Cake Flour vs. All-Purpose Flour

Today is Howard's birthday! Also George Eliot's birthday (my new project has begun: chronicling the experience of reading Middlemarch: From Here to Middlemarch). We woke up and cuddled with Baudelaire for a bit, and then walked to the grocery store. It's Howard's favorite kind of day: the sky is a solid gray and it's chilly, but not too cold. I made pancakes from scratch and sausage. Howard asked for a chocolate cake (which I made with Aaron in May and that journeyed across many neighborhoods afterwards) and so after breakfast I made him a chocolate cake.

My recipe called for cake flour, which I'm out of. Which led me to ask: What's the difference between cake flour and all-purpose flour, and are they interchangeable? What I learned today is that cake flour has less protein than all-purpose flour, and helps to make a cake light and fluffy while retaining its shape, but isn't tough or dense. 

If you are like me, and habitually forget important ingredients in your recipes, it's valuable to know how to make substitutions. My most frequent Google search term is: "what's a substitute for _______?" So when you are making a dessert that calls for cake flour and all you have is all-purpose, here's what you can do:

For every cup of flour your recipe calls for, remove two tablespoons and replace it in your flour bag, or use it to dust the greased pans, like I did. Replace it with two tablespoons of corn starch, and sift together five times. 

If you are like me, and don't have a sifter, whisk together multiple times with a fork. I hope that works, because that's what I did. I tried and make sure it got lots of air. 

When we remove some of the flour, we are cutting out some of the gluten and replacing it with an agent that inhibits gluten development, leaving the cake tender. Read more about it on Joy the Baker, which is where I learned about it.

Here are the cakes cooling:

I will add photos of the finished project later!

UPDATE 12/2/14: Finally, pictures. Howard's birthday cake with wrapped presents:

Sidebar: Hot Toddy

I've been finding that when I am creative with a recipe and make alterations, it comes first from a financial perspective, and then usually from forgetfulness. I went to the store to buy ingredients for Howard's birthday cake for Saturday and ingredients for mince pie for the 29th. Because it has to be vegan, and most mincemeat contains beef suet, I'm making the mince from scratch. Exciting, right? However, there is a lot in mincemeat. And it's expensive. After walking around the store asking myself: "Can I afford this?" I looked at the list of ingredients again and started asking instead: "Can I go without this?" After paring down the recipe, I selected a few things I figured should probably go in a mince pie: two apples, dried currants, cranberries, prunes, and golden raisins. I eliminated the dark raisins, because it seems redundant, and I'll just double the amount of currants. Additionally, I skipped the mixed candied peel and candied cherries. What I decided was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to the recipe was the rum and brandy.

The first thing I did when I got back home was to make myself a hot toddy. I haven't had one of these in years, and they are delicious. Into one small mason jar I poured:

1/2 t sugar
2 whole cloves
1 small cinnamon stick (one of the ones used in the mulled wine, in fact)
a tiny, butchered slice of lime (because we don't have a lemon and a citrus is a citrus is a citrus, as far as I'm concerned), wrangled from a quarter of a lime found in the back of the fridge
1 shot of rum

Diligently following my Good Housekeeping recipe, I placed a spoon in the glass because it told me that would prevent glass from breaking when I added the boiling water. And ta-da! A hot toddy.

I wanted to be cheeky and add a photo of a hot man named Todd to this post, and when searching for one came across Todd Sanfield, who is about as unique as a Ken doll, nevertheless can lead one to some pretty racy thoughts. Have fun.

Sidebar: Mulled Wine

A moment ago I was lying under a pile of pillows, book in hand, starting to doze. I wanted to do something with my Saturday night, but had this feeling I had "done enough" this week: Lauren's going away party (with a beautiful sweet potato chiffon pie, cream whipped in the bathroom away from the guests), Sidetrack on Monday, SAIC grad lecture Wednesday, an all day extravaganza from the Bucktown Tree House to the Art Institute with my work friend Chelsea on Thursday, and Howard and I, in a sugar-craving frenzy, making a frozen lemon cream pie yesterday. But tonight I wanted to do something! Or have a drink.

I asked Howard: "Do you want to go to the Glenwood for a drink?"

"Sure," he said.

I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep. I wondered what it would be like to go to bed at nine and wake up at six. Would I wake up at six, or would I sleep until ten, like normal? Would I be a much more productive person? Maybe I would go to bed and lie awake thinking of all the things I should do, like work out. Like start working out. Or maybe just stretch.

Howard gasped and his eyes got big. I jolted awake.

"You've got an idea?"

"I've got an idea. Let's make mulled wine!"

