Best practices vs. reality

January 14, 2023 by
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As I made a chocolate Bundt cake today for a friend’s birthday (the Chocolate ganache bundt cake from Zoë Bakes Cakes), I couldn’t help but think of how many ways I was not adhering to best practices when baking. According to the experts, you shouldn’t separate eggs using the shells (I did), and you should crack each into a separate bowl just in case it is spoiled (I didn’t). The recipe said to sift the dry ingredients to remove any lumps; instead I just ran a whisk through them and hoped for the best. I didn’t measure the vanilla, I eyeballed it. Same for the baking soda and salt. I did not scrape down the bowl as often as the recipe instructed.

Despite my cavalier ways, the cake turned out well and received rave reviews, even from an admitted chocolate snob. Nevertheless, today’s bake made me think about when best practices crash into the reality of cooking situations. I want to follow appropriate cooking guidelines – both from a food safety standpoint and from a quality perspective – because I know that if I take too many shortcuts, I can end up with lackluster food or (worst case scenario) something dumped into the trash can uneaten.

After many years of baking I think I understand where I can bend the rules, and because I’ve been dealing with a health issue I will cheat as much as I can get away with. It doesn’t always turn out as well as today’s bake – last week I winged it with a sandwich bread recipe which ended up in the worst case scenario, a collapsed loaf of gummy bread not fit for man nor beast. Knowing where to draw the line between following everything to a “T” and taking shortcuts can take years to understand, and even when you think you know it all you discover that, in fact, you don’t.

Although I want to always employ best practices, life does not allow it. Health issues, time considerations, monetary problems, and other obstacles make it impossible to follow every cooking rule each and every time. Cooks just have to do the best they can and not beat themselves up if the dish goes awry. Sometimes you can skirt the rules and still have acceptable results. Consider the guidelines above with respect to eggs. It didn’t matter if I broke a yolk by using the shells to separate the eggs (one did break), nor was it an issue if the eggshells had bacteria on them because the cake would be fully baked. The chances of getting a rotten egg these days are almost nil, so those two best practices could safely be ignored. I ran a bigger risk with eyeballing the leavener, and truth be told the cake was probably a bit more dense than it would have been had I measured accurately. But I was able to a) bake the cake and b) have enough energy left over to attend my friend’s party, so the shortcuts were worth it. Next time I will measure more carefully. Probably.

Category: Antipasto

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16 Comments

  • demomcook  on  January 15, 2023

    “But I was able to a) bake the cake and b) have enough energy left over to attend my friend’s party.”

    And this is what is the most important thing. In fact, if you had to leave of a) to take a before party nap and stop at a bakery, it would be ok, too. You have our permission!

  • valbe  on  January 15, 2023

    Enjoyed this post! Particularly the sentence “Cooks just have to do the best they can and not beat themselves up when things go awry…” Last Friday I made a special dinner for special friends and somehow burned the ‘Kulebyaka’ – a dish in the two very recent practice trials came out perfectly. After more dinner parties than I care to count this may have been the worst bomb ever (maybe I have a short memory). I suggested to my diners to just cut off the black bottom but in reality the dish was ruined. When it comes to cooking and baking do we ever know it all? Maybe that’s the allure – the outcome is never a given.

  • annmartina  on  January 15, 2023

    Darcie, I hope you are doing better soon too. I can relate. I wanted to make some buns yesterday but didn’t because I worried I wouldn’t have the energy left once it was time to shape and bake them. I really appreciate this post about being easier on ourselves. And never, since 7th grade home ec in the 70s, and the thousands of eggs I have used, have I ever had a rotten egg.

  • averythingcooks  on  January 15, 2023

    My 1st thought: “Rotten/bad egg?? Unlikely!”
    My 2nd thought: “Estimate the vanilla? Easy!”
    My 3rd thought: “Eyeball the baking soda??? GUTSY!!”

    • Darcie  on  January 15, 2023

      I’ve learned to use the palm of my hand to guesstimate teaspoon and tablespoon measures fairly accurately (although not perfectly).

