I make - cake release spread

It all started when I tried to figure out how to reliably create a muffin dome. The biggest factor, at least for me, is to bake the muffin dough directly into a muffin tin, with no paper case. Yes, I can hear you, baking directly in a muffin tin, how do you get muffins out intact?

First thing first, all non-stick muffin tins only work magically for the first few times in my hand. After the new tin honeymoon period passes, creating a nonstick surface on a nonstick pan is necessary for my peace of mind. There are a number of nonstick baking sprays you can buy and they work well. After that, there is an ancient way of preparing a nonstick surface with oil and flour. You first apply a thin layer of oil all around the inside of a cake tin. Then you light dust flour all over. It works as well, for all kinds of tins, including muffin ones. Then there is something called cake release, a thick paste which you brush it all over a cake tin and bake the dough directly in. That's it. I was intrigued by its ease of use and effect, and almost made a purchase. While I was googling for the product to buy, posts kept coming up mentioning a homemade version. I was hooked.

All posts about the homemade cake release uses the same recipe, mix equal parts (in volume) of flour, vegetable oil and solid shortening. Store in a nice glass jar. That's it. Three ingredients, less than any commercial version, and everyone who makes and uses it raves about it. I was bought.

So here is my cake release with 1/4 cup of all-purpose/plain flour, 1/4 cup of canola oil and 1/4 cup of solid coconut oil. And tonight I tried my cake release the first time. I brushed it all over the muffin tin and baked my muffin dough directly in. After cooling the muffins in the tin for 10 minutes, I tipped the tin side way and the muffins just. fell. out. I felt my bake tin honeymoon started all over again!

September 2016

Finally the temperature feels like autumn with crisp nights and cold mornings. The wind, the falling leaves, the sound and the color of nature slowly going into a hiatus, all is familiarly calming. I think I am an autumn person.

This is my first year of growing tomatoes, probably also the last. I did enjoy my experience but growing fruits/veggies does take more effort than growing ornamental flowers. At this moment, I think I will stick with flowers for some time. Here is how my cherry tomatoes looked like in August.

My first harvest of cherry tomatoes. 

I also learned that tomatoes can still ripen/turn red after they are picked. What a revelation! As evidenced from the second picture, the left bunch is ripened after they were picked (or rather rescued after the branch broken off), and the right bunch is vine ripened. I have to confess that the the vine ripened bunch is so much sweeter than the the ones ripened after being picked. Nevertheless, the less sweet ones can go into cooking. Nothing is wasted in this household.

And finally, my orchid. Can you believe that this orchid of mine has been flowering from February till now? Remarkable. I can see that it's going into its last leg of blooming but what a rewarding plant to have in the house.

This is how it looked like back in February.

 This is how it looks like now in mid-September. The color surely has faded and it is ready to rest before the next year bloom. Thank you my orchid for this year pleasure.

Finally, the muffin dome

For all these years, I've been wanting to create the much desired muffin dome. I think I may have found one or two tricks which may give me this very ticklish-able dome more reliably. One is to bake at higher temperature at the beginning. I found that the dough receives the heat shock much better when baked directly in an oiled/floured muffin tin than a tin lined with paper case. Secondly, the dough needs to have less liquid in proportion (i.e. thicker dough, think spoonable rather than pourable). Therefore, I adapted my trusted muffin recipe to use 1/2 cup of yogurt, instead of 1 cup of milk. By using both tweaks, here is what I got this morning:

I was ecstatic! First proper dome with nice color all around. I will repeat a few times to pose my final recipe in the future.