Lightening the mood....

Since my last post was a little heavy, I'm writing again tonight about something very light: Air. Specifically, air bubbles found in cakes, muffins, and biscuits. I read a post earlier today on Whole New Mom about making your own baking powder, and the professional baker in me had to put in his two cents... and another two cents... and well, here I am writing a post about chemical leavening agents. :-)

One of my favorite classes during my culinary training was baking techniques, as it was a marriage of visual creativity, balance of taste, and chemistry. All things that I have natural passion towards - even the chemistry. And that's where baking powder comes in.

Baking soda is where it all starts actually. It works by producing carbon dioxide when an acid is present - heat and moisture speed this process way up. Common ingredients that have an acid component present enough to react with baking soda include:

• buttermilk
• molasses
• brown sugar
• chocolate
• cocoa powder
• honey
• citrus juice
• vinegar

At my job as a bakery supervisor, I had to get creative with recipes on several occasions when certain key ingredients ran out.... like baking powder. I suppose I should reveal here, that baking powder is simply baking soda with the addition of a white powdery acid - cream of tartar (and also contains some starch to prevent clumping).

So, when I was making chocolate chip muffin batter at 4:00 in the morning one cold January day and found we were out of baking powder, I naturally grabbed the baking soda and an empty container that once held cream of tartar.... huh. For some reason instead of simply making a muffin batter that didn't require baking powder, I struggled through my sleepiness to remember the aforementioned information I had learned so long ago in a bake lab.

I ended up using brown sugar instead of white sugar and instead of baking powder used half that amount of baking soda. Then I crossed my fingers and tried desperately not to fall asleep. And it worked! Not only did the muffins rise, but they had a delicious hint of butterscotch flavor about them.

You might not want to use baking powder because of the cornstarch, or because many brands contain aluminum, or maybe you just ran out... The reality is this: Baking is much more flexible than most people assume. I rarely measure anything, and my cakes, tarts, and cookies almost always turn out....albeit with little consistency :) but that's part of the magic and charm.

Anyway, with a little know-how about how ingredients react to each-other and assumptions of how they will react under heat, baking can be as intuitive as steaming rice. Baking soda just needs an acid to become baking powder. There you have it. Perfect muffins ever time. :) Almost.