Complex Numbers

Waxy Scaley

It's been a while since I had a bit about cooking here, partly because I haven't found many lately, and partly because I haven't been doing much cooking, opting instead for convenience. But here's one from bon appétit:

    How to Measure Sticky Ingredients Without Losing Your Gosh Darn Mind  
I spent 30 years measuring sticky ingredients like a fool.

Amusingly, if you preview the URL at the link above, it provides a handy spoiler answer to the clickbait headline.

There used to be exactly one thing I didn’t like about baking. I called it the Peanut Butter Problem and it happened every time I made my favorite three-ingredient cookies.

Are you going to share the magical recipe with us along with the sorcerous solution to the problem? No? Oh, well, there's always Google, if you can stand scrolling through pages and pages of anecdote before getting to the actual recipe.

The Peanut Butter Problem was, as you may have guessed, my best attempt to get a precise amount of peanut butter from a measuring cup into a mixing bowl, and it involved multiple butter knives, my pointer finger, and swearing.

From my lofty perch of having figured out two different solutions to this problem many years ago, I could only laugh at this imagery. It's like those commercials that show people failing at different tasks before presenting the One True Solution, Only $19.95 While Supplies Last CALL NOW. Do they still have those? I avoid ads. You'll be getting my solutions for the low, low price of free.

And then came TikTok.

hu... hu.... HURK

The trick? Simply oil your measuring spoons and cups before measuring sticky ingredients.

I can't trust any other content from this author, because, like I said, I figured that out decades ago.

There are two ways to do it: The first is to dip a finger in oil (hereby referred to as your “oily fingie”) and swoop it around the inside of a measuring spoon or cup, using your oily fingie pad to grease the bottom like you’re coloring it in.

And also because she finds "oily fingie" somehow amusing.

Anyway, I know a better solution. This whole "measuring ingredients by volume" thing is imprecise. With or without "oily fingie," two cooks measuring the same ingredients with the same tools can come up with different quantities, because of how void spaces get filled or not. No, for the absolute best method, and one that requires fewer steps, is to measure ingredients by mass, not volume.

Yes, this does require you to figure out the proper number of grams or ounces in a standard volumetric measure of, say, peanut butter. But you only have to do this once. A quick Google search yields 256 grams for 1 cup. Now, set a sheet of wax paper on a kitchen scale and tare it. Add peanut butter until you reach 256 grams. If you go over, put a dab back into the jar. Then dump the ingredient into your mixing bowl or whatever.

For ingredients that are sticky but spread out more, line a bowl with wax paper and tare the scale with that.

Better yet, find recipes that give quantities in mass/weight (really, as long as you're on Earth, it doesn't matter) in the first place.

This has the other important advantage of requiring less cleanup. Just chuck the wax paper into the trash afterwards. Sure, it contributes to landfill problems, but at least you waste less water.

But then you won't get to give it a cutesy name like "oily fingie." Unless you're cool with "waxy scaley."