productivity and pound cake

[kareina]

Today was one of those days wherin I was busy enough that every time I looked at the clock I was quite surprised, because I was convinced that it should be hours earlier than the clock said. As a result of all of that time happily spent working I managed to complete the calculations for one sample and get it written up properly, and complete another but not write it up, because I'm now too sleepy, so that part can wait till morning.

In addition to uni work I managed to get in a walk to the waterfall, wash some clothes I do some baking. The hens have been laying, but we haven't been eating much in the way of eggs, and it happens to be clovis_t's father's birthday today, so I decided to make a pound cake. A good, old-fashioned sort: a pound of eggs, a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, and a pound of flour, with just a tiny dash of vanilla for good measure. I baked it in two loaf pans (I really like my new silicon bread pans--they are quite easy to clean, and unlike metal ones, I'm happy to wash them straight after taking them out of the oven and emptying them--they don't need to cool first). One loaf is for the house, and we will take the other to clovis_t's dad on the weekend, since clovis_t is too busy trying to finish up his Honours Thesis by Friday, when it is due (and for Honours they are very fussy about the deadline, at least in Australia). Besides, all of the old cookbooks say that pound cake is better if it sits a couple of days first.

Comments

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

I'm still dubious about the science of plastic in the oven (yes, I know, I'm being a luddite) but I will say that I have shunned metal for almost everything in favor of my stoneware. :)

Yes, pound cake is almost always best after sitting. I have a powdered sugar pound cake recipe that isn't but it isn't a traditional pound cake exactly. (It's divine with good caramel sauce.)

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Plastic I would worry about. However, plastics are made with carbon as the primary ingredient. That is the same element which is pervades our bodies and the things we eat. Generally speaking, carbon-based items either burn or melt at fairly low temperatures, which means their "metamorphic" (in the geologic sense of causing a change in the crystalline, or in the case of life, cellular, level) temperatures are even lower, since things tend to change before they melt.

I have not put in a study into the chemical composition of the new style bakeware, but if they are correct when they describe them as silicon-based I will not worry about putting them into the oven. Silica (in conjunction with oxygen) is the main component of glass and of quartz. These both have much higher melting points than we can ever hope to achieve with our home ovens, and the temperatures required to get crystals of quartz to "re-crystallize" in a metamorphic environment are also hotter than we can manage in our home ovens. a "hot" oven is around 200 degrees C. That temperature is the absolute bottom for "low grade" metamorphism--when tiny crystals of clay and mud in a siltstone, if left at that temperature for long enough (say thousands of years) start to grow and change into low-temperature minerals. To get the quartz to recrystalize needs temperatures more like 400-700C, and melting of quartz won't happen till somewhere over 800 degrees C (wow--the reading I'm doing must be taking effect--I did those numbers from memory, so they could be off by a little, but they give the idea).

Now, I admit, I don't know the chemical structure of these baking pans, but by extrapolation from what I know of other silicate minerals, I don't think our ovens are going to get hot enough to cause a problem.

(not only am I not a Luddite, I'm spending my "free" time reading textbooks on the thermodynamics of metamorphic minerals.)

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know they work, but I can't get past the feeling that they shouldn't. :)

[kareina.livejournal.com]

lol Perhaps if you have more spare time than I you could do a bit of research to determine their chemistry and structure and learn *why* they work, it might help get over that feeling. (and if you do, please share, the extrapolations I've made are based on not enough data!)