Today I have a special blog post! I will be doing a documentation of my first baking experience in France, along with some tips for cooking in another country (believe me, these tips are worth noting).
To start off, I'd like to point out that baking in a new place is hard. New kitchen, new ingredients, new tools, etc. As someone who is quite familiar with the kitchen, I was ready for the challenge. I figured that I could problem solve if I really needed to (and believe me, I really needed to). So if you're someone, say, and exchange student, who is not too experienced in the kitchen and wants the low-down, this is the place for you!
Today's experiment: Chocolate Chip Muffeleins.
I'd like to consider this an Effy Akamian special. Bet you've never had a Muffelein before.
My real mum makes the absolute best muffins I've ever had, so I wanted to try to make some. They're faily easy and I was certain that we already had most of the things I needed to make it. The recipe she sent me was a muffin recipe that called for blueberries and orange zest for falvour, but I decided to use chocolate chips instead to make them more suitable for dessert. I'm gonna give you guys some photos to show my process, along with some cliff notes to inform you of my mistakes and quick fixes.
Step 1: Convert your measurements (Optional, if you are not American)
This was where I ran into my first problem. Not only do tablespoons and teaspoons not exist here, but I had to convert some things to liters and some things to grams, and it depended on WHAT I was measuring (for example, flour and sugar do not measure the same), as seen in this photo:
As for the tablespoons and teaspoons, I eyeballed it. Tablespoons are easy to guess because they're the same amount as a normal sized spoon. The teaspoons were tricky, but I think I did alright!
Step 2: Gather your ingredients.
Luckily, this recipe was fairly easy. I didn't even need butter or some fancy flavour extract. However, every country is different when it comes to cooking and baking. I realised this when I asked if my host mum had any baking soda. I tried to translate it into French, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to translate baking powder to see if it was the same thing (and because the recipe called for baking powder, as well) but it was something different. Luckily, we had the baking powder, but she still had no idea what baking soda was. So the chemistry nerd inside of me translated "sodium bicarbonate" into French, which confused her even more. She then asked me if it was the same thing that you "brush you teeth with"....
At this point, I had to resort to Google to make sure I wasn't the only person who had this problem. According to the many threads of cooking questions that I read, baking soda doesn't exist here. It's considered an "old fashioned" way of baking. As I said before, baking and cooking is different in every country. Another way to get the same effect as baking soda is to whip egg whites and fold them into your batter (also a very French style of baking, same method used in making macarons). But because I didn't know how much egg whites I would need, I ended up using this:
Yep. It's teeth whitener. Sodium bicarbonate is an active ingredient in toothpaste. It's the magical stuff that makes your teeth white when you buy your favourite super mega ultra pearly white toothpaste.
You may be wondering why the hell I decided to use teeth whitener in my muffin recipe. My host mum wondered the same thing, telling me that it probably wasn't an important ingredient. But baking soda is a very very important thing, as it is the raising agent when you bake things. Also a very important reason why you should never confuse or substitute baking powder for baking soda.
Aside from the slightly minty smell, it really didn't make that much of a difference in the overall flavour of the batter, so I went with it. Gotta do what ya gotta do. There's no way I could have successfully made these muffins without it.
Anyways, back to baking!
Step 3: Put dat stuff together.
My host sister said that her grandmother had one, but at this point it was too late and I had already been improvising. So I decided to use Madeleine pans!
Being someone who was already familiar with Madeleines, as they were a childhood favourite and still are, let me give you the low-down on what they are; they're French ass cookies that are a tad tricky to make right because of the pan. I recall my mum telling me that the tricky thing about making Madeleines and all their deliciousness is baking them correctly. So doing this right took a few tries. I decided to bake the pans one at a time as a sort of trial and error and take photos along the way.
As you can see in this photo, the first ones were pretty full, and the second I put them in the oven, I was afraid they wouldn't work.
Here was the result of batch one:
Result: not a total failure!
Second batch, I decided not to fill them as much and reduce the baking time:
Yep, turned out pretty nice! Not too brown, less dry in the middle, and I even got that pretty shell shape. Pretty good, huh?
To give you more of an idea of the difference from the first batch, here's a comparison:
*The recipe made 10 muffins, which ended up being 4 batches with these Madeleine pans, a total of
So, what have we learned today? Here are the three things I took away from today's experiment:
1) Convert your ingredients thoroughly.
2) Make sure all of the ingredients you need are available to you.
3) Take risks!
I hope you guys learned something from today. And if cooking isn't your thing, I hope this was entertaining! I cook a lot with this host family, so I'll most likely be writing about more cooking experiences in the near future (or at least posting photos).
Until next time, bon appétit!
~Effy
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