fandomhigh | Cooking for Beginners & Not-So-Beginners, Monday 3, Week 6

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cooking

Cooking for Beginners & Not-So-Beginners, Monday 3, Week 6

"We were going to cover something a bit more practical this week," Steve admitted, "but I know everyone had a rough week last week, and the island seems to have been sending me a message today..." Oh, look, he found another piece of chocolate in his desk drawer. He held it up illustratively and said, "So, instead, we'll be making brownies and chocolate chip cookies.

"A quick note on baking. In cooking, experimentation is encouraged. Expected, even. In baking...not so much. There's a lot of science, chemistry especially, involved in baking, and if you mess with the ingredients and don't know exactly what you're doing, you're going to end up with a disaster. So it's really best to stick to the recipes, especially the first time you make something, and even after that, if you're not an expert, it's probably a bad idea to play around. Something like omitting nuts or switching walnuts out for pecans probably won't cause a problem, but if you, say, substitute buttermilk for regular milk, or use medium eggs instead of large ones in a straight numbers swap, you're not going to be happy with the results. So. Stick to the recipe." He was unaware of Karla's reputation, not living in the dorms and all, or he might have been looking directly at her, if she was present.

"So, get to baking. Please don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it, or if there's something in the directions that is confusing you. And if you feel the need to snack on the chocolate while you cook, there seems to be plenty more where that came from."

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Having mastered cookies, Karla was moving on to brownies. They wouldn't be too hard--

--Except for where she'd misread the direction and was melting the butter and chocolate in the pot of boiling water, instead of above it.

"Whoa, whoa, Karla, what are we doing?" Steve asked. Well. That pot was going to have to be scrubbed out.

Karla gave Steve a blank look. "Cooking?" she tried.

What did it look like? Honestly! She was mastering the art of baking, Steve. Duh.

"Well, okay," Steve said, subtly grabbing the pot with the mess in it and putting it in the sink to be dealt with later, "but it works better if you use a double boiler instead of putting it directly in the water, because, how were you going to get it out later?"

Karla looked very confused. "Just pour it out?" she said. "And I was double boiling!"

See, she'd waited until the water had boiled before adding the chocolate, and then was letting the melted stuff all come to a boil again!

Genius!

"With all that water in it? That would make it really wet, don't you think? We're making brownies, not chocolate soup," Steve pointed out. "A double boiler means you boil water underneath a bowl or another pan--that isn't touching the water--so you can melt the chocolate gently without risking burning it." Steve grabbed another pot, filled it with water, and added a bowl to make a double boiler. "See?"

Karla was rereading the instructions again. "Oh. Huh. I guess that's what it says." She decided not to mention that when things seemed too soupy, she usually just added more flour or sugar until it looked right again. "Though I think the chocolate might have gone bad."

Someone didn't understand that unsweetened chocolate was supposed to taste like that.

"No," Steve said without even tasting the chocolate to check. "It's unsweetened. It's supposed to taste like that. You're not supposed to eat it straight, just use it in baking."

"Oooh," Karla said, nodding. She'd just have to add a little more sugar to make sure it tasted right. "Good on whoever first tried that stuff and didn't just decide it was awful."

Because life without chocolate would be unbearable.

"...Do we have coffee beans?"

"That's why the recipe is calibrated with the right amount of sugar to make the chocolate taste good," Steve continued, oblivious to Karla's thoughts. He consulted the recipe and, just as he thought, it called for instant coffee, which he'd provided, not brewed coffee. "You don't need coffee beans, we're not making coffee, you're using instant coffee, which is this stuff here," he said, indicating the jar. "The moisture already in the recipe will be enough to dissolve it."

Karla had never run into instant coffee before. She'd been planning to crunch up the beans and add them into the recipe. "What is this?" she asked, opening the jar and sniffing. "How is it instant?"

"I don't know all the exact ins and outs of the production process, but I know it involves freeze-drying the powder," he said with a shrug. "It makes a powder that dissolves instantly in liquid, unlike with normal coffee where all of the methods involve running hot water through the grounds in some way, which takes longer and may involve waiting for the coffee to steep, and then discarding the grounds, since coffee grounds and coffee beans are no good to eat." Unless you subscribed to the chocolate-covered espresso bean thing, but caffeine did nothing for Steve, so he didn't. "Hence, instant. Even if the recipe called for brewed coffee, I would've provided grounds, I wouldn't make you grind your own," he assured her.

Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

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Re: Baking Time!

glacial_queen - 2011-08-10 04:03 (UTC) - Expand

Aaaand that would be Kenzi. Standing by. Ready for the worst.

Steve shot Kenzi a sympathetic look, as clearly she had been exposed to Karla's cooking (which he was rapidly realizing was terrifying) before.

Kenzi gave him a sad and knowing little nod, smile tight. 'Cause what could you say about someone who thought cream of tartar should be in cookies? Except, 'get out of the way, oh noooooo'?

"These are very iffy appliances. You never know, right, Mr. Rogeers?"

"Safety first is important," Steve said, agreeing as best he could without implying the appliances were iffy and risking Tony deciding to take them apart. "Good thinking, Kenzi."

"Kiss kiss!" Karla said, giving Kenzi a friendly smile. "Waiting to share my brownies?"

Kenzi had gotten to try her delicious cookies before Warren had run off with most of them. She must be there to get a few before the rest of the class descended.

"You," Kenzi said, voice cracking with emotion, "Are just so generous. Wow. What did you put in them?" And as a distraction, "How're you doing after this weekend?" Was she ready to take out the entire class plus herself? This was important info!

"I'm following the recipe!"

Because Steve had decided to stomp all over her creative impulses by standing over her shoulder and watching.

"I'm doing okay. Better, now that we've solved it. You?"

"Enh. Meh. Bleah." Kenzi made faces, then shrugged, and decided to risk death by sticking a finger in the batter and lifting it to her mouth to lick off. "That whole thing, this week, that happens a lot? Or not a lot?"

"I guess it kind of depends on your definition of a lot," Karla said, deciding to lick the spoon instead. She'd get another one to get the batter into the pan. "There were the bitey goblins in December and the weird flying turtle things that kidnapped the island's kids in March. And something horrible seems to happen just about every August, so...regularly, if that helps?"

Kenzi brooded. "We can't evacuate as soon as we see the badness coming down the pipeline? 'Cause I'm going to learn to shoot a gun and a crossbow, but still. Wouldn't that be the smartest thing?"

Hmm. "Not. Bad. Hmmmm." Nom!

Don't worry, Kenzi. Karla would find some way to ruin it. Probably specacularly!

"What if we'd all scattered for this last one?" Karla asked reasonably. "There would have been nothing for us to go back to. And what if our infected friends got loose across the Causeway? Better for us to handle it than some poor person who has no idea magic was real. And that's assuming we can leave. Which isn't always the case."

"If we'd all scattered, nobody would've been hurt--" Kenzi was eating chocolate chips now, by the handful. She paused, 'cause Karla had a point there. "Okay, well. Maybe. Sorta." She pouted, one shoulder going up. "I sucked at it though," she muttered.

"People were infected long before anyone knew anything was amiss," Karla pointed out. "The administration, for one. Principal Winchester has a daughter. So does Professor Skywalker. And Deadpool. If we'd scattered, they never would have seen them again."

And she never would have seen Warren again. Ugh. Move over, Kenzi. Karla needed some chocolate chips.

"And so you sucked? So what? At least you were out there, doing stuff. Some people just hid all day." Peter. "You suck now. So you learn. Next time something bad happens, you suck less. The time after that, you don't suck at all. And the one after that? Maybe you even start getting good. It's not hopeless."