Questions for this Sunday

[quinara]

1. Why does Sainsbury's use milk in their flapjacks? It's sickly and completely unnecessary.
2. Why am I so sensitive to the taste of milk in sweet things? This is like when college ruined baklava by lacing the whole lot with cream.
3. Why are ablative absolutes so inelegant in English? I don't think I should be penalised in a classics essay for clearly having read too much stuff that uses them.
4. Why doesn't anyone like gerunds? They only want to be free...

Comments

[evilawyer]

I have a similar problem with milk in scrambled eggs. I hate it. It's gross.

There is a bread called Pan de Leche, and it's very nice but it's more milky than sweet. Other sweets with lots and lots of milk? It tastes like the milk's gone off. Blech.

[quinara]

See, I'm OK with milk in scrambled eggs, as long as it doesn't ruin the consistency. I'm not sure I can think of anything savoury where I have a problem with it... And I do actually like sweetened milk, when it's clear that's what's going on (like in cereal, or you get steamed milk with a shot of syrup in a coffee shop because you're me and don't like coffee), but this putting it in pastry-snack-things? It's ridiculous!

Pan de Leche sounds like it would be good, with emphasis clearly on the milk, rather than milk ruining what is meant to be a cleaner sweet flavour...

[stultiloquentia]

I had to go google "flapjack" because over here it's another word for "pancake" and of course you make pancakes with milk. Or yogurt. I have a really good yogurt pancake recipe.

Baklava is not creamy, though. That's just wacky.

Down with the Noun Police!

[quinara]

Oh yes, I always forget the world beyond doesn't have flapjacks (or does under a different name?)... They're very simple in principle, if apparently easy to fiddle with and get Wrong. Anyway, I can imagine yoghurt pancake recipes as being very tasty - if somewhat healthy feeling?

It was awful! My tastebuds went 'mmm, honey-pastry-nut-honey-hang on what's this? Blech, argh, cream-taste, cream, cream cream cream'. :(

Sing it!

[stultiloquentia]

Dictionary.com says, "a chewy biscuit made with rolled oats"...and I am still foiled, because I don't know whether dictionary.com is using "biscuit" in the British or NA sense. My Scottish grannie made what she called oatcakes out of flour, oats, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, shortening and water or milk. Rolled thin, cut out, baked. Yum.

Yoghurt pancakes taste quite decadent, actually. They puff beautifully.

[quinara]

Oh no, not oatcakes! My sense of them is that they're almost savoury, which isn't true of flapjacks at all... Sorry, I didn't want to be patronising by babbling on about them, but didn't realise the internet would foil you, rather than revealing all my secrets. Flapjacks are more like a traybake than a biscuit (is traybake a term? You end up with an object about the same dimensions as a brownie), and are basically oats baked in a thick syrup to a solid but preferably chewy texture.

This is a recipe for them, which I give you because I turn to Delia always, but I have to say that even though this is essentially the recipe I use (the ginger is not traditional and not in my edition, though funnily enough I did decide to add it on my own, along with a handful of chopped up crystallised ginger, which is very nice mixed in), I tend not to really follow it at all, because Delia doesn't have a particularly sweet tooth, so, while you usually can't fault the chemistry of her baking/all of her cooking, I find this sort of thing often needs a tweak, and flapjacks are what I tweak most of all. It's been a while, so I can't remember precisely what to do, but it's something like drop the butter down to 2 1/2 oz and massively top up the syrup, maybe two (generous) tablespoons of golden syrup and then a tablespoon of black treacle (I don't know how these ingredients translate; I'm imagining some variation on molasses? Golden syrup is our standard sweet syrup and black treacle is slightly thinner, much darker, and quite bitter along with being sweet - you use the combo also for gingerbread). You want the oats to be quite wet when you put them in the tin, but not dripping. The butter balance is really key, so if you're interested it might take a couple of goes, because with the recipe as is the flapjacks come out quite dry and savoury but OK, while with more syrup the butter tends to sink to the bottom to make a big greasy layer, but you do need some to stop the thing setting rock solid. It's always tasty in whatever combination, just sometimes more pleasant than others. I like the real kick of heavy syrup taste cut through with the ginger (which I would level up by taste), but it's easy to fiddle with, and raisins are a popular addition, or alternatively a layer of chocolate (but that's usually a cover for the more savoury pale coloured versions, when people pretend it's sweet... :P ).

(I know no recipe which adds milk, hence my indignation, but I think what it does is make the oats almost porridge before they're baked, so as to get the texture a lot more soft and consistent and cakey, but a good home flapjack should be perfectly chewable, in my opinion, with the oats gooing apart between your teeth...)

I am very intrigued by these puffing pancakes! But then I assume your cooking ones that are quite thick? I tend towards more crêpe-type ones.

[stultiloquentia]

You are hilarious and adorable and I'm totally trying these as soon as I rid my house of shortbread.

Yogurt pancakes:
1 C flour
1 T sugar
1 t b pow
1/2 t b soda
1/2 t salt
1 egg
1 C yogurt
1/4 C water
1 T oil
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 t nutmeg (if it's peach yog)

[quinara]

I realise now that other people probably actually keep recipes, rather than vainly trying to remember how they alter others... :D

Ooh, concise instructions! Yum!

[stultiloquentia]

rather than vainly trying to remember...

Oh, no, I do that, too. It's always, "Dammit, this was the one that needs 3/4 of the sugar left out!" after they come out of the oven....

[quinara]

*nods sympathetically* It makes me really sad to think of all the great recipes I've found, tweaked, perfected and then forgotten/lost somewhere (I baked really regularly between 2005 and 2007 or even a tad earlier as well, but have completely got out of the habit, and the well stocked kitchen, and never realised at the time I was gaining knowledge that could do with being written down). Though I was quite proud at Easter when I remembered that the way to get the perfect brownie consistency was to cook them at 180 C for ten minutes, then drop the oven to 170 for another 13... /anal baker

[verity]

Can I just say hell to the yes on the last two? I didn't really ever learn English grammar formally, just picked it up through context, so whenever I analyze English for grammar/structure I end up superimposing Latin grammar on it. This makes my thinking/formal writing sometimes strange.

[quinara]

I'm a big fan of the way Latin compartmentalises its various clauses, so it can be quite scary how many real verbs my sentences start asking for...