  • Jenny  on  January 15, 2023

    At this point, Darcie, we are no longer “dealing with a health issue” we are living with a health issue. After three years, if I get a pan of Polish sausage and tater tots on the table – the family should be gratetful. During the holidays – it took me two days to make two different cookies – do a bit, rest, do a bit rest. I didn’t precisely measure – I didn’t care. They turned out great and were eaten. For over two weeks now I’ve wanted to make buttermilk brownies — my goal is to make them by tomorrow. As cooks, working women/men, moms/dads, wives/husbands, we do the best we can. Uber Eats is my best friend lately.

  • thegluttery  on  January 15, 2023

    The main lesson to take away is that every approach is valid, in every context: cuisine, ingredient, method.

    Homemade Indian food, with its punch-you-in-the-mouth intensity, is just as valid and just as delicious as classic French cooking and its “subtlety of flavor”.

    How many people would prefer their grandmother’s strategy of tossing ingredients into a pot, seemingly at random, until she gets her desired result to fine dining’s fractions-of-a-gram food-scale precision?

    For my own part, my wife and I base our travel around the ability to experience Michelin-starred and other high-end culinary experiences. Despite that, I still eat processed cheese product that gets sprayed out of an aerosol can. It is objectively terrible and I still love it, because it is what I grew up eating.

    Food is an intensely personal experience, but in the world of the internet, too often we feel obligated to live up to the crowdsourced “standard”. What would people think if they knew you used iodized table salt instead of Diamond Kosher? Perish the thought.

    The point is, be who you want (or need) to be, when you want to be. If today you want to make a A5 Grade Wagyu with foams and purees and edible flowers and useless gold leaf, do it. If tomorrow, you need to dump cans of condensed soup and store-bought flavor packets into the slow cooker with some meat to get through, then do that. Forget what anyone else thinks.

    • Darcie  on  January 15, 2023

      I’m the same way – my friends were aghast when I brought a jar of the cheap cheese dip from Aldi to go with tortilla chips. They think that I would never eat something so processed, but they are wrong! I don’t do it very often, but sometimes it just hits the spot.

  • cookbookaddict2020  on  January 15, 2023

    In my experience, VERY few people are experienced enough cooks to “eyeball” critical ingredients like baking soda, that make a real difference to the chemistry of a recipe. Too much vanilla? It’s all good. Too much baking soda or salt? Inedible cake. I’m not rich enough to throw food out or energetic enough to do it twice, so I do it right the first time. A small investment of attention on the front end and you’re almost sure to get something good at the end, and being sloppy in the beginning is risking being stuck with ruined food.

    • Darcie  on  January 15, 2023

      I’m glad you are always able to do it right the first time! Bravo!

  • TBipp  on  January 15, 2023

    So glad you posted about this cake. I was immediately intrigued and baked cupcakes using the recipe instead of a Bundt. So happy to have a new chocolate cake recipe. Thanks for the inspiration.

  • GenieB  on  January 15, 2023

    Interesting post. I usually measure pretty carefully when baking, not so much when cooking other things. I’ve had some dismal failures when trying to eyeball quantities for baking. I keep two sets of measuring spoons so one is always clean.

    When I get into trouble is when I have made a recipes many times, and think I can just wing it. Last time I did that I ended up with super-salty soup.

  • bittrette  on  January 16, 2023

    I do occasionally get rotten eggs, so I always empty eggs in a small bowl one at a time before adding them to a recipe.
    Rotten eggs’ reputation for stinkiness is richly deserved.

  • TeresaRenee  on  January 16, 2023

    I just got a new induction stove and oven. Between the electric-induction difference, a new set of pans and an oven that heats properly and has working convection, it’s like learning to cook all over again. The past 10 days have been littered with sub-par food. No short cuts for me for the next few months!

    My family is very supportive though. “Yes, that batch of cookies was a little crispy. Maybe you should try making another batch…”

  • goodfruit  on  January 17, 2023

    Many baking instructions are left over from the days when mills didn’t leave flour ground so fine and even, or eggs were not pasteurized, as they are today. I bake much the same way myself.

  • bittrette  on  January 22, 2023

    “What would people think if they knew you used iodized table salt instead of Diamond Kosher?”
    Has there ever been a true recorded case of a guest who tasted table salt in a host’s cake and spat it out?

    Or a guest who refused to eat the host’s soup because the vegetables were cut with a dull bread knife?

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