Friday, February 27, 2009

Flaxseed Meal, the Averter of Baking Disaster

Your task is to make mini cupcakes for a book report project with your son. The cupcakes need to be brought in to school in the morning and naturally its later than you anticipated starting to make them. As your son is mixing the dry ingredients, he gets a little overzealous and the bowl hits the floor. The majority of the dry mixture remains in the bowl but enough flour has hit the floor that you're concerned the wet to dry ingredient ratio might be screwed up. What now?

This was was the scene in my kitchen last night. I tried to eyeball how much had hit the floor. I think it was less than a cup but more than half a cup. I didn't want to take a chance and add more flour. What if I added too much?

I opted instead to add about 1/4 cup of flaxseed meal and 1/4 of oatmeal ground into flour. I hoped that the flaxseed/oatmeal combo would bind the mixture but maintain a moist final product. It worked remarkably well.

SInce I'm spreading baking wisdom, here's a tip I had to search the internet for again. Mini cupcakes take about 16 minutes to cook. For some reason this is the best kept secret in cooking.

If you're wondering what recipes I used, the yellow cake recipe from Simple Treats worked beautifully. We added chocolate chips to some of them which was very nice. The frosting recipe was the vanilla frosting recipe from The Compassionate Cook by PETA. Both were very simple recipes but they worked really well. Rob wants to make them again for his birthday in May.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First, I love your blog. Second, I made note of how long it takes the mini cupcakes to bake. Third, and the main reason I'm writing is to thank you for the Anadama Oatmeal Bread recipe. I've made it twice and it has turned out perfect. Delicious!

Dolores Jones