Baked Green Tomatoes
Let me preface this blog post with one caveat: a baker, I am not. However, approximately 2.3 times a year, I fail to recognize this fundamental fact and optimistically think that I can overcome my baking curse. It typically results in a messy kitchen and a pan full of edible-enough results, which is usually enough to consider it a success and give me hope to try it again roughly five months later.
My most recent experience came this weekend, courtesy of this summer’s tomato blight. Comforted by the illusion that my garden full of green tomatoes had nothing to do with my lack of green thumb (never mind that the blight was more prevalent in the Northeast than my Chicago home), I was encouraged to try a recipe for green tomato cake.
Setting aside my skepticism, I embarked on a mission: to convert that handful of unripe tomatoes into a Bundt-pan full of deliciousness. I started out doing well enough – I thought to substitute chocolate chips for the raisins, and managed to buy everything on my shopping list. I correctly measured out my ingredients, or, for the fancy cooks out there, set up my mise en place. It was going like clockwork! Until…
…I encountered two seemingly simple words in the ingredient list: “softened butter”. Softened butter? How soft is “softened”? How does one soften butter when one’s kitchen is a brisk 66 degrees and lacks a sunny windowsill? Having read at some point that microwaving is not a suitable form of softening but not having the time to leave it at room temperature for much more than a few minutes (and with flour-encrusted hands that kept me from Google), I had to reach deep into my creative side. So, I placed the butter atop the preheating oven. Pretty impressed with my ingenuity, I left it there until it felt, well, kind of soft. I then proceeded to beat the butter and sugar, never really achieving the “creamy” consistency that Paula Deen claimed it should have.
In what was probably my critical mistake, I charged ahead undaunted, “technical” terms aside (hey, it became “creamy” when I added the eggs, so that was close enough, right?). As I poured the batter into the pan, I had an inkling that something was off, as the pan felt as heavy as a bowling ball. Having gone too far to turn back, I baked the cake and, not shockingly, it was incredibly dense, so dense in fact that the crust pulled away from the cake as I removed it from the pan, thus keeping me once again from joining the ranks of People who Bring Baked Goods into the Office.
After hypothesizing about the fatal mistake, I consulted our resident baking expert, who confirmed that while my softening technique was valid, the butter should have been soft enough that you could break it up with just two fingers. Novice baker that I am, it would have been extremely helpful to have such context at the time of baking. This inevitably led me to reflect on the fact that we often take for granted terms that our learners “should” know, when we may in fact be doing them a disservice without realizing it.
Moral of the story? Chocolate chips can salvage many a baked good, but never underestimate the value of a clear explanation and an expert story.
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Christina Anderson
Project Manager
NogginLabs, Inc.
