Sunday 26 June, 2005
Cakes and games
Laura and Clay couldn't explain to me why Americans insist calling some of their cakes bread. Prime example is banana bread which in my mind has nothing to do with bread: it's very sweet and therefore quite clearly a cake. For yesterday's gaming night I baked a strawberry and cream bread which in reality is a strawberry cake, a classical shortened cake that is done with creaming the butter and sugar and adding flour and eggs to it (and in this case also the cream and strawberries). Result was very nice though, no matter what it was called, and I served it with strawberries and cream.
I got the strawberries from West End Farmer's Market which is held every Saturday at the corner of Comox and Bute. I didn't realise it - but the strawberry season is over in BC. I thought it would be a piece of cake (ehhehe) to get some nice juicy strawberries, but instead most of the farmers were offering rasberries, blueberries and cherries. I finally managed to find one farmer with some extremely ripe strawberries - almost too ripe for eating, but perfect to put in a cake. I also bought a big box of blueberries for Dragon, who absolutely loves them - and for once didn't have think about the price (they were cheap) and ate them all to his hearts content.
Game of the night was Starfarers of Catan which we haven't played for ages for some reason. I like Starfarers - in many ways it's probably the most innovative of the Catan games, with the playable motherships. It's also probably one of the more random Catan games, with the random encounters in space - but at the same time those encounters with pirates and space rifts is what gives the game it's character. There's almost like role playing quality to it - there is enough variety with the cards so that you can't know what the best course of action is, so how I play it is that I'll just do the encounters "in character", like weather to answer distress calls or hire pirates to steal from your mates.
Very social and nice evening, eating lot of good food (chili, wild rice, guacamole... mmm... I write an awful lot about food these days don't I?), having good conversations and laughing a lot. What the doctor ordered.
Posted by kolibri at 26 June 21:29, 2005The cake vs. bread vs. muffin distinction is at times rather confusing. The eternal question of what's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin is usually best left to 'the cupcake has icing/frosting' on it though a muffin is technically known as a 'quick bread' as is banana bread since it requires no kneading and uses a chemical leavener. It comes down to the leavener as to which genre the baked good falls into. Lots of quick breads resemble cake when they are sweet, but cakes are generally sweeter, decorated in some fashion and contain [usually] fewer ingredients. Of course, some muffins and quick breads in the US cross the boundaries of simple quick bread into iced confection where they should likely be called a cake instead. :)
# 2 - kolibri (on June 28, 2005 09:21 AM):
I guess in Europe - or in UK, the only English speaking country - breads are the ones made with yeast, and cakes and the rest are done with other leaveners like baking soda and/or baking powder.
Looking at my current baking bible, Sarah Phillips' Baking 911 (who's American and explains the chemistry behind baking in a very easy-to-understand way), she separates them as
Cakes - leavened sweet foodstuff, prepard by baking a wheat flour-based dough or batter in a pan into a compact form. They can be multi- or singlelayered, filled, unfilled, frosted or not, and come in about million different varieties. Cheesecakes don't belong to this category.
Yeast breads - made with yeast and the dough is kneaded, and include pan breads (loaves made in pans - but also includes pizza crust and bagels and the like) and sourdough breads. Sourdough breads are also called "European style" on this side of the pond, and are generally what Finns would mean when talking about bread.
Quick breads - made using chemical "quick" leaveners and batter typically consists of flour, sugar, eggs, fat, salt and some type of a liquid. When baked the crumb is irregular and moist - Sarah says that cakes have the double amount of fat and eggs than quick breads.
Eh. So like you said, the line seems very thin between cakes and quick breads, and people who name recipes probably don't know the difference :)
You can't add any more comments, but if you wish you can email the author.