Sunday, September 24, 2006

Kitchen Scales Reviewed

Cooking For Engineers has a very good post discussing kitchen scales. I find there are a couple of benefits to using a scale to measure ingredients. Measuring flour by weight is much easier than by using a measuring cup, you don't have to worry about consistent packing. Same is true with something like brown sugar. Ingredients like shortening are also easier to weigh than use water displacement or even trying to use a dry measure cup. Ease of measuring leads to repeatability, which is nice when I make the same recipe for sugar cookies or frosting I can become more consistent. The more variables you can control, the better you can do when it comes to baking.

I wish I would have found this post before I purchased my scale. Don't get me wrong, I like my scale and it works fine. But this post is very informative and explains everything you should take into account when you are looking for a scale.

The scale I own is the Salter6055. It has all of the options that Cooking For Engineers recommends and is in the similar price range.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

About Cookies, Et Cetera

Welcome to Cookies, Et Cetera! Cooking was a big part of my life growing up in small town Wisconsin. Sunday dinners at my grandparent's, I can still taste the fresh baked rolls and kuchen. Baking fruitcakes for my church men's club yearly fundraiser with my dad. My summer jobs were all cooking related. Early morning baker, short order cook, catering assistant, anything they let me do I tried. Ultimately I chose the very different and glamorous life of a computer programmer over that of a chef but the love of cooking and baking has never waned. Baking cookies, finding a new candy recipe, or writing about my latest kitchen escapades are some of the simplest pleasures in life to me. Cookies, Et Cetera combines my loves and drives me to try new things and perfect my skills. Here I will record my culinary successes, my baking failures, and my kitchen education.