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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Kitchen Tips

When making this safari cake for my nephew's 2nd birthday, my 4 year old nephew was eager to help me. I'm not going to lie. This stressed me out a bit. Ha ha...

While I was baking my sister told me about chef Michael Smith who is a top Canadian chef (I hadn't heard of him before! Shows how much I know about food...)

She saw him on TV recently and he was saying it doesn't matter if the food doesn't look perfect or even taste perfect. The point of cooking is the experience and if cooking with loved ones, then it's about enjoying that time together regardless of the outcome.

At the time she said this, I was like, "Oh yeah. Of course!" But later I told her I was actually thinking, "No. That is so NOT true."  Heh...

I understand what he's saying though. It all depends on context. If you're having an afternoon activity of cooking/baking with your kids, then yes, of course don't worry about perfection!

However, this was not a lassez faire sort of cake...

Anyways, this is totally not the point of this post! Haha.

The point of this post starts here. 


My nephew insisted on cracking the eggs. I admit, I was skeptical at first but turns out he's actually pretty good at it! From the 3 eggs he cracked, only one little shell piece fell into the bowl. He seemed disappointed but I remembered reading a little trick somewhere. And that brings us (finally) to Tip #1:

It's so simple. All you have to do is get your fingers a little wet with water! This allows you to pick out the shell in a jiffy!  No more futile chasing after an elusive piece of egg shell!


Now that my nephew knows this trick, there will be no more egg shells in the bowl in the future! Hurray!

Tip #2:

Use vinegar to cut through grease... or butter.

I was washing up after icing the cake and since I had to use a LOT of butter in the mixture, everything was feeling so slimy. Yuck...

My sister overheard my disgust and told me to use vinegar. Worked like a charm! I will definitely use this trick in the future!

Hmm...Well..this isn't much of a list now is it? I guess I need to bake/cook more to actually come up with a decent list. =)

To make up for this sad list, I found this list for 20 uses of vinegar. I knew vinegar was pretty amazing stuff but who knew it could soften hair or even kill warts!

20 Uses For Vinegar
 There are a lot of tips on that list that I'm eager to try! And no. It's not the wart one.... =)

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