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Cookies don't really come out well if you forget to add the flour.

(For added humiliation, this is a cookie recipe from a knitting book.)

Current Music: Danny Boy - Johnny Cash

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From:

sunburn.livejournal.com

I'm having trouble picturing what would come out at all.

Last night I almost left the salt outta the cupcakes I was making for work. (I had to try out my new mixer, and this recipe called for some creaming and some egg-white-whipping.)

It might've just been bland without the salt, I guess.

From:

jwgh

The dough melted, basically.

From:

femme-liqueur.livejournal.com

not to butt in, but salt is pretty important to baking...it controls the yeast productivity, and without it the yeast would feed like crazy on the sugar and your product would end up tough and bricklike due to gluten overdevelopment...salt also aids in things like retaining moisture & bacterial control, etc....and like you mentioned, it aids in flavor but doesn't produce flavor, because salt merely opens up your taste buds more so they're more receptive to the flavors that are already present in the cupcakes...however too much salt means..."wow, this is really salty!" :)
the creaming is to bring the butter/fat products up to a higher temperature (creaming = slight heat) to ensure proper melting when you bake it (if you don't cream it = it's too cold, it won't melt as soon as it needs to in the oven which means your product will turn out all wrong!). and the whipped egg whites add some buoyancy & air to your cupcakes, as well as some structure. :) mmm...now i want to make cupcakes!!

got a kitchen-aid mixer?

sorry if i totally acted like a know it all...i'm a culinary/baking student at j&w & like to share my (expensive!) knowledge. :)

From:

sunburn.livejournal.com

Alton Brown fan too, right?

Well, if you get to act like a know-it-all, I get to brag about my sweet Kitchenaid (natch!) mixer: 5Qt Professional, 475W, and white in color because it was all they had on the shelf when I found it rather cheap. (I wanted the 6Qt Pro, but the price couldn't be beat.)

And I'm familiar with the necessity of salt in yeast-breads-- yeast-breads are some of my favorite to work with, even though I'm still learning to get them right-- I can do loaves, but I can't get the forms right, so my bagels look mutilated, my pretzels erratic, and don't get me started on king-cake or cinnamon rolls.

But these were easy cupcakes, with the salt being added along with the dry ingredients. I baked them as a kid, and while I remembered whipping egg whites in mom's old 175W Sunbeam mixer, I didn't remember doing it for cupcakes (and yet I remember learning to fold egg whites). As for creaming, I made plenty of batches of cookies by hand before I got the Kitchenaid, and it's always worth the time to combine the butter and sugar into what must be the most perfect-tasting food, a simple marriage of fat and sugar.

Anyway, between the creaming and the whipping I got to test two attachments; now I've got a sourdough starter in the fridge who is probably begging to blow up bread for a change, and a doughhook that needs breakin' in.

From:

femme-liqueur.livejournal.com

sure, i love alton brown! but it's also culinary teaching talking too...:)

i <3 yeast breads. :) i'm starting my baking & pastry AS later this month...i did a year of culinary, and have since realized where my heart lies. LOL...what's wrong with your forms? and why don't your cinnamon rolls turn out ok? are they wound up too tightly? that can sometimes cause them to "explode" upward once the dough expands.

and YES. fat and sugar. the modern manna from heaven. and, i have a white kitchen-aid too!!! do you love it as much as i do??! not to butt in, but salt is pretty important to baking...it controls the yeast productivity, and without it the yeast would feed like crazy on the sugar and your product would end up ...and i have a white kitchen-aid too...do you love it as much as i do?!?!?!? :D oooooh.....dough hook....stop with that dirty talk. :)

From:

sunburn.livejournal.com

P.S. I just read, today, over at Tricks of the Trade (http://www.tradetricks.org/archives/001508.html) a real time-saver for us. Rinse a bowl in white vinegar before whipping egg whites in it-- like cream of tartar, it'll stabilize the eggwhites, and allegedly turn out 5-minutes-worth of whipping in 30 seconds or so. Nice one!

From:

femme-liqueur.livejournal.com

wow, really??!?!?! i had no idea! do you know why that is, scientifically-speaking?

also, if you buy a certain kind of refrigerated egg white & whip it up to foam, it'll whip up to consistency in something like 10 seconds...that's the kind we have in class...it's awesome. but the vinegar/cream of tartar trick is great to know. :)

From:

sunburn.livejournal.com

I dunno-- something about the acid makes the protein foam more firm or stable. Just a pinch of cream of tartar helps. I've also heard that you can increase the volume with a tablespoon of water-- that should be good for about 1 white's-worth of volume. Not sure how much water you can reasonably add, though-- I don't do more than 1 tbsp.

Apparently the copper atoms picked up from a copper bowl can do the same thing to stabilize egg proteins, though I don't know if it's for the same reason, and I can't afford copper. :^)