Food Scientist Shirley Corriher's tips for baking perfect cookies seem to be everywhere at the moment. On National Public Radio, her advice for crumbly cookies is to add a tablespoon of water to a cup of flour. That will make the proteins — glutenin and gliadin — hold together. In the New York Times she's one of several culinary experts weighing on why you must keep butter cool.Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. But food scientists, chefs and dairy professionals stress butter’s unique and sensitive nature the way helicopter parents dote on a gifted child.Although I have not heard of Corriher before, I am tempted to check out her new book Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes. Amazon customers give it some rave reviews.
We had homemade ice cream for dessert on Thanksgiving. (My dad, never having seen our machine, asked, "Whose home was the ice cream made in?") But the machine we have uses a cooling pan with some kind of chemical sealed inside. You put the pan in the freezer before using it, then just add the ingredients and let the machine stir them up. Not much to it.
I came across a discussion on a homeschool email list of the American Chemical Society's high school textbook Chemistry in the Community (ChemCom) and thought I'd throw it out there for anyone interested. The textbook is muy expensive, but there's a companion website with supplementary student material, including animations, that might be useful even if you don't use the text.
(And if you want to send my family a little holiday cheer, and maybe save a little money, come back here and buy the items you see at MAKE from my Amazon store. Those little kickbacks I get when you click through from my websites are appreciated!)