Julie & Julia

I am a bit behind on my postings but am skipping ahead anyhow. I am watching the movie Julie and Julia on one monitor while I type and work on my second monitor. Oh what bliss is two monitors!!! What a wonderful movie and I'm only halfway through. I'll probably watch it a few times before I return it - gotta love Redbox.

I was asked to teach a friend's husband how to make mini cupcakes and fondant. They are moving to Japan and opening a bakery and are interested in making small, cute desserts. To say the least I am flattered and hope I can deliver on every expectation. So for the next two Saturday's that is where I'll be. I made a list of all the supplies we'll need and which recipes we'll use. I am very excited.

For the preparations I thought it wise to take my battered packet of recipes and clean them up a bit. To make them shorter I removed all the steps that I knew by heart and were just taking up space. Sift together dry ingredients, fill cupcake liners 1/2-1/3 full, bake until toothpick in center comes out clean, etc. Turns out that wasn't a great idea since I'm always asked for my recipes and I don't mind sharing. They're not much good to others without all the steps so now I have to add them back in. Also the clean-up is a bit literal since most of the pages have some sort of food splattered on them.

I firmly believe in using a food scale to get consistent results every time, which is important when I'm making something someone purchased. They are paying for that consistency. You can buy a pretty good digital scale for about $15, I found mine online. It should at least show ounces by tenths (ex: 9.8) and grams, which are more accurate since they are smaller increments than ounces. It's also helpful if you're using recipes from other countries.

I had a few conversion tables, but none of them seemed to match exactly. So I found a conversion calculator online that I trust and re-did all my measurements (http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/us_cups_to_weight.htm & http://www.angelfire.com/bc/incredible/weightmeasure.html). This is also handy to figure out how many cups are in a pound so you know how much to purchase, especially for buying in bulk. There are 16 ounces in a pound, so if a cup of honey is 12 ounces then 16/12 = 1.3 cups per pound.

1 Cup = Ounces/Grams
Brown Sugar = 7/200
Butter = 8/225
Cake Flour = 4/100
Cream Cheese = 8/225
Chocolate Chips = 6/175
Cocoa = 4/100
Coconut =3/75
Cornstarch (Cornflour) = -5/125
Corn Syrup = 11/300

Evaporated Milk = 7.8
Flour = +4/+100
Honey = 12/340
Oatmeal, Dry = 3/75
Oil, Vegetable = 8/225
Peanut Butter = 9/250
Powdered Sugar = -5/125
Pumpkin = 8/225
Shortening = 8/225
Sour Cream = 8/225
Sugar =8/225

More to come, have a sweet day!