Adventures in Baking

I love baking. Love it. I also love eating baked goods, so it works out quite well. My mini me sous chef also loves baking…at least for the first 5 minutes until she gets distracted. But yet she always manages to show back up when it’s time to lick the bowl.

Christmas Party Dress and Glitter Cat Ears were perfect attire for making apple tarts...

Here’s the thing about baking in a foreign country. Your US recipes don’t always work.

I have made banana muffins a million times - that’s not (much of) an exaggeration. We really like banana muffins. Same recipe every time.

Butter
Sugar
Eggs
Flour
Baking Powder
Baking Soda
Bananas

Problem #1: Butter

My recipe calls for 1/3c of butter. I know this as a little past the 5 tablespoon mark on the butter stick. Well, butter doesn’t come in sticks. It comes in a massive block with no lines on the wrapper.

Also in the US, butter is usually around 80% fat whereas the EU definition of butter is 82 - 90% butterfat. This difference in butterfat makes everything denser, so you either have to decrease the butter or increase the rising agents. Based on my research most people suggest using 75-80% of the butter your recipe calls for when using EU butter.

So I googled 1/3c of butter * 75 - 80% = approx 60 grams. At this point I decided it was a good thing I had an advance accounting degree and I busted out my kitchen scale and to weigh butter.

Problem #2: Baking Powder and Baking Soda

Both of these ingredients come in itty-bitty non-resealable packages. So when you open a new pack to take 1/2 a teaspoon out, you have to bust out a ziplock or some other containment device to not lose and/or spoil the rest of the package.

Problem #3: Flour

At home, it was quite easy. You went into the grocery store, you picked up a bag of flour, you took it home and you did whatever you wanted with it. It was the flour called for in every recipe known to man: all-purpose flour. And it would make sense that this multipurpose, good for everything flour is readily available. Flour translates to Weizenmehl. However, wait just a moment, every bag of flour has a different number on it. What the heck does that mean?

I talked to several coworkers some told me the number was how finely the flour was ground up (so 405 was very fine and 812 was more coarse), some told me it was something to do with the ash and other minerals and fiber in the flour because more of the wheat corns have been ground up into the flour (i.e., numbers are calculated based on the amount of ash in milligrams obtained from 100 grams of the dry mass of the flour). This hurts my head, however after extensive research, I found a chart!

I've gone with 550 flour, incase you’re wondering.

Problem #4: Temperature

Everything is in Celsius over here. I literally have this taped above my oven because I can’t remember the conversions for temperature (or anything else for that matter!).

I made all the conversions & worked through all these obstacles to achieve a beautiful end result of...

Thankfully my guinea pigs thought they tasted okay and were more than willing to allow me to try again.