the red mixer
November 11, 2009 by Jill Thomas
Jill is the creator and editor of this blog and the owner of Rock Salt Restaurant and Cafe on Salt Spring Island. 
I don’t bake. I hate baking. It’s too precise for me and involves too much measuring. Once I decided to bake my daughter a banana birthday cake. Her name is Hana and I call her banana so I thought it was apt. Despite my best effort the cake tasted like a banana tennis ball. Hana eats anything with sugar but she could not eat that cake. My current pastry chef, Dean Mollon, has made all our family cakes since then.
Many great bakers have worked in my restaurants over the years. I have learned from them that bakers and cooks are different creatures. Bakers are precise and follow recipes exactly. They like to weigh their ingredients. They don’t like to wing it-ever. Restaurant cooks on the other hand thrive on chaos, enjoy stress and are almost always winging it. They hate scales and resist measuring.
I am a confirmed cook. I have never followed a recipe in my life. I don’t even follow my own recipes. My family recipes have endless revisions and a healthy dose of sarcastic comments.
I just received a bright red kitchen aid mixer for a wedding gift. My ‘husband’ and I got married this fall after raising a family and running two businesses but that is a story for another time. This story is about the mixer.
I have always wanted this mixer. Stand up mixers look so proud on your kitchen counter. They announce to every person who enters your house that you are serious about food. I am a serious no processed food kind of cook so my mixer will tell no lies. However, I am not sure what to do with it because I don’t bake. Mixers are for bakers. My husband thinks we should return the it and buy a cappuccino machine. So I am going to have to find ways to use the mixer if I want to keep it. Any ideas?
In the meantime let me share this great recipe for aged cheddar biscuits. I make these all the time in the winter. They are quick and easy and are great with homemade soup. Making them is as close as I come to baking. The only equipment you need is two mixing bowls, a spoon and a baking sheet.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In bowl combine dry ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking soda (sifted)
In another bowl combine wet ingredients:
1 cup grated white aged cheddar
1/4 cup minced parsley
1 1/2 cups milk (sometimes need more or less, your spoon should stand up, batter should be sticky not runny)
2 Tablespoon butter (melted)
Combine wet and dry mix. Mix as little as possible.
Spoon onto a well greased cookie tray. Sprinkle more grated cheese on the top of each biscuit.
Bake for about 20 mintues. I like it when the bottoms of the biscuits are brown and crispy.
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Next time do carrot cake, you don’t need to be accurate with them.Never had a failure and never used the same amount of ingredients.Just do the by guess and by golly thing.
I beg to differ with buckwheat about cappuccino maker.
I got a small ol’Krups at a garage sale for $5.
The water is boiling in a minute.
To make another cup you have to refill the basket with good organic fair traded ground for espresso coffee. The problem is: you keep wanting another one, so it can take 2 or 3 before you ever get out the door.
If you decide against keeping the mixer, and for some reason don’t return it or loose your receipt, I know this great young Mom who would love it when she eventually moves out. Jill, why do you want a crapachino maker when you just go to your restaurant and get one. Another reason why you don’t want one…they take forever to warm up and in the time your getting grouchy and waiting for it to warm up, you leave the house in your slippers and go to Rock Salt.