About
About Recipes and Ingredients
We highly recommend you get a scale for precision. Baking anything technical without a scale is just an exercise in futility, especially if you want consistent results, or are a beginner. A gram scale is essential.
There are also a few clarifications about ingredients, which will be contained in this section as I think of them.
- Eggs, unless otherwise noted, are US large, which weigh roughly 58 grams with the shell.
- Cream is always heavy cream.
- Likewise, milk is full-fat milk.
- Flour is King Arthur all-purpose, unless otherwise noted. KAF has a slightly higher protein content, so KAF AP flour is equivalent to roughly Gold Medal (and others) bread flour.
Recipes and experiments will be split into categories 1 through 5. They will be filed based on general levels of skill, time, and effort involved. As a rough guideline, Category 1 is the lowest; things in this category can be done pretty easily on a daily basis, and will probably require only slightly more effort than opening up and emptying out a big tub of Haagen Dasz. Category 3 is for things you would likely make for yourself on a good day, or if your favorite uncle came over for dinner. You know, the one who bought you that awesome stuffed Pikachu that your parents wouldn't. And within Category 5 lie the big guns; this is the stuff you bust out once a year, probably not even. This is the stuff you make for your fiance's boss when she comes over to discuss his new promotion.
About the authors:
Alex, otherwise known as waffles to the internet and whatever friends he manages to hang on to, is the creator and administrator of this site. In real life, he is a typical college student working on a BS in Computer Science. In his mind, he's currently writing his dissertation for his PhD in jiggerypokery and hullaballoo a new software developer who is somehow gainfully employed (2012). In his spare time, he tinkers with pretty much anything he can possibly get his hands on. He enjoys pastries, food, coding, gaming, and lively discussions. Things that bring him displeasure include Vegetable Monster, raw garlic, and people who fail to recognize the significance of Google in their lives. He loves fresh quality ingredients, and believes that cooking is a philosophy, not a recipe. Unless it's desserts, then it's chemistry.
Behind the nickname of Bakstol hides Thomas Lextrait, a Computer Science student from France who enjoys real food. Even though I'm a socialist, I'm highly conservative when it comes to food. I like fresh and simple things, just like Ramsay. I will also retain the quote from the French cook Hervé This: "I care about the food's taste, not its healthiness".
About the site:
curehappiness.com started out as a dummy domain for waffles to play with after he got his brand new server. Over time though, the desire to actually do something with it grew steadily, and an idea spawned from an off-hand comment about certain food being so bad it cures happiness. curehappiness.com will be, if it isn't obvious yet, a blog about the authors' (mis)adventures with food; that means recipes, miscellaneous evaluations, comments on restaurants, product reviews (No, I swear we are not sponsored, so no worries there... Unless we are. If so, waffles would like to know where the hell all the money is, 'coz he certainly doesn't have it.), and sometimes maybe a rare bit of insight on life in the form of a clever metaphor revolving around a pudding, a chicken, and a creme brulee torch.
As it is, the authors will make every attempt at posting at least once a week, but like all other broke college students, sometimes life just supercedes blogging in ways such as: Coursework, real work, food, sleep, gaming, and spontaneous bouts of psychosis.