Lessons Learned

I have done a great deal of baking and cooking this weekend. Much of it was the usual monthly bean supper preparations but I also baked a 4^th of July cake for someone. As experienced as I am as a cook and a baker, I did learn some valuable lessons in the past few days.

First of all, when baking a cake, letting the dairy products come to room temperature really effects the height and fluffiness of the cake. I have always let my butter stand at room temperature so it can be nice and soft and easier to incorporate into the batter. But I have always just taken the eggs and milk directly from the fridge. Well, on Friday, I let all the dairy items sit until they were at room temperature…yes, even the milk. And, let me tell you, that cake was fluffy and had such height! I made a strawberry cake and I mixed it in my stand mixer. The batter filled the bowl and it was so light and airy. I tasted a little bit of it when I trimmed it before I frosted it. It is incredibly moist and flavorful. Never knew that the temperature of all the dairy products could make that much of a difference. Lesson learned.

The second thing I learned had to do with the preparation of the beans. We have been doing this bean supper for almost six years (or is it seven?) and we have always soaked the beans overnight. Well, the beans didn’t get soaked this weekend. The person who was supposed to soak them forgot to and rushed over on Saturday morning to boil them instead. She cooked them for about an hour and, when I arrived, the pots were filled with soft beans. I had to adjust my recipe in that I fried the bacon until it was crisp and I sautéed the onions and garlic until soft. Then I let my sauce cook a little longer so that all the flavors were well incorporated. Finally I combined it all together in the roasters and let them cook. They were done earlier than usual but they had a bit too much liquid. Oh well. They were still delicious. So what did I learn? The beans don’t need to be soaked and, if they aren’t but boiled instead, use less liquid. Lesson learned.

Finally, in the interest that I am entering my apple crumb pie into a pie contest next weekend, I was very careful in making my pie yesterday. Not that I’m not always careful but yesterday I paid close attention to exactly how many apples I used, how much cinnamon I put in and carefully measured the nutmeg. The pie turned out wonderful and I know precisely how I did it. Most months when I put it together I’m a little casual with the amount of apples, generous with the cinnamon and nutmeg and, even though it tastes good, sometimes it is a little too many apples or becomes a little too cinnamoney or a little too nutmeggy. Yes I do have a recipe, my own recipe, written down but I have always used it as a guideline and not necessarily an exact “by the book” recipe. I have always adjusted it based on the types of apples available, the size of the pie plate and whether I was feeling more cinnamoney or nutmeggey. But, for something important like a pie contest where I need to submit two pies of the same recipe, I want to make sure I use the exact ingredients in each pie so they will both be absolutely delicious. The lesson? When baking a pie, no matter how many times I have done it, it is good to write down adjustments to a recipe when I have found the adjustments that work. Lesson learned.

I find it interesting that, after all these many years of cooking and baking, I am still learning. I guess it is the same with anything else in that practice makes perfect. Or, should I say, practice makes better. Makes me wonder if things will continue to evolve and I will discover more ideas and notions that will make my cooking and baking even better. It will probably happen. Things always change, grow and develop over time. That is just the nature of how everything is done. If it didn’t happen that way, we would all still be living in caves and eating mammoth for dinner. Wonder how I would cook that???