More Than Sugar

There are two reasons for picking “More Than Sugar” as my tag line. The first is so many baked goods overdo it with sugar or some other ingredient to make up for a poor base. More frosting than cake, more chocolate than cookie. At some point a cookie with too much chocolate becomes a candy bar with bits of cookie. A snickerdoodle buried in cinnamon can’t make up for a less than eatable sugar cookie underneath. I strive to bake items that have flavors in balance.

The second reason is I will wander at times and cover things not related to baking. I’m a home owner and do much of the work on my house so I might cover a new tool or home improvement project I am working on. I also dabble in woodworking and gardening, do some hiking, enjoy dinning out and travel, all possible side trips for posts.

Why I like to bake? For my day job I am a software programmer and at the end of the day it is sometimes hard to show others what I did that day. I enjoy the work and my clients seem to be OK with it as they keep coming back. Frequently when talking with other programmers and we get into hobbies many of us have hobbies that produce something physical. We joke some days that being a ditch digger would be good as at the end of the day you can look over your shoulder and see what you accomplished.

I don’t call myself a baker, I use the term baking technician. In my job as a programmer you need to be precise and since baking is more science than art the precision appeals to me. A recipe is much like a software program if the instructions are clear and executed correctly you will get the same results each and every time.

My goal is to bring you along on my journey, I’ll cover my successes and my failures. How I’ll be different than many other cooking blogs is I am always looking for a gadget or technique that is more a geek solution than something a baker might use. For example when I cover “room temperature” butter I’ll show you how I built a room temperature refrigerator to make sure the butter really is at “room temperature.

Products that I evaluate and recommend I’ll give you a link if you’d like to buy it. These links may provide a payment to me. For products I don’t end up using or wouldn’t recommend I will give the product name but not provide a link. My evaluations will not be super scientific and frequently leverage evaluations by other websites which I will fully disclose. For example, I follow Cook’s Illustrated regularly and use their evaluations as starting points for some products I try. They have a good track record and most of the time I am happy with the item but not always which I will not hesitate to point out.

As a baking technician I rarely come up with a recipe on my own. Recipes I post on my site will usually start from someone else’s recipe, I will have made the item several times and detail the changes I make to the starting recipe. The source of the original recipe will be included.

My posts will be about my experiences and what has proved successful for me. The old saying “there are two ways around the same tree” is a common remark in the programming world. As long as you get to the same place in about the same amount of time it doesn’t matter much which direction you take around the tree. In baking, the direction you or I take may just be the direction we enjoy more and as long as you are happy with the results it doesn’t matter if it is the “correct” way as others see to do it. For example, as you will find I may overdo it in the precision category but I find a sort of “Zen” in doing it.

I welcome feedback, suggestions, complaints, etc. I am new to running a blog so I expect things might be a bit uneven as compared to other blogs you might follow. I’ll get better. As I mention above, I still have a day job so my posts might not be super regular and responses may be delayed.