A question, and my response, on Quora today

[thewayne]

Quora is, I guess, a social media site where people ask questions and other people answer them. And the quality of questions have really gone down hill in the last couple of months. I think part of it is they're monetizing and people are getting fractions of pennies for questions they post, so they're posting really stupid stuff. Here's an example:

What are the ingredients, tools, and utensils to be used and correct the procedure of baking cookies?

What you are asking for are all summarized in an amazing new invention that now can be discussed publicly. It summarizes the assembling of ingredients, the tools used and utensils. It describes procedures used in mixing and the subsequent deployment of the mixed cookie dough.

It is called…

Drum roll, please…

Wait for it…

A cookbook.

I heartily recommend cookbooks from America’s Test Kitchen and Milk Street, either will serve you well. A lot of people like the Betty Crocker cookbooks, I have no personal experience with them. I bought a Joy of Cooking book for a flourless chocolate cake recipe, which is excellent.

Ye gods and little fishes, the questions these days.

At least I get to exercise my snark and sarcasm. A similar question was something like 'What kitchen appliances can damage prepared food?' and I glowingly suggested putting prepared food under the broiler for two hours.

Comments

[rain_gryphon]

I highly recommend the Betty Crocker Cookbook. All of one's basic recipes, right there.

[moonhare]

I love their (her) cake recipes!

[thewayne]

You do know there is no Betty?  She's a complete fabrication.

[moonhare]

*gasps* For shame!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betty-crocker-unveiled/

[thewayne]

I don't have a BCC, and as a rule I don't care for their web site as a lot of their recipes call for canned product which I don't do.  Having said that, I was looking for a recipe for a salted chocolate caramel sauce and found one on their site that is fabulous!  I have certain parameters for recipes, and among them are a simplicity of ingredients and techniques required, and this one was very simple to put together and pretty much impossible to burn when melting the sugar for the caramel because you're cooking it in (drum roll please) heavy cream!  Most caramels have you melting sugar for caramel directly in the pan, and it's really easy to burn it, and this recipe let me avoid it.

[moonhare]

The America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks listed/suggested fantastic accessories for our endeavors. Betty Crocker was more basic, and as my copy is from the 70s it is not current with available improvements.

[rain_gryphon]

I've got my grandmother's mid-50s BCC, and then my own much smaller one from 2000 or so. There's nothing exotic or fancy in there, but they've got all of the comfort foods, plus the sort of stuff you'd serve for parties where you want to go for stuff that everyone will at least eat. Lots of handy charts and info pages too.

[starwatcher]

Excellent! Had I seen that, I would have upvoted.

Love the snark that many answers incorporate so readily, but must admit I'm getting tired of questions to which the most relevant answer is, "Duh!" I mean, even if one [a] didn't have parents who taught them in the kitchen and [b] never took home ec, there's enough exposure to cookie-making in holiday films and/or fictional stories that "find a cookbook" should be a natural idea. Or, you know, Google. It took me a couple of years -- literally -- to realize that, but eventually even *I* learned that Google (or suitable alternate) contains answers to many, many questions.

[thewayne]

There was one a little later today that I replied to that asked the question “What is the advantage to using proper ingredients in making bread?”, to which I replied something like “Because improper ingredients, like ground glass, motor oil, and meat sauce, don’t make very good bread. Whereas flour, yeast, sugar, an egg, and some water work pretty good.” Just amazing what questions have become.

[starwatcher]

<g> Even proper cooking ingredients in the wrong proportions can make a mess of things... as I learned with my first effort at making a cake. Fortunately, I've improved since then.

Hahahahaha

[dauntless_heart]

Every day, we get a little closer to Idiocracy...