gonna allow the starch molecules to swell and absorb, creating the thicker batter and the thicker batter is known for doming!

Tip number two:

Fill your muffin holes with at least six to eight tablespoons of batter. That’s like a heaping half cup okay. You want them super full so they’re gonna create that dome.

Tip number three:

Kinda goes along with tip number two. You’re only gonna fill every other hole in your muffin pan. And why we do that - that’s so the muffins that are baking can spread and dome without running into their neighbors. Because when they run into their neighbors they get like square edges but we want perfect dome circles.

Tip number four:

You’re to bake your muffins at a high temperature initially. That’s gonna be 425*F for the first seven minutes. And then keep them in the oven and lower the temperature to 350*F for the remaining bake time. Starting the muffins off at a high temperature initially allows the muffins to rise rapidly and it sets the outer surface of the muffin, producing a dome shape.

There you have it. My four muffin tips for creating bakery style muffins.

if you’re craving chocolate muffins after the olympic muffin man videos, jordan the stallion on tiktok has the recipe for you

I typed up a text version of this recipe, for people who want to copy it down to their recipe books.

Olympic Muffin

Muffin

¾c milk

¼c water

2tsp instant coffee

½c cocoa powder

½c chocolate chunks

8tsp butter

2c flour

1tbsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

½c dark brown sugar, packed

½c granulated sugar

¼c vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling

½c heavy cream

¼c chocolate chunks

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Add milk, water, and instant coffee to a saucepan, bring to a simmer. Add cocoa powder, mix well, then add chocolate chunks and butter. Stir until melted, transfer to a bowl, and allow to cool.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Once the chocolate mixture is cooled, add brown sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

Add a third of the flour mixture to chocolate mixture and combine, then add remaining flour mixture, folding in gently. Take care to not over-mix, then add chocolate chunks, fold in, and then bake for 24 minutes.

For the filling, add heavy cream, chocolate chunks, and salt to a saucepan, heat until melted, taking care not to come to a boil.

After baking, fill muffins with filling, and serve.

best brownies in the known universe (at least, according to my grandma)

some year and a half ago when i was getting ready to move out i combed through all the family recipes that lay lost to time and one of the ones that i found was my grandmas brownie recipe. idk where she got it from (nor can i ask cause she has dementia) and its a printed out email she sent to my mom in june 2000. but by george these the best brownies i have ever tasted. would she be pleased that i am sharing this recipe with my vast following? absolutely.

YOU WILL NEED:

5 tablespoons butter (unsalted) 1 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate (or as much as your heart desires) 2/3 cup unsweetened good cocoa powder 1 cup sugar (white) (superfine preferred, normal works fine) 1 cup sifted white flour (can use gluten free) 1/2 teaspoon baking powder as much cinnamon as your heart desires (your heart needs to desire at least some cinnamon. its essential to the recipe) 3 egg whites 1 egg splash of vanilla extract (again, non negotiable step!)

preheat your oven to 325 degrees. grease a square baking pan (9x9 preferably).

in a small saucepan over medium heat melt the butter and baking chocolate. while that is melting, sift together the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a small bowl. once the butter and chocolate is done melting add the cocoa powder and cook it together for 1 minute. add in the sugar and stir. it will get very thick. this is correct.

set that aside to cool. while thats cooling take a large bowl and put in your egg whites, egg and vanilla. beat it up with preferably a whisk but you can use a fork if youre fresh out of whisks. once the chocolate is cool enough to not scramble your eggs dump it in the eggs and mix it together. add the flour in gradually and keep mixing until its smooth and happy.

spread into your greased baking pan. put it in the oven for EXACLTLY 18 MINUTES. very crucial step. they will come out slightly under done. that is what we want. as they cool they will continue to cook in the pan. we dont want them to get hard and sad. they are not good when they are hard and sad. do not overbake them. you will be sad.

slice them up and as the official last step on the original recipe says: EAT ENJOY AND MAKE MORE! (theyre very good with mint chocolate chip ice cream)

I was going to transcribe this, but looked it up instead after seeing the username. Brown Butter Brownies from Broma Bakery!

The single serve double chocolate chip cookies that I pretty religiously make like four times a week are from Broma Bakery and they are so decadent and rich and amazing, I def recommend their recipes.

... Yeah that audio is appropriate

Umbreon chocolate pie 🌙✨ This pie design idea has burning in my head for months, but I just hadn’t had the time to make it come true…until now! Super happy with how it turned out.

so i dont usually go on reddit

but has someone on the dungeon meshi subreddit figured out more detailed recipe amounts of the pan-steamed bread that senshi makes in the orc episode?

once we run low on bread in my household I wanna make some anime-ass bread

This was gonna be a comment but it got too long.

