Yeah, I guess it’s all what a person is used to. I like being able to use the same container (cup measure) for milk, water, flour, and sugar. I do see how the weights of such things can be very different (I assume flour is lighter than sugar, and milk is lighter than water…?) which could make a very big difference in baking, but I’ve also heard that your ovens just have a few temperatures (low, medium and high, any in-between?) wheras ours have several, and they range from 200 to 500, and are marked in 25 degree segments (200, 225, 250, 275, 300…on up to 500, then Broil), so it just seems strange.
In other words, it would seem that you’re much more precise at measuring, but very casual about oven temperatures. Is that a wrong impression?
What’s the difference between the sugar maples that grow in Canada and the ones that grow on my neighbor’s property? The most important thing to the end product is the sugaring process, and as a rule I don’t think Canadians take it far enough.
Well… you’re not supposed to do that either. You use liquid measuring cups for liquids, so you can get the exact level and not worry about slopping over when you fill something to the brim. And you use solid measuring cups for solids like flour and sugar, so you can level them off with a knife.
As far as weighing, the big deal is flour. It’s more exact because flour is compressible. Sugar you don’t need to weigh.
Um, no. Where’d you hear that? Electric ovens are marked in degrees (°F or °C, depending on age) gas ovens are marked with “Gas mark” numbers (I assume they still are – long time since I used a gas oven).
It’s actually less complicated and messy to measure by weight in my opinion. More and more cookbooks (at least here in the US) are including ingredient weight along with volume in their recipes.
When I bake nowadays, I grab my scale and a bowl, put bowl on scale, turn scale on. It zeros out. Add my flour - big spoonfuls at first, smaller until I get the weight I want. Takes about half the time as the old dip-leve method, and it’s more accurate. Grab the sugar, do the same thing, right into the same bowl. Faster, and all I’ve dirtied is one bowl and maybe a spoon.
Sticky things, like molassas or shortening or peanut butter are MUCH easier by weight rather than trying to measure them first into a measuring cup then into a mixing bowl.
I really never use volume measures for dry ingredients since I’ve started with the scale. It’s just so much easier by weight.
A combination of the sites listed above will have you making huge 1 cm thick pancakes using 1/4 cup (50 ml) of batter each. Don’t do it! Smaller and thinner is much better.
Don’t overmix your batter. As someone said above, lumps are good. They do not end up as clumps of raw flour in the finished product.
Let your batter sit for about 5 minutes before cooking, so the baking soda/powder or buttermilk can do it’s thing. You’ll see some bubbles form in the mix.
The pan needs to be hot enough to set the batter when you pour it in so it doesn’t keep spreading out, but you don’t want it too hot or the bottom may scorch before it’s cooked.
You can make them any size they want, we also have a “Silver Dollar” size here.
I am not a big fan of maple syrup, the thought of maple candy makes me gag. Don’t let the maple “snobs” force you to use something you don’t have or don’t want, you can put anything you want on your pancakes. You can use fruit preserves, cinnamon-sugar, powdered sugar, butter, or you can make a simple syrup with a fruit juice that you prefer (I usually make blueberry). You can even make the pancakes savory if you prefer. They’re your pancakes, make them the way you want and enjoy.
Count me out of the syrup snobbery. Real maple syrup pours like water, soaks into the pancakes instantly (where’s the fun if you can’t sop each forkful?), and has an alcohol-like aftertaste, which is fine if that’s what you’re into, but I’m not. Me, I likes “syrup”, maple-and-buttery flavored by artificial means. Tastes sweet, stands high on the pancake or waffle, and generally does what a good syrup should.
Knowing when to flip your pancakes is a knack. Watch for the edges to start to look dry. That’s a good clue.
Every household in a America has a set (often several) of Measuring cups that offer 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup and 1/4 cup sizes for dry measure, and a glass measuring cup for liquid measure marked in fractions of a cup and ounces, as well as a set of measuring spoons from Tablespoon down to 1/4 teaspoon. Few houses have a kitchen scale. So there’s no guesstimating. If you want 1/3 cup sugar, you grab the 1/3 cup measure, scoop up some sugar, level it off, and done.
Fanny Farmer is the mother of level measures in the US, and I’m quite certain that Land O’ Lakes (a Minnesota butter cooperative) invented the packaging of butter in 1/4 lb sticks with the Tablespoons marked off on the wrapper.
OK I want to make something like French onion soup . The recipe calls for 2 lbs of onions. How are you going to get the correct amount if you don’t have kitchen scales?
Define a medium onion. Also I would have thought that is it much less hassle measuring “messy” things like butter or soft margarine on a scale ,than having having to scoop the stuff into a cup and then try and get all of it out, without leaving some of it in the cup.
Butter and margarine comes premeasured in 1/4 lb sticks, further subdivided into Tablespoons by markings on the wrapper to address this exact issue (see my previous post re: Land O’ Lakes and this practice). A recipe calls for 5 Tablespoons, you slice off the right chunk with a knife.
A medium onion is a medium sized onion. It’s not big ot tiny. Cooking isn’t rocket science. A little onion more or less never hurt anything. OR, you could purchase a certain poundage at the store and use what you bought.
I guesstimate. It’s not like French onion soup (and lots of other things) are utterly ruined by having slightly too much or too little onion. In baking, of course, that’s less true, but I don’t bake (I figure, health-wise, I’m better off without easy access to cookies, cakes, et cetera). Actually, I tend to stay away from most recipes that call for very precise measurements, because that makes cooking seem too much like work.
Some of our recipes would call for “2 cups onions, sliced”, or something like that. I just guesstimate in that case, too- I don’t actually put the onions in a measuring cup.
Oh, all this confusion about temperatures and flipping. It ain’t rocket science!
When the pan is heating up, occasionally flick a few drops of water into it. If it just lays there and sizzles, the pan is too cool (like me ). If it dances, the pan is perfectly hot (like me ).
When the 'cakes look slightly dry around the edges and the edge bubbles pop but don’t go away, flip 'em. Another minute or so on the other side and they’re done. Easy peasy.
The reason lumps are good is that you don’t want to over stir. Just enough to bring everything together, and a tad more. Otherwise you’ll end up making Frisbees.
Lumps cook out. Let the cooking process eliminate them. Trying to stir them out activates the gluten and will make your cakes rubbery.
You’ll get the temperature wrong at first. Everybody does. After a few cakes, a few adjustments, you’ll find the perfect point on the dial.
Key: 99% of the cooking is done on one side. If you flip too much, the surface becomes tough. So you put the batter in, and you let it cook until the upper surface is no longer shiny and liquid. You flip only to finish that side with a little brown.
If when you flip you discover that the fire was too hot–the bottom overbrowned before the top got unshiny–then lower the fire a tad for the next one.
I put a cover on; helps cook the cake through in slightly less time, reducing overbrownage.
Your cakes won’t be perfect until the 4th or 5th one, for most people. The first few will be slightly less than perfect. So don’t serve them to your mother in law, just eat them yourself.
). If it dances, the pan is perfectly hot (like me