14 November 2017

peel

Midnight cashew brittles
^
I suppose my form of yolo-ing is a lot more tame.

It literally took making brittles at close to midnight on a day when I woke up at 5:30am to make me realize that hey, I'm in a high stress state right now.

Side note: I've always semi-joking said that creaming butter and sugar is my therapy, but this turns out to be more true than I expected given that not baking is straining me. Or is it just my sugar consumption?

Side note 2: I once read somewhere the different between stress and strain when used in the mental health context and recall it to match well with their usage in civ, however my sleep deprived brain right now can't make the connection so I doubt I'm using them appropriately. I am also rambling.

It is hardly something to complain about, or perhaps particularly justified, as I've put myself in this situation. Stress via deciding to go on vacation early, so gotta finish assignments early. Strain via deciding not to bring baking equipment (particularly my scale!!! Technically not necessary, but pride won't let me go back to volumetric measurements...except that I did for brittles) and not braving the use of uk ovens with badly marked gas lines. The solution is for myself to chill and go for a crappier mark on my assignments, and suck it up and bake. Or devise a plan to get a couple of ingredients while in London and find some more recipes for making candy (hurray I brought my thermometer at least) and force myself to get more efficient at critical thinking and report writing. It's clear which one I went with.

...

Brittle making notes:
  • Ratio of ⅓ cup mix-ins with ¼ cup sugar
  • Consider the packing factor of mix-ins, will try a combination of cashews (creaminess taste good), sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds to maximize mix-ins to sugar
  • Taste very much depend on toasting mix-ins beforehand, adding some salt, but most importantly caramelizing the sugar to an appropriate level.

No comments: