liv | (Reply)

From:

liv

Thank you, I really appreciate this advice.

Regarding the butter temperature, how narrow a range of temperature are we talking for melting butter? I mean, I want it to be liquid, not solid, but I don't want it to be hot. 6 oz is quite a lot of butter so it won't melt instantly. What I did was I put the butter in a pan on the smallest gas hob on its lowest setting, and left it there while I did all the rest of the steps. Maybe I should've taken the melted butter off the hob and only just warmed it if it looked like it was trying to solidify? At least with gas I can turn the heat on and off instantly, that helps if I'm aiming to keep my butter within quite a narrow temperature range.

Is the sugar actually supposed to dissolve in the butter? I imagine it will eventually, sugar is famous for being soluble in both non-polar and aqueous solvents. But it didn't look like it was going to on any sensible timescale, I just had a fairly homogeneous mixture with a slightly grainy texture. And

azurelunatic says above you're not supposed to dissolve sugar in fat.

When you talk about boiling sugar in liquid, do you mean actually bringing the sugar itself to boiling point? Because I think that's pretty hot! Or do you mean putting the sugar into boiling liquid? I'm sorry for asking very pedantic questions here, I'm trying to translate from chemistry to cooking. Really useful to know about crystallization, though, I think I've made that mistake sometimes, like when I was trying to make a sweet lemon drink because I had a sore throat and accidentally ended up making toffee.

Eggs: does "beating" eggs refer to just mixing together the yolk and white, or does it mean making the eggs actually fluffy as if you were making meringue? I suppose you can only do that with separated eggs, not whole eggs.

Flour: ok, I need to cool the butter/sugar mix so that it doesn't make the flour lumpy, but hopefully not so cool that it starts to solidify again, is that right? And that would be less lump-prone than sifting the flour?

Details for a basic cake would be much appreciated, thank you!