Monday, November 20, 2006

Ingenuity

You know how when you make muffins or a cake, the recipe tells you test it for doneness with a toothpick or cake tester? Tell me the truth: does anyone ever have toothpicks lying around? I never do (and what is a cake tester, anyway? I've never seen one.) Typically I'll just use a butter knife and deal with the divot in the surface of the cake. I'm not that fussy. Cake is cake. But! I caught a few minutes of Nigella Lawson a few weekends ago, she was making this ridiculous four-chocolate loaf cake and she said, 'Just poke it with a piece of uncooked spaghetti.' Genius! Finally, a use for the whole-wheat spaghetti taking up space in my pantry.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you do if it breaks off inside of the cake? Do you perform surgury, or do you leave it in and serve that piece to yourself?

Chefty said...

Good question. I suppose if you make sure to insert the spaghetti lightly and in a straight up & down motion, there's less of a chance that the spaghetti will break.