Welcome to the KitchenNotes Blog. With luck, you'll be able to ask questions that I can try to answer about food, cooking, or recipes.
For the first entry, my idea was to give some important basics about general cooking. It always amazes me to read recipes and wonder exactly what they mean by "flour, sifted" or "water bath." It doesn't matter whether the recipe is "fancy" or "everyday," there are guides you need to follow.
First, it is important to meaure liquids in a glass or clear plastic liquid measuring cups. The nesting metal cups are for dry ingredients. If you use metal cups for liquid, you will be getting more liquid than called for.
Second, when you measure flour, do not sift it unless called for. It is VERY important, however, to first take a kitchen knife, make some circular motions in your flour container to loosen it up, and then measure the flour by spooning (not scooping) it into the dry measuring cup. Then you take the back of that kitchen knife and level it off without tapping or shaking the cup If you scoop the flour into your measuring cup without lightening it first, the flour is compacted and you'll get quite a bit more flour than the recipe calls for - and it could ruin whatever you're making.
Finally, for today at least, when recipes call for "eggs," they mean large eggs unless otherwise specified. It's always best to use room temperature eggs when baking, an thirty minutes on the counter will be just about right. Needless to say, I tend to forget this so my trick is to put some warm water in the sink and put the eggs into the water while I'm getting the other ingredients ready. This also seems to work well.
That's enough for today. I look forward to hearing from you.