A vender at the local farmers' market had a variety of apples. She let me taste a couple, and I settled on a tart, yellowish green with golden brown coloring. She split a half bushel for me, and I only realized after I was home that I did not have the bag with the name written on it. I will try to find out the name next Saturday. On Tuesday, I baked an apple pie using some of them. I probably won't be able to cut into it until tomorrow, since it needs to sit for at least four hours, and the recipe (Cooks Illustrated Baking) says next day is best.
As the article I gave a link to above says, the only foods that are REQUIRED under federal law to have an expiration date is infant formula and some baby foods. In some states milk is required to have an expiration date so it can be removed (by state law) when it is past that date.
Otherwise, all those notations and dates are voluntary and IMHO sometimes they're rather meaningless.
Here's what one site has to say about using outdated foods.
I've had a lot of foods go bad long before the date on the package, which is really frustrating. Recently it was a package of Sargento cheese that was moldy when I opened it a week after I bought it. I couldn't remember what store I bought it at (I almost never save receipts), so I just tossed it.
I've been known to cut out moldy parts of fruits and vegetables (if small) and use the rest, but cheese is one of those things that I won't use if moldy, unless it's the mold it was designed to have. I also won't use moldy bread, even if the mold might be the one that produced penicillin in Dr. Fleming's lab.
Beyond that, if it looks and smells OK, I'll generally use it. Dry items are ones I'll use beyond their expiration date. Flour is OK as long as it hasn't gone stale or the oils in it turned rancid, but both of those produce easily recognized odors.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
Some years ago my sister-in-law asked us to make a rutabaga dish for Thanksgiving dinner from a recipe she gave us. It took at least an hour for the two of us to slice up a large rutabaga, a band saw would have helped! (And neither of us cared for the taste of the dish.)
A bisque is supposed to be a thick but creamy smooth soup. Most of the time when I make soup it's really thick, but that's because it has lots of meat and vegetables (and often noodles) in it.
I just tested my SAF red instant yeast which has been in my freezer for probably 2 years in a ziplock bag. It's also thawed out twice due to hurricanes. And, it behaved perfectly! I am impressed.
However, I do have in my cabinets never opened KAF products such as boiled cider (2015) and Vermont cheese powder and instant clear gel (both fall 2016). Are these still useable. KAF seems to put very short use by dates on their products and I'm wondering if that's just to sell more.
If you all say to toss them I will, but obviously I'd rather not.
Thanks!
I'll be making a BLT for lunch and pizza (baking or cooking?) for dinner.
I like the ginger on oatmeal idea, especially as oatmeal time is now (after a week of 80s and 90s we are having nights in the 40s).
We can buy caster sugar here at Whole Foods and we needed it for some recipe. Had I known that it's just an English name for super fine sugar I would never have bought because it was stupid pricey but my wife likes to follow recipes and this was one from Jamie Oliver. And now that we have it I will not throw it away because it was stupid pricey. 🙂
And while much has dropped in price since the Amazonization of Whole Foods, they've yet to touch the baking aisle ingredients.
If you've ever read any of Rick Riordan's books he has one where his heroes must fight the queen of the Amazons who is, of course, the true head of Amazon (sorry Jeff B). It is the Amazons' secret plan to have us all buy everything from them and that is how they will conquer the world!
This book is about old so Mr. Riordan was pretty prescient.
Well, I'm not sure another 5 minutes would have made much difference. While it is a cake on the outside, the inside is reminiscent of pumpkin pie.
Here is the recipe: https://www.bakefromscratch.com/pumpkin-cake-with-brown-butter-streusel/
Theirs does look bit more cakey than mine, but it also seems to have sunk a bit in the center. I used homemade pumpkin puree--but I did weigh it for 15 oz. Mine was probably a bit more watery than canned, but I've made this substitution in other pumpkin recipes without a problem.
I'm going to ask Cass about it. I note that the sugar does far outweigh the flour, and I recall that causing problems for me in another recipe that he then balanced.
The flavor is actually wonderful, and that streusel topping superb, so I would like to figure out how to bake the cake successfully.
ADDENDUM: The online recipe says it is supposed to be a "pumpkin pie like" cake. NOW they tell me. They say THERE (not in the magazine I worked from) that for a more traditional cake, use only 1 cup of pumpkin. So, what I ended up with is correct, except it could have baked another 5 minutes.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by
BakerAunt.
On Saturday afternoon, I baked a new recipe: "Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Streusel," from Bake from Scratch 4.2 (Fall 2016), p. 45. I baked it exactly except for substituting in 2/3 cup white whole wheat flour (flour total in cake is 1 2/3 cup). I also used homemade pumpkin puree from the "peanut pumpkin" I processed last week. In making the streusel, which includes roasted salted pumpkin seeds, I initially burned the butter instead of browning it and had to throw that butter away and start over. The cake did come out of the pan nicely after 10 minutes cooling, but next time, I'll probably let it cool for 15 minutes. I was not sure about cooling it on a rack, so I inverted it back onto another plate to cool. It has sunk a bit in the center, so even though it tested done at 55 minutes, I probably should have baked it another 5 minutes.
I would expect it to be a little denser, ie, take up less volume after being ground into smaller pieces, for the same reason that table salt weighs more per teaspoon than the larger grain kosher salt, but if you take it all the way to powdered sugar, I think it gains volume, because a powder can hold more suspended air in it.
If you weigh it beforehand, it might lose a little weight when you grind it up (dust and whatever sticks to the food processor), but probably not enough to matter.
Followup: The C&H site says that their superfine baker's sugar is measured the same as regular sugar, which implies that a cup of both would be the same weight, or the difference so small as to be negligible.
You might try superfine baker's granulated sugar to combat the grittiness, you can make it yourself in a food processor, but I usually keep a container of it on hand.
Our younger son was a pretty fussy eater, until he went to study in Germany for 7 1/2 months. When he came back, he'd eat just about anything we made and was much more willing to eat spicy foods (not that we do a lot of them, but he'd object to sweet peppers in vegetable soup.)
I made GF cinnamon rolls today, the KAF recipe (but without the butter flavoring), and I used a simple milk and powdered sugar icing. They didn't rise as much as I had hoped, but that's often the case with GF baking.
My understanding is that edible wafer paper is mostly sugar with some stabilizers to make it into sheets.
If there's a store than handles a good selection of Wilton products (eg, Michaels, Jo-Ann), they may carry them, a package isn't very expensive, probably under $4.
On Wednesday, I tried a new recipe: "Brickle Bars," from Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book (1998), p. 219. It is a variation on their "Easy Fudge Brownies," except that 3/4 cup almond brickle pieces and 1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips are sprinkled on top before baking. I'd describe it as a fudgy brownie with a candy coating on top. I lined the pan with parchment paper, so that I could remove them for cutting. I will bake this recipe again.
To go with the leftover pork on Wednesday, and to take advantage of cooling weather, I tried a new recipe, "Crispy Roasted Garlic Potatoes," which appeared in Cook's Country (sorry, it does not have an issue number or date). I used yellow potatoes, as I had no red ones, and as they were small, I cut them in half. I had about 3.1 pounds, so I doubled the recipe for the coating. I used grapeseed oil as it would not smoke at the roasting temperature of 450F. I did not add the minced garlic (already had garlic powder in the coating) or the lemon zest added to the potatoes before serving, but I did add the butter. We liked it a lot. The potatoes were not crunchy, but they were meltingly good to eat. I will be making it again.
