Touch my Muffins

I expanded my baking pedigree today when I attempted some simple from-scratch muffins. I was only planning to make a loaf of bread, but when I got to the second rising, I thought, "as long as everything's already dirty, why not use this next hour of thumb-twiddling to try something new." Those were my exact thoughts. Verbatim. Note the quotation marks.

But I quickly ran aground when I found I had no baking powder. I had baking soda on hand, but no powder. "What's the difference anyway?" I asked the internet. "Well," says the internet, "baking powder is really just baking soda, but with a palette-neutralizing acidic agent added to enable a steady release of the gases that promote rising; usually cream of tartar."

"But I don't have any cream of tartar, internet-sama. Would lemon-juice work? That's acidic. I've got that!"

"Uh, maybe."

So, I substituted 3/4 of a teaspoon of baking soda, added to the dry mix, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice, added to the wet mix, in place of the 1 tablespoon of baking powder called for in the recipe. Then, for a filling, I threw in some raisins and brown sugar. It tasted good as a batter anyway. Let's see what we get:


In the pan.


Out of the pan.


That golden brown booty.

So we may have overshot the rising agent a tad. Still, they taste pretty good. At least my pantomime seems to think so!


I made pastry!


Was there ever any doubt?

They could be sweeter, actually. But what do I want for raisins and brown sugar? Anyway, next time we'll go 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tbsp lemon juice, and maybe they don't all come out looking like breast implants.

But what about the bread?


Even my bread looks sexy.

Best tasting loaf yet! Though I need to work on my shaping method. This rolling it up and tucking it under business gives the ends more lift than the middle.


That's going straight to my hips.

Bread without a Bread Pan

I refrained from purchasing a loaf of bread when I went grocery shopping today, despite dire need thereof, resolving instead to conjure some up using my many infernal magics. It was to be my first loaf from scratch and all was coming along well enough until I reached for the bread pan - into which I meant to summon my dark-pastry from the netherworlds below - when I realized that I don't actually own a bread pan.

Well, necessity is the inbred cousin of invention... Have at you kitchen cupboards!



Rise from your grave!

Matching a square pan with sides of a tolerable height to a longer pan of similar dimensions I achieved full bread pan velocity. I rubbed those sides of each pan in margarine which would make contact with the dough, and continued reciting incantations from my book of shadows. The flames of Hades soon rose to an even 400 degrees and a mere thirty minutes later I was manging on one tasty voodoo sandwich.


Fresh from Hell's own Oven!


Cerberus gets the scraps.