cutting pastry
Dec. 19th, 2007 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishNicholas Was . . ., a heartwarming tale from Mr Neil.
What inspires me to break two weeks of silence? Is it a report on the reading (which went well, and my most sincere thanks to all in attendance)? The trip to Green Valley Book Fair the day after? Giving a presentation at work that included the phrase "No one actually reads the manuals"? Initiating Secret Project Rock? Peeking out of my shell by attending a delightful party where I knew no one but the hostess, and her only barely?
No, it's buying a pastry cutter.
I've made coffeecake a few times now-- it's easy and tasty, and it gives me an excuse to make the kitchen smell really good. The only difficult part has been the "cut butter into flour mix," which is one of the first steps in the recipe ("Buttermilk coffee cake" from the Plaid Book). I detest this part.
For the uninitiated, "cutting butter into" things involves slicing the butter into small pieces, putting them in the whatever, and then attacking the mixture repeatedly with two butter knives. In theory this gets you a mixture of cold butter and flour, which supposedly puffs up better in the oven, and also yields crumbly sweet stuff that can be sprinkled over the top of the coffeecake. In practice my wrists go numb from the whacking and scooping and stirring after about ten minutes, at which point I give up.
But no more. As a tool-using primate, I picked up a pastry cutter when I went grocery shopping on Monday. It's a D-shaped piece of metal, with the long bar of the D as a handle and several parallel blades for the curve. This simple device makes it almost absurdly easy to cut butter into flour. Five minutes of pounding and I'm done.
Simply amazing. Coffeecake for everyone!
What inspires me to break two weeks of silence? Is it a report on the reading (which went well, and my most sincere thanks to all in attendance)? The trip to Green Valley Book Fair the day after? Giving a presentation at work that included the phrase "No one actually reads the manuals"? Initiating Secret Project Rock? Peeking out of my shell by attending a delightful party where I knew no one but the hostess, and her only barely?
No, it's buying a pastry cutter.
I've made coffeecake a few times now-- it's easy and tasty, and it gives me an excuse to make the kitchen smell really good. The only difficult part has been the "cut butter into flour mix," which is one of the first steps in the recipe ("Buttermilk coffee cake" from the Plaid Book). I detest this part.
For the uninitiated, "cutting butter into" things involves slicing the butter into small pieces, putting them in the whatever, and then attacking the mixture repeatedly with two butter knives. In theory this gets you a mixture of cold butter and flour, which supposedly puffs up better in the oven, and also yields crumbly sweet stuff that can be sprinkled over the top of the coffeecake. In practice my wrists go numb from the whacking and scooping and stirring after about ten minutes, at which point I give up.
But no more. As a tool-using primate, I picked up a pastry cutter when I went grocery shopping on Monday. It's a D-shaped piece of metal, with the long bar of the D as a handle and several parallel blades for the curve. This simple device makes it almost absurdly easy to cut butter into flour. Five minutes of pounding and I'm done.
Simply amazing. Coffeecake for everyone!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 05:58 pm (UTC)I bought a candy thermometer earlier this week. Hopefully I will find another use for it after this holiday season. I have a cookie press that I've tried to use and never managed to use successfully.
Kitchens can get filled with all sorts of weird stuff. I love that apple slicer thing. I don't know if it's the ease of suddenly having the apple sliced or the fact that you pretty much get to wreak havok on an apple. (It's like wolver for fruit - but with more function.)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 01:46 pm (UTC)I am trying very very hard to avoid filling my kitchen with things that have only one use, no matter how small they are, unless I'm likely to make the thing that they're used for fairly often. Since I've made coffeecake an average of once every two months, this is acceptable.
Apple slicer/corers are really neat, though.