I didn’t learn to measure anything until I was 30. I just cooked by vibes. My girlfriend started getting really irritated that I would make something and she would never have it again. Something like it? Sure. But it? No. So I started actually learning how to cook and know how much was going in .

The heating time time on some frozen chicken strips was for “a cup”. Of long frozen pieces of chicken.

What happened to grandmothers cooking and baking from normal ingredients, using handwritten recipes collected on papers randomly stuck into an old cook book?

I was making a galette for the first time and while I was going over the epic saga that is making your own puff pastry I said, “fuck it, I’ll just buy some from the freezer section at the store”. It came out great and I saved 3 hours of my life.

Cake mixes use cake flour which is a super low protein flour great for cakes. Pastry flour likewise is a lower protein percentage wise. Bread flour is like 12%, AP is around 10 or 11% protein by weight. Cake flour is like 8% which is great for cake but limited.

So the boxed cake mixes are pre-mixed with leaveners like baking powder and soda but they are a way to buy not too much cake flour, as well.

“we can’t have pancakes because I didn’t buy any mix” “What? Mix? You know you can just make that stuff on your own. Right?”

We have reached a point where, despite celebrity chefs existing, some people have zero idea that you can make stuff without a can of this, a block of cream cheese, a box of that and a bottle of this. They don’t know the first thing about cooking. To them pretzels are something you buy from someone else and sometimes you have to bake them yourself.

At least if I bought the 20 ounce bag, that’s divisible by 4, and taking out 12, leaves 8… but still…

Baking shouldn’t start with a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.

Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032

Comments

But then the product would cost more and people would immediately go to whatever other brand was available out of spite or budget consciousness.

Margarine? I didn’t know people still used that.

I was making a galette for the first time and while I was going over the epic saga that is making your own puff pastry I said, “fuck it, I’ll just buy some from the freezer section at the store”. It came out great and I saved 3 hours of my life.

1. The products already cost more, regardless, and they HAVE sent me to a different brand in a different store that didn’t change sizes. The other one costs more than the 12oz., but it less per pound (something like $1.59 for 12oz or $1.99 for 16oz. – you get the idea). Pre-COVID, these would regularly go on sale for $.99 a pound.

2. For me it is oil and not margarine, just like the example says. You will find lots of kosher recipes do not use butter because you can’t eat dairy with meat – and even if you aren’t eating meat, you still need dairy from a kosher animal. Cheese can’t have animal rennet. There are lots of rules. Anyway, it is easier to skip butter for anything that might get eaten with meat.

This makes me wonder if a quarter cup of butter was ever less than half of a whole stick…

I’ve shared my grandmothers recipe before, worth sharing again. Caution: Makes a metric fuckton of pancakes. Make for multiple people. You cannot eat this many pancakes.

1 Qt. Buttermilk
2 TBS Baking Soda
1 TBS Salt
4 Cups Flour
2 TBS Baking Powder
1 Pkg Dry Yeast
1/4 C. Oil
6 Eggs
1 cup of milk the next morning.

Put 1 quart buttermilk in large bowl and add 2 TBS Baking SODA and 1 TBS Salt.

Mix 4 cups of flour with 2 TBS Baking POWDER, stir this mixture into the buttermilk.

Don’t mix up the SODA with the POWDER. You might not think it will make a difference, it does.

Add one package of dry yeast, 1/4 cup oil. Mix.

Whip 6 eggs till foamy, fold in mixture. Do not use electric mixer, use mixer tine by hand.

Pour batter into large pitcher or bowl. Cover with foil. Refrigerate overnight.

The next morning put a cup of milk in the pitcher to thin the batter.

Heat pan until hot. Add 3 TBS or so of oil, when water droplets sizzle in the pan it’s ready.

Cook pancakes in 2s or 3s. When the tops are covered in steam-holes then it’s ready to flip. 2 to 3 minutes or so. Can be as fast as 1 minute. Do not turn your back or they will burn.

Lasts 10 days to 2 weeks in fridge. Yeast will turn black over time, this is normal. Stir batter before use.

Cooking freehanded can work. Cooking is art. Baking, on the other hand, is science. Every ingredient must be measured precisely, or you’ll get seriously funny results. And often on the bad side of funny.

I stock three different protein levels in my kitchen. Cake flour is used up in my Ukrainian paprika chicken and dumplings recipe. I never make cakes.

How do they distinguish between those flours in the US? Here we have three main grades: 405, 550, and 1070, denoting low to high protein wheat flour.

Baking powder and yeast. They weren’t taking any chances. Did she work in a kitchen of lumberjacks?

Grandma grew up in the 80s eating microwave dinners. She never learned to cook.

Stuff like that is available to buy at places like bulk barn. You can buy by weight or volume there.

White cake mix is easy though:

2¾ cups cake flour
1½ cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine salt, sea salt or himalayan
4 tablespoons softened unsalted butter

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Then use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. Blend until the butter is not longer detectable and the mix is a fine crumb.

Store in an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.

Alternately, skip the butter step until just before use. No need to refrigerate then.