Baking Soda

Many pastry recipes specifically call for unsalted butter. Yet in the same recipe a small amount of salt is called for. Why can't I just use salted butter? The short answer is, you probably can. But here's why it's risky: Different brands of salted butter may contain different amounts of salt. So, when you rely on salted butter for the salt in a recipe, you can't control the amount. In recipes that don't call for leavening agents (such as piecrust), the worst-case scenario is that the product will taste too salty or not salty enough.

Linda Robinson of Black Hawk, S.D., was looking for a recipe for Pumpkin Streusel Cake similar to one she had found some years ago in her local newspaper. Gladys Wilt of Lothian had a recipe she found in the Libby's Home-Baked Goodness cookbook published in 1995. This recipe makes a moist and delicious coffeecake that is particularly wonderful to serve in the autumn months. I served it room temperature, but it probably would be even better served warm from the oven. Pumpkin Streusel Coffeecake Serves 10 STREUSEL TOPPING: 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 3 tablespoons butter or margarine 1/2 cup chopped nuts COFFEECAKE: 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup (2 sticks)

Southern Cakes By Nancie McDermott Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook By Alan Rosen and Beth Allen The Taunton Press / 2007 / $22 In 35 years of baking I had never made a cheesecake. Ever. But cheesecake baking, according to the cheesecake mavens at Junior's Restaurant in New York, can be a no-fear proposition. So I decided to put it to the test by making the Original New York Cheesecake. I first read the nine-page Cheesecake 101 introduction - twice. Each step was explained in an easygoing, conversational style.

Barbara Stowe of Haydenville, Mass., was looking for a recipe for Morning Glory Muffins. Joanne Calvert of Baltimore sent in a recipe for these dark and deliciously moist muffins that she says are a family favorite. They are full of healthful ingredients and reminded me of carrot cake. The batter can be made in advance and will keep well in the refrigerator overnight if you want to bake them first thing in the morning. They also freeze and reheat very well. There is no doubt that these delightful muffins would be a great start to any day. Morning Glory Muffins Makes 16 to 18 muffins 2 cups flour 1 1/4 cups sugar 2 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups grated carrots 1/2 cup raisins 1 apple, grated 1/2 cup coconut 3 eggs 1 cup oil 2 teaspoons vanilla Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Rough and craggy on the outside, tender on the inside, Irish soda bread is the perfect treat for celebrating St. Patrick's Day. The bread -- so named for the baking soda that makes it rise -- became popular in Ireland in the 19th century, before yeast was in wide use there, Alan Davidson writes in The Oxford Companion to Food. The crosses cut in the top both helped the bread bake faster, and, lore had it, warded off the devil. (A tic-tac-toe pattern works well, too.) Shirley Coleman, a chef instructor at Baltimore International College, showed us an easy version made with raisins, called a "spotted dog" in Ireland.

Mary Keen of Baltimore was searching for a recipe for what she described as the "best oatmeal cookie" that she had ever eaten. Keen said what made these cookies unique was that they were made with orange juice. Joy Meyer of Bella Vista, Ark., sent in a recipe she had clipped many years ago from a magazine for orange-oatmeal cookies. These tasty cookies are made with both orange juice and orange rind. I tested the recipe using butter and freshly squeezed orange juice. The cookies were crisp on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.

I've been searching for Dutch-process cocoa. In the supermarkets, I just see Nestle and Hershey's cocoa, neither of which says "Dutch" or "processed with alkali." Chocolate liquor has two principal components - cocoa solids and cocoa butter - and in 1828, a Dutchman named Coenraad Van Houten invented a method for separating the two. The newly independent cocoa solids also could be pulverized to make a fine powder with lots of chocolate flavor but little fat: cocoa powder. Van Houten also invented a process by which cocoa powder, which is naturally quite acidic, was treated with an alkaline to neutralize the flavor and deepen the color.

Little things can cause great aggravation. I reacquainted myself with this truism recently as I wrestled with a bathtub's faulty pop-up drain. I lost this battle but did learn some new words, such as "lift-rod assembly." In its youth, this tub drain stopper could jump. At the flick of a lever the stopper would pop up to let water run out of the tub, or close to let the tub fill with water. But over time it lost its "ups." Maybe it was age; maybe someone taking a shower -- the tub doubles as a shower -- had stepped on it. But lately flicking the control lever was like calling your cable or satellite provider: Nothing happened.

Courtney Montgomery of Baltimore was trying to track down a 30-year-old recipe for black walnut cookies as a surprise for her grandmother. The cookies were a family favorite, and her grandmother had lost her recipe. Eleanor Manner, also of Baltimore, sent in her mother's recipe for the cookies. She said her mother used to bake them every year for her husband during the holidays. Since her mother died, Manner makes them for him herself and said it helps them "to remember how sweet she was."

Well, yes, you could just open a can. But homemade baked beans offer much, much more. They offer a connection to the past. One of my favorite food writers, Della Lutes, opens her 1935 classic The Country Kitchen with an accounting of her father's birthday feast in 1882: "A great pan of beans was baked, nice, white Michigan [or New York State] beans, soaked overnight, parboiled in the early morning with a pinch of soda, then washed in cold water and boiled again with a slab of salt pork and an onion, until the outer skin burst.