The magic my mother’s mother worked in the kitchen was learned. She wasn’t a natural, as she readily admitted. She grew up a bookworm on the South Side of Chicago, rather poor yet part of a privileged generation of women who were — for the first time in American history — going to college en masse. It’s commonly thought that it wasn’t until after World War II that women in America started leaving home and taking degrees in higher ed. In fact the trend started well before then, back in the teens and twenties. It was only interrupted by the war, when men went overseas and women went to work. …

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Whew, after five days away from home in rainy weather you should see my lawn! Lots to do and catch up on, but I’ll be back on the case as soon as I can. Those yolks aren’t getting any younger!

In all the hubbub of traveling this week I forgot to post this short tutorial. This sauce (really a syrup) is simplicity itself. Assemble your ingredients, then combine the sugar and cocoa powder. …

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Any time my mother’s mother made angel food cake, you could always count on gold cake as a follow-up. After all, it was the perfect way to use up the leftover yolks. It’s not what you’d call a “classic” preparation in the wider world of pastry, but it sure was at grandma’s house.

Another very good question, reader Will. Heat penetration is the answer. Without that center hole, an angel food cake would be an extremely broad and thick mass. Heat from the oven would have a hard time reaching the center before the outside over-baked. Meringue-topped pies are a good illustration of this problem. Big as they are, the very centers are often under-baked or weepy, because it’s hard to get that middle region hot enough without overheating and breaking the rest of the meringue.
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Several readers have written in to ask if it’s true that a tiny bit of fat in a mixer bowl will ruin a batch of whipped egg whites. The answer: absolutely not. A small blot of, say, egg yolk will do virtually nothing to impede a batch of whites from whipping up to a nice, voluminous foam.

Egg white foams work because the bubbles that make them up are reinforced by a mesh of string-like protein molecules, molecules which have been coaxed into untangling by the whipping action. At that point they begin to collect around air bubbles because certain regions along their length are attracted to air (are hydrophobic) and others are attracted to water (hydrophilic). Thus the surface of the bubble is a desirable spot for them, as all their different regions are happy, and they can bond to each other side-by-side while they’re there. …

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Ladies and germs, I have to blow town for several days on business. I will still be blogging, just not as much as normal…I don’t think. We’ll see. More soon one way or another!