The fruit cake looks delicious, very yummy indeed. Your post made me laugh as I really recognize your problem with baking and the lack of someone else eating the delights before you eat everything by yourself

Gummi is my helpful one. He often sits on my desk and helps me write, mostly by chasing the cursor and getting in the way. He also likes to sit and watch me cook, though he is bad about sticking his wee paw into the sink to try and fish out anything that is thawing in the water there. The other cats leave it alone, being that they hate water. But not Gummi…no, not at all.

Hey, Ladi–you’ll get to see your Sekhmet soon!

Whole-grain bread is the bomb, but only when it is good. I cannot abide dry crumbly bread, which is why I tend to add more honey to such loaves I bake. It is hydroscopic and so will draw more moisture and retain more moisture in the dough, thus helping to keep the bread a bit more moist than it otherwise might be.

Hello, Shirley–I love food science. My favorite classes in high school were science classes and in fact, for a time in college, I was a zoology major. The math requirements, however, killed me, so I ended up with a writing degree, and then went on to culinary school.

But still, chemistry, biology and physics still call to me, so when I teach cooking, I always give the scientific principle for how and why it works. I find that people really respond well to that method–not only do they get the practical knowledge of how to do something, they understand why it works the way it does. I find that if people understand the basic principles behind cooking and baking, they can apply them to other dishes in other settings, rather then just rely on rote memorization of recipes and processes.

I am not good at breadmaking. I am very good at producing lots of heavy bricks. Perhaps in my past life I was an Egyptian brickmaker of some sort.