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Supposedly as a woman, I’m wired to get high off of shoe shopping and makeup sales. In actuality, I find little joy in either one. The whole process is quite stressful and confusing for me, which would explain why I have a grand total of 5 pairs of shoes and haven’t bought makeup in over 2 years. But I’m not completely void of girly shopping urges. Instead, I get my high from kitchen accessories, and that’s why I was so crazy excited when my Amazon box full of goodies came in the mail yesterday! Now I usually keep these happy thoughts to myself in an attempt not to scare you folks into thinking that I’m some kind of weirdo who’s obsessed with kitchen accessories and the color red, but I wanted to share my happiness with you all this time, because this is actually good news for a lot of you.
Since I started blogging and doing more baking, I’ve been reminded that the US is very much alone in its measurement units. I vaguely recall something called the metric system many years ago in O Chem, but when the semester ended, I was sure to promptly purge that information along with everything else that wasn’t beach, beer, or boy related. Okay, so I’m just kidding…well only half kidding…kinda. My point is that my super sexy red kitchen scale was in that box and so from now on I’ll be writing out my recipes in both metric as well as standard U.S. units. So no more funky conversions for you folks and no more goofy baking flops for me!….because as you can see from the last cake I made, conversions don’t always turn out pretty.
I had never before made such a failed cake in my life! It came out of the oven only about a centimeter tall, tasting like eggs and shame! Not being one to waste food, I did what I’d like to call creative marketing. I cut it into cute little squares and decorated it with strawberries and chocolate then told everyone it was a special Chinese dessert. Being in small town Texas, anything Asian is considered wildly exotic. People were telling me how incredibly wonderful and delicious “that egg cake” was and how they’d never had anything like it before…ummm yeah hopefully you never have anything like it again…well, at least not from my kitchen. I’d like to think of it as good marketing…after all, I am Chinese and it was cake…or maybe I’m in denial about being a bad person? If that’s the case I’d prefer the term “good liar”. Either way I wanted to show you my new scale because it’s so pretty and does everything that I ever dreamed it could do!
And yes I ended up buying the matching spatula and silicone oven mitts not because they were red, but because I actually needed them…and Amazon said they would go well together. Have you ever had a failed baking adventure? Was it caused by evil and funky conversions? Please share so I don’t feel so ashamed. :/
Hahaha! That’s so funny about the “special Chinese dessert.” Great idea of helping people out with the conversions. It can definitely be a confusing thing!
Haha I’m just glad that the cake didn’t go to waste!
I find it easier to use a weighing scale than cups when measuring because you know you’ll get the same result all the time
It really is! I can’t believe I never got into weighing all of my ingredients before….or maybe I was just too cheap to buy a scale…haha.
it’s been a bit of a challenge for me (living in the UK) to cook from American recipe sites. Because ugh, why do they not have the weights of the ingredients? I only have a scale! For a while I was converting all the cup measures etc into weights, but it got too much, so eventually I gave in and bought a set of cup measures. But yeah…it’s not as accurate.
EPIC WIN on the Chinese dessert. I’m so proud of you, I wish I had the balls to do that when I have baking fails. Maybe I will next time =D
I have no idea why we use cups either! And supposedly we’re supposed to use different cups to measure liquids than for dry stuff because it’s “more accurate” but I always just use my liquid cup for everything cuz I don’t want to do more dishes lol. Weights make way much more sense and I feel so much more confident that everything is accurate…especially when I cut a recipe thirds…how the heck much is 1/3 of 1 1/4 cups?!?! Thanks for the epic win comment I can’t believe it worked either!
The rebranded egg cake sure sounded good to me– marketing is everything!!
Nice scale. Looks a lot more hip than the old clunker I’ve got in the bathroom.
When I made my first lemon meringue pie, I didn’t have an electric mixer, so I had to use an old hand-crank egg-beater for the meringue. I cranked away for an hour, and finally had just enough foam to cover the surface of the pie. I put it in the oven at 400 degrees for 5 minutes, as instructed. When I took it out, the meringue had shrunk to the size of a quarter in the exact center of the pie.
There– I knew you’d feel better!! : P
Lol! Oh no!…but yay at the same time…only because I do feel a little better about my cake flop so thanks.
I live in Canada. Canada is officially on the metric system of measurement. But a lot of people use the Imperial system for things like weight, height, measurements, and, of course, recipes. I often just estimate/eyeball measurements, but, when I do measure, I use a measuring cup and a set of measuring spoons that have both systems of measurement on them. I’m used to it, so I don’t really think about it too much. If there’s a conversion I’m not sure of, I often Google it. Like gallons to litres: I need to know that for homebrewing beer, not for baking, but it happens infrequently enough that I usually have to Google it again when I need it.
I spent some time living in Western Europe and did observe that people seem to use mostly weight for baking measurements there. While living there, I had a set of measuring spoons – that I bought at the local Ikea – that I sometimes used for baking. One of my housemates was absolutely fascinated by the measuring spoons and claimed to never have seen them, ever, before.
Haha it’s so funny that your housemate would be fascinated by measuring spoons! Yes google is incredibly useful for those types of conversions even if it’s just liters to quarts since I can never remember which is bigger….then even when I do remember which is which I don’t trust myself. You make your own beer?! That is so awesome! I wish that I had the patience for a project like that..oh what crazy flavors I would experiment with!