How Donuts Are Made

 

I love donuts and I'm passionate about them. For my money, cake donuts are not donuts - there is only yeast. Everything else is pointless and a waste of time.

I'll throw something else out there that will probably affect nobody in the world. When I was in elementary school, we had a day where we were all sat down and shown a movie where someone invents a donut making machine that goes haywire and makes infinite donuts. The conundrum of the movie is literally that a machine won't stop making donuts and they're just piling up and they don't know how to stop it. The movie was terrible but the image of the delicious donuts, as well as the mechanization aspect, were enough to keep me interested and leave an indelible memory.

If you're looking for that movie, it's "The Doughnuts" from 1963 and you can watch it here. All the top youtube comments are people talking about how they also remember watching it in school.  And it is still terrible. But thanks to the above video I now know that the machine in the movie is making cake donuts.

What is Malt?

 

It might sound dumb but I've always wondered what malt was. From "going to the Malt Shop" in old movies to the candy malted milk balls, I always had it in the back of my mind.

Adam Ragusea - What is Kosher Salt?

The Invention of Cereal

 This will sound like a joke but it's not: I've always wondered about the history of cereal. Now I know. Turns out it's very interesting.

Why Brownie Skin?

 A two-part series on the science of shiny brownie skin. That's it. That's the post.

Adam Ragusea - How I Became the Mariah Carey Christmas Chord Guy

 Or: The Problem with Clickbait and the Tyranny of Twitter...

Strangely, I have a feint recollection that I saw that article and who would've known that years later I would be watching the same guy for cooking videos.

Adam Ragusea - What is Wagyu Beef?

  

I've had Wagyu A5 beef and I've given it away as a gift to others. I mention this because this affects my ability to get honest feedback - people want to be polite about gifts no matter what. So my data is not objective but my sense is that perhaps they didn't enjoy it as much as the hype train should suggest. As the video points out, we Americans ate it as a steak and it's so fatty that this is perhaps too much of a good thing. One person echoed what the video says in the way he started to feel too full and a little sick. 

As for me, I really liked it. I describe it as beef bacon. I was really hungry at the time and ate a full steak with no problem. But it was such an unusual experience, I don't know how to compare it to other steaks. I mean, it was definitely the best steak I've ever had but, again due to the fattiness, I wonder if other steaks would win in the long run.

A future test of this possibility will be to try Wagyu A4 next. A5 is the most expensive, most marbled and A4 is one step below that.

What Is Iodized Salt?

 

Do Hershey's Bars Taste Like Vomit?

Blogspot has overhauled the entire system and I have a feeling the formatting of this post will be vomit. Let's see....

I haven't had any chocolate in 1 or 2 years and I have urges...

Before that I had a strange relationship with this whole issue. I grew up loving Hershey's. Then I encountered people who said it tasted awful and I re-assessed my view. From that moment on, I started liking Hershey's less. Am I a victim of peer pressure or did I fail to question my own axioms until one day "the scales fell from my eyes"? Or is something else at work? Hard to say now.

And if my opinion of Hershey's has fallen, what kind of chocolate(s) do I consider to be superior? I would love to be able to do a chocolate taste test and get down to some facts.

A Brief History of Ice

What is Baking Soda? Baking Powder?

Boxed Cake vs. Scratch Cake

An interesting video about the reasons boxed cake tastes different from cake made from scratch and the science behind it.