Monday, October 19, 2009

The powdered sugar sanction

We have an old family recipe for applesauce cake that if Melanie and Carol don't watch out they might just be subjected to at group next week..along with the other nice ladies.  Mom made it for a lunch she was going to.  Now, normally, when we have said cake it's au natural.  Nothing fancy.  But when Mom takes it to lunches and such she likes to put a glaze on it.
I have to admit the house smelled FANTASTIC while they were cooking.  The smell of those cakes wafting through the house is a tell tale sign it's fall.
So while I was working on my beet stew with lamb meat balls, Mom was working on the glaze, but something wasn't quite right.  It didn't taste right, the glaze not the stew.  It wasn't sweet.  We pondered.  Mom was using a new recipe for the glaze and she was using whipped cream cheese instead of a block softened. Maybe that was it.  But whatever it was this was NOT a sweet glaze.
After dinner she returned to her old tried and true glaze recipe, but again it didn't taste right, and what's more when she put it in the microwave to heat up the contents and thin it...it got THICKER!  What the...
Can powdered sugar go bad?  What was going on.  I'd made a pumpkin cake last month and had a box of powdered sugar sitting in the cupboard so I went to get it.  About the same time Mom decided to double check her powdered sugar.  There was the hand written label on the canister - pwdr sugar.  There was the bag with a white powdery substance.  She pulled out the bag.  Impostor!!!  There, sitting in the canister for powdered sugar was in fact corn starch!
It all made sense now...sad..sorry...corn startchy sense.  With the box of TRUE powdered sugar in hand she made a fantastic glaze for the applesauce cake.  I noticed this afternoon on the grocery list....we're in need of corn starch

9 comments:

  1. aww cooking is fun and easy! But I think if I bring this cake I'll soak it in rum in honor of Melanie and her rum cake

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  2. Aaaarrrr, matey, I never be meetin' a rum cake I didn't like.

    However, I should note that I only made rum cake once. I have an opened bottle of rum. Should I bring it to group? (In the trunk, of course)

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  3. Well the cake will be soaked in rum prior to group next week. But a dram to go with ye ol' cake couldn't hurt.

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  4. HA. You aren't a cop, are you? That sounds like entrapment. I know, I know, you have a quota, right?

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  5. Damn! You found me out! I only pretended to be a computer programer i Portland. Curse you and your bottles of rum

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  6. That's too funny...I've baked some crazy things before. Once made chocolate chip cookies and forgot to put in the butter. Yeah, um, those didn't turn out so well...I didn't realize it until Wifey went through the recipe trying to figure out why they tasted funny...

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  7. I did something like that years ago too. I was making some cookies and i forgot to add the flour. OY what a mess. I also remember when I was in Jr. High making bread and misreading the recipe and used 1/4 CUP of salt instead of the 1/4 teaspoon it called for. Needless to say No one ate that bread.

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  8. Don't know what I did with my homemade bread biscuits. The first time I made them they were great. Signed up to bring them to a pot luck at work. This time they were like hockey pucks.

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