Published: April 18, 2007 10:15 am            

The anatomy of a recipe

Ever gone to a restaurant or a meeting and had something to eat that was really, really good and you wanted to find out what ingredients were in the recipe that made it so tasty?

It’s happened to me a lot. I find myself tasting something and then asking people around me if they could taste a hint of cinnamon or cream cheese or whatever that ingredient is that makes it so good.

Sometimes I feel a little like Alton Brown and his “Good Eats” show on the Food Network. Brown explores the science behind the cooking, the history of different foods and the advantage of different kinds of cooking equipmnent. The show tends to focus on familiar dishes that can be easily made at home and also features segments on choosing the right appliances and getting the most out of inexpensive multi-purpose tools.

Brown may take a general recipe, such as for icing, and tell us what ingredients will make it the best icing for whatever kind of cake we are making.

That’s how I feel when I’m tasting something and trying to figure out what’s in it. It happened Sunday during the Hospice of McAlester’s Sabbath service at the Little Chapel on the Hill.

The Casual Gourmet Department of the McAlester Fortnightly Club, GFWC, provides refreshments for a reception after the service and I was one of the volunteers helping with the reception.

Debbie Blanchard, another Casual Gourmet member, brought these wonderful raspberry bars. They were so wonderful, so decadent. We stood and munched away, trying to decide exactly what it was that made them so tasty. Two of us had come to the conclusion that it was cream cheese.

No, no cream cheese, Debbie told us. It was butter, lots and lots of melted butter. “Butter has to be good for you,” she added. We agreed.

The bars were made using a yellow cake mix, 1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats, 3/4 cup melted butter and 1 12-ounce jar of raspberry jam mixed with one tablespoon of water to make it spreadable. The melted butter was added to the cake mix with half the mixture spread on the bottom of a 9x13-inch pan. The raspberry jam mixture was spread on top of that with the remaining cake mixture on top. Then it’s baked at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Super, super easy. Debbie got the recipe from razzledazzlerecipes.com. I visited the Web site and there’s lots of other great recipes there.

Casual Gourmet Director Kay Grumbine brought a very tasty frozen punch. After one taste, we all knew it had pineapple and bananas in it. Those ingredients were pretty obvious. I didn’t get the exact quantities of the ingredients but the punch also had ginger ale and strawberries in it along with sugar and Splenda®.

Geneva Miller brought some crescent cookies. She didn’t get to stay so we didn’t find out what the ingredients were but we think there was some cinnamon involved.

My contribution was brownies, actually a new recipe I hadn’t tried before. My usual recipe doesn’t rise very much. I like a nice chewy brownie but I want a little bit of thickness to it. This recipe had baking powder in it along with a third of a cup of butter (back to Debbie’s statement about butter must be good for you). I had to share with the ladies how much butter there was. There were nods as they said that’s what made the brownies so chewy.

Yes, we all have to do a little bit of investigating what we eat. It’s all out of curiousity and most of us cooks are glad to share that secret ingredient that makes a food so good.

I’ll even share that brownie recipe.

Brownies

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 tsp. baking powder

1 cup pecans (optional)

2 tbsp. cocoa

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Cream butter and eggs; add dry ingredients and vanilla. Place in a 9x9-inch greased glass baking dish. Bake at 325ºF until done. (It took about 20 minutes in my oven but times vary)

Courtesy Mrs. Pat Shamblin, Stollings, West Virginia, in the “People are Precious but Desserts Are Delicious” cookbook sponsored by the National Shut-Ins’ Day Association, (c) 1979.

Contact Teresa Atkerson at family@mcalesternews.com.

        

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