He looked up a couple recipes and after a little back and forth, during which I resigned myself to a quiet night reading, we finally decided to get dressed and go around the corner for ingredients.

It's a perfect night for mulled wine. Fat soft snowflakes floating down, and they have started sticking to the grass. It's a glinting, shimmering night. A good night to stay in and sip hot spiced wine.

We poured a giant bottle of cheap wine into our big saucepan and added four cinnamon sticks, four anise stars (which are beautiful!), sixteen cloves, honey, sugar, and a whole sliced orange. Once it was hot, we poured it into a glass (for a picture), and then mugs (to drink).

Now we are going to watch Harry Potter, which Howard is SO EXCITED about. I might sort of read my book while we're watching.

The wine is really good.

The End is Nigh

Image from 28 Days Later

I met with Elise today, which is always inspiring. We talked about our writing projects and ideas for the future. I am currently meandering my way through Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and it's coming up on a perfect season for the slow savoring of a novel. Prompted by my pleasure in this reading experience, I want to tackle one of the largest novels on my shelf, of which I know nothing about: Middlemarch. I have thoughts of a future blog project for that.

But first: working my way through the pies and cakes of Good Housekeeping. I'm feeling antsy now about finishing this project, and so when I got home I made a list of the remaining cakes and pies, not counting the cakes that start with a mix. Then I eliminated the custard pies, because they are disgusting. After that I cut out the ones that were pretty much pouring a can of fruit onto ice cream and calling it a pie, and lastly I scratched out "jelly roll" because it sounds revolting. That leaves me with twenty-six pies/cakes.

The forecast:
Pumpkin chiffon pie for Lauren's going-away party this Saturday
Butternut squash pie next Thursday
? for Howard's birthday on the 22nd
Sour cream pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving at Stephanie and Amanda's
Vegan mince pie at Sydney's on the 28th
Spicy gingerbread cake Dec 4th
Peppermint pie Dec 11th
Grasshopper pie for my birthday Dec 18th
Christmas pie on Christmas
3 layer party cake for the first day of 2015.

HOLY SHIT!

The end is nigh.

Remaining pies:
Butterscotch cream
Concord grape
Deep-dish cherry-berry
Deep-dish plum
Double peanut
Freezer pineapple-orange
Fudge-Nut (makes me smirk every time, which is disgusting)
Gooseberry
Raspberry Ribbon
Rich Bavarian

Remaining cakes:
Angel food
Big orange chiffon
Chocolate chip chiffon
Deluxe marble
German gold poundcake
Merryfield apple
Sugar bush walnut (another one that earns a chuckle)

If anyone is interested in a particular pie or cake, please let me know and we can arrange a date to get together and enjoy it and/or bake it together.

To thwart thee, foul fruit fly

I bought a bunch of bananas earlier in the week (last week?) with the optimistic thought that I'd eat more fruit, instead of just stuffing myself with cream cheese, burritos, and booze. I did have a few, but they quickly turned an unappetizing brown, so I put them in the fridge hoping that might preserve them (and thwart any potential fruit flies!), but instead they rapidly (shrunk?) turned completely brown.

"You gonna make banana bread?" Howard asked me the day before yesterday as we were getting into bed.

"What? Why?"

"I just thought...because of those ripe bananas in the fridge."

"Oh, yeah. Right, yeah, I'm going to make banana bread," I decided.

Tonight after dinner Howard looked up and asked again: "You gonna make banana bread?"

"Yes," I said, carrying our bowls to the kitchen and pulling down Good Housekeeping. Since we don't have loaf pans, I greased and floured a medium casserole dish. In a large glass bowl, I mixed the flour, brown sugar, shortening, and baking powder and soda. I added cinnamon and nutmeg because my recipe didn't call for any spices (or walnuts or raisins).

The bananas were surprising ok-looking under their grotesque skin. I've learned over cursory online "research" that there is an enzyme (?) that breaks down (?) when the bananas are stored in cold temperatures because they are tropical fruits, but though the skin will darken it won't affect the quality of the insides.

The dough was irritatingly sticky, and took a few utensils and fingers to get it spread across the pan, leaving spoons and globs of dough sprawled across the dusting of spilled flour on the counter top. That Crisco, man, it never gets off your hands.

I can't use the stuff without thinking of working at Tulip. We had a lube that was basically Crisco, just more expensive. Which makes me want to add that I wonder when I'll have a job where I'm not wiping up people's spit and leftovers, spurted lube samples, or cat piss. If that sentence doesn't make me want to go to grad school, I don't know what it will require to push me.

Back to the banana bread. It's delicious. Its taste is warm and rich, and the outside is satisfyingly crusty while the inside remains bouncy and soft.