So looking at the process, the steaming is completely incidental to the main cooking - it's the final step and I'm… genuinely not sure what it's doing. You do not steam baked goods at the end because it turns the crust rubbery.

I think what Senshi is actually doing is closer to baking - the vessel that far from the fire is as close to indirect heat as you're going to manage without an oven. I think what the writer means by "steaming," because we don't see him add any water to the pot neither in, is just letting the bread finish "baking" in the vessel. To get the finished product I think you actually want a dutch oven here.

And sure enough, if you google "campfire dutch oven bread" you get a very credible approximation of Senshi's final loaf.

You'd have to tweak it for a home oven and getting the "buns", but that process should yield you what you're looking for.

The extra bit of confusion is that the anime calls for "strong flour" in the English subs, which doesn't appear in the English dub, nor any scanlations I can find. That's broadly "bread flour" (as I'm sure you know, I'm just explaining for others), but the inconsistency is interesting. I'm also not convinced that bread flour is best for this.

If anyone has access to the original manga, they could check if Senshi says "強力粉" (strong/bread flour) or report what version of "粉" he uses.

okay so disclaimer that I'm not a professional baker first but:

gave me an incredibly close visual representation of senshi's camp bread, and the new place I've moved into has a small backyard and one of the household's miniature bbq seems to be back there.

It's winter right now but I could theoretically get some charcoal briquettes and do this as close as possible to the anime bread without having to light actual fires.

the next issue is this:

vs

now, it's not the yeast adjustment that has me, since I know by vibes at this point how to raise starters and levains to make up for volume and bacterial culture differences.

it's the milk and eggs.

one of the defining things about rolls, I find, is the softness that milk and butter add. senshi's recipe barely has any fat in it other than the olive oil from the fire trap, so I'd be losing a lot of softness. His recipe doesn't have egg either, so I'd be losing structure.

in addition to that, the liquid:flour ratio is very different. Roll recipes usually have around a 1:3 liquid to flour ratio (eg 0.5Cwater+1.5Cmilk:6C flour). I don't know what hydration level Senshi's starter is at but it looks pretty 1:1 from the comic and anime, meaning that his has around TWICE the liquid in it proportionally, since 160:250 is abouuut 1:1.5

......

you see THIS IS WHY I WAS HOPING SOME SUBREDDITOR FIGURED IT OUT FOR ME

I JUST DROPPED EVERYTHING TO DO M A T H

I sense an opportunity to pass on one of the greatest lessons my Scoutmaster taught me!

Counting coals for Dutch ovens is the normal method, but it's also really inconsistent! Different size lumps or briquettes, coals getting smaller as they burn down, etc! So here's what you should do instead: Rings!

Basically make a ring around the perimeter of your Dutch oven under the bottom, and then put the listed number of rings on the top! You'll get much more consistent heat, and better cooking results!!

This blog post goes into additional detail if you want it!

were doing this folks were making this happen

also I know @bitternest irl so we're gonna have a proper go at trying to get close to senshi bread as possible without fucking up its structure some time this week fingers crossed

Okay so, prelimnary-POC-that-I-didn't-think-would-work: done.

It, uh. Worked.

I legit cobbled this recipe together out of three separate ones, so there's a lot of room to improve, but here it is:

Ingredients

Steps (notice: if you don't have a stand mixer, I'm sorry, I'm useless at kneading and haven't done so manually in over a decade):

I think the double proof did the majority of the legwork here. The dutch oven is good for getting good steam early on, which is important for crust development and airiness, but there's no way in hell it would turn out this light and fluffy without a 2nd proof.

If others want to try variations, go nuts. Tomorrow I'll post the version of this made by a baker buddy using tangzhong, which was a "breakthrough" realization before this fucking recipe just... worked?!?!

Anyways, happy baking

wholly shit, TRULY

I had to try several different searches to find this.

Mix with whisk until it's blended and has no visible lumps.

To prepare: 1-2 tbl per 8 oz of water.

The Dungeon Meshi renaissance is making me want to share the resources that taught me how to cook.

Don’t forget, you can check out cookbooks from the library!

Smitten Kitchen: The rare recipe blog where the blog part is genuinely good & engaging, but more important: this is a home cook who writes for home cooks. If Deb recommends you do something with an extra step, it’s because it’s worth it. Her recipes are reliable & have descriptive instructions that walk you through processes. Her three cookbooks are mostly recipes not already on the site, & there are treasures in each of them.

Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden: This is a great guide to seasonal produce & vegetable-forward cooking, and in addition to introducing me to new-to-me vegetables (and how to select them) it quietly taught me a number of things like ‘how to make a tasty and interesting puréed soup of any root veggie’ and ‘how to make grain salads’ and ‘how to make condiments’.

Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way With Grains by Joshua McFadden: in addition to infodumping in grains, this codifies some of the formulas I picked up unconsciously just by cooking a lot from the previous book. I get a lot of mileage out of the grain bowl mix-and-match formulas (he’s not lying, you can do a citrus vinaigrette and a ranch dressing dupe made with yogurt, onion powder, and garlic powder IN THE SAME DISH and it’s great.)

SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT by Samin Nosrat: An education in cooking theory & specific techniques. I came to it late but I think it would be a good intro book for people who like to front-load on theory. It taught me how to roast a whole chicken and now I can just, like, do that.

I Dream Of Dinner (so you don’t have to) by Ali Slagle: Ok, look, an important part of learning to cook & cooking regularly is getting kinda burned out and just wanting someone else to tell you what to make. These dinners work well as written and are also great tweakable bases you can use as a starting place.

If you have books or other resources that taught you to cook or that you find indispensable, add ‘em on a reblog.

Appetite by Nigel Slater (UK) has a lot of very basic recipes accompanied by multiple ways to dress them up. Really good for easy but tasty comfort food (assuming your cultural background includes these as comfort foods). This really helped me get to what the heart of various meals was in a way that lets me tinker around with flavour fearlessly.

The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt (US) is perfect for anybody who's a giant nerd about food and food science - it's 1000 pages and most of that is getting into the whys and wherefores of the techniques it uses. I was a proficient cook before I got a copy and I've still found a bunch of ways to up my game here on things as 'easy' as poaching eggs. Really great for comfort food (US-American edition). If you don't want to shell out for the 1000-page cookbook a lot of his techniques are in his Serious Eats column online.

For my AoNZ crowd...no, you really can't go past the Edmonds Cookbook for all the basics like shepherd's pie and the unbeatable one-egg chocolate sponge. It also has a really handy set of charts and tables in the front for cooking times and temperatures and measurement conversions. But if you want to get serious about our baking tradition, Ladies, A Plate by Alexa Johnston is where you should start. You too can make brandy snaps from scratch! You will never be short of ginger crunch again! And I could go on.

Also an enthusiastic second for Smitten Kitchen, and the caveat I am legally obliged to give for Salt Fat Acid Heat: yes it's otherwise very good but she is wrong and potentially dangerously so about iodised salt. Know your own diet and location, and if you don't eat a lot of iodine-rich foods and/or live somewhere with deficient soils (e.g. Aus/NZ), DO use it. You can't taste the difference no matter what she thinks.

Smitten kitchen enthusiast too! Her Babka 💯

Also a big fan of cooksillustrated.com (it's paywalled but worth it imo. They're equipment and ingredient reviews are fabulous. if you ask nicely maybe I'll copy paste a recipe or two for you. Not sure if 12ft.io works on it)

I also love kingarthurbaking.com/ for recipes although they sometimes sneak in weird ultra niche, specialty ingredients and equipment that only a hardcore baking enthusiast would ever need. There's a reason folks (me) swear by their flour though.

Unofficial Studio Ghibli Cookbook // KRISP Design on Etsy

I was going to transcribe this, but looked it up instead after seeing the username. Brown Butter Brownies from Broma Bakery!

The single serve double chocolate chip cookies that I pretty religiously make like four times a week are from Broma Bakery and they are so decadent and rich and amazing, I def recommend their recipes.

Coming from a state champion baker:

If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t. 

Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof. 

This concludes me attempting to be helpful. 

yo I can vouch for this I’ve done this for the last few cakes I’ve made and holy crap it makes suuuuch a difference the cake is still fluffy, but it also seems more dense, and it doesn’t dry out like at all you can leave it uncovered on the counter all day after being cut into, and it won’t get all crusty and dry this is an amazing way to take your cakes to the next level

Does this count as cake hacks?

cake: hacked

OK but if you’re adding all that to the mix why not just scratch bake? There are literally only four ingredients you’re NOT adding yourself at this point.

It’s always so baffling when mix hackers give you a whole ass cake recipe. Like there’s some kind of magic to mixes that needs to form the core of the thing instead of just, a couple dry ingredients and powdered milk.

presumably as a step of intermediate complexity between mix baking and scratch baking, when neither of those fits your complexity needs exactly?

In particular, this is a useful technique for people living in dorms, or traveling, or similar situations!

Baking from scratch means you’ve got to buy a whole tin of baking powder and only use a spoonful, and a whole thing of flour, and maybe multiple kinds of sugar, and maybe cocoa powder, maybe spices, and there’s no way you’re going to use up any of those, you’ll just have to pitch them when you move out.

Not to mention that you’ve got maybe one measuring cup, and there’s no way you’ve got a sifter, and you probably don’t have measuring spoons and how sure are you that your eating spoon is actually the right size…

Scratch baking is great if you’re going to do it regularly! But for situations where it doesn’t make sense to invest in all the tools and ingredients, cake mixes are very practical.

Scratch means you have to worry about ratios. Scratch means you have to keep cake flour on hand. Scratch means you don’t get the benefit of some of the CHEMICALS in the mix that are 100% beneficial to excellent cake.

I bake some things from scratch. Anything requiring creaming a mix is basically a sad joke because all the work is the creaming. Standard cake is not one of them.

Of course, me being me, a standard cake is usually just a component - I don’t actually like “just cake” that much and canned frosting is terrible. So while I don’t scratch bake cake, that cake is getting saturated with tres leches, or put in a trifle, or getting add-ins before baking anyway.

But in a larger sense, who cares? Baking is hard and for fun anyway. Why bake-shame someone?

Just FYI… A LOT of professional bakers (probably more than half) in the US at least use doctored mixes rather than scratch ingredients even for their more expensive cakes like wedding cakes. There are whole forums where they talk about this amongst themselves.

In taste tests they’ve found that while customers may ask for a cake from scratch they often end up preferring the taste and texture of the doctored mixes when all is said and done.

Unless you have some particular allergies or some other reason to avoid box mixes they are often the better way to go.

I’ve been looking into opening up a home bakery and part of the task of producing food for the public is making sure your items are standardized so that every person who gets a cupcake (for instance) is getting the same quality, size, etc., etc.

Doctored mixes really help with that since big companies like Duncan Hines buys in larger quantities, can afford to test/discard bad batches and will rarely have a one-off batch of flour or flavoring that are bad or go bad like you can at home.

Nice seeing this going around again!

My standard cake is box mix + milk for water + melted butter for oil + dash vanilla extract + frosting from scratch. This really seems to hit the right spot for people of “mmm, homemade” but also “exactly like Mom used to make.” (Do that for a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, add candles, and serve to a college student, for the maximum “this is exactly what I didn’t want to admit I wanted” potential.)

Seconding the addition of coffee to chocolate cake; a tablespoon of instant coffee powder in a dark chocolate cake makes it taste chocolatey-er without actually adding a perceptible coffee flavor (I don’t like coffee flavor, personally, and I still do this).

Another good option is a box lemon cake mix plus maybe 3 lemons. Zest the lemons, set the zest aside, then juice them and use that in place of the water; then use the zest to flavor the frosting. Adds a nice fresh kick.

Chocolate chips can be dumped straight into chocolate cake mix without fussing with anything to compensate. Sprinkles can go into white cake mix to make your own “confetti cake” with any specific color combo you like. Any kind of dried fruit can be chopped to raisin-size, soaked in hot water (or, better yet, hot juice with a couple of citrus peels added) for an hour, drained, and then added to batter.

Replacing part (up to maybe 1/3) of the water with yogurt (and then the rest with milk as usual) will give you a denser cake; make sure to check if it’s cooked through, and bake a little longer if necessary.

Swirling things through batter for that fancy marbled look is easy. Consider melting chocolate chips with butter, or mixing brown sugar with cinnamon and a little melted butter, or making up two different cake mixes and swirling those together.

I swear by the Cake Mix Doctor’s two cookbooks (one’s general, one’s specifically for chocolate cakes). I think every birthday cake I had as a child was out of those.

@yourlocalangryautistic

Okay so I made these without the cinnamon and nutmeg and lemme just tell you:

THESE MUFFINS TASTE EXACTLY LIKE DOUGHNUTS.

I DUNNO WHAT KIND OF VOODOO I PULLED IN THE KITCHEN BUT SLAP MY NIPPLES AND CALL ME BETSY BECAUSE THEY TASTE LIKE DOUGHNUTS HALLELUJAH IN THE HIGHEST.

i made these today! they’re DELIGHTFUL! (i made them with the cinnamon and nutmeg, but now i’m planning on trying them without and maybe filling the middle with some kind of jelly???? we shall see.)

slap my nipples and call me betsy

OH HEY it’s the french breakfast puffs recipe I use as a base for the gf version I am trying to perfect.

welp, we’re gonna make these

YOOOOO… the recipe has spread. I’m conflicted about this, because I keep my copy semi-secret, because I use these to make friends. And then people can’t stop being friends with me if they ever want to eat them again (which is, I assure you, a compelling argument–they are delicious). Honestly, I bake a *lot*, and people always tell me these are their favorite thing that I’ve made. But yes: if you’ve ever eaten my doughnut muffins, this is the recipe I use! PERSONALLY I like to double the amount of nutmeg/cinnamon in them, throw in a shake or two of ground cloves, and about ½-1tsp vanilla extract.

I’M GONNA MAKE THEM FILLED WITH RASPBERRY JAM FOR CHANUKKAH

Geode cake pops crystal formations

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Show me what you cooked!

Wait this is actually so helpful

where was this when i was making my lembas bread