LFMF: Salty Seadogs

I have never really understood why anyone would put salt in a confection. Salt liquorice excluded. And salted caramel. And sea salt ice cream for all you squeenix-ites out there.

What I am talking about is salt in cakes, biscuits, brownies etc. I don’t understand it. Why?

I grew up in a no salt household. My grandmother has a heart condition, and so my mother grew up learning to cook without salt. So when she passed the torch to me, naturally, I cook without salt. Now I am mostly grown, I love a little tiny pinchette of salt in the water when I boil wholegrain rice, or the occasional sprinkle on chips (though I much prefer cracked black pepper and Mediterranean herbs, a num num num). Salty takeaways are a rare and delicious treat. However, on the whole, I still cook without salt. I still live without salt.

I found a new recipe I wanted to try a couple of days ago, on Cooksunited.co.uk (I will post about the less fail version soon). The recipe called for 2 ½ tsp of salt in a cupcake batter. I’m a great believer in baking being alchemy, and I’m a gullible fool who doesn’t really know how strong salt is, so I merrily mixed it into the flour, and got on with the rest of the baking procedure. It was, whilst not difficult or really complicated, an involved recipe, so by the time I was mixing the wet with the dry, I had forgotten about that 2 ½ tsp of salt I had mixed in. So when I had popped the first half-batch into the oven, I tasted a bit of the batter.

BLECH. It was like strawberry scented sea water.

Baking didn’t improve it. Delicious frosting didn’t improve it. There was nothing for it.

These cupcakes were fail!cakes.



Seriously. Utter fail.



Don’t pity them. They brought it on themselves. They had the audacity to smell delicious too. *weeps*

I followed the recipe to the letter, and alas, fail occurred. I have little doubt that it’s happened to every baker worth his or her flour streaked hair in their time. In fact this one was a multi!fail. The cook temp was too high for my oven, even when I had factored in fan assistance and a little for the fact my oven appears to be powered by THE FIRES OF HELL. Also, the cook time was too long, and of course, as afore mentioned, the poor beleaguered cupcakes tasted like undiluted miso and my perfume.

What can we all take away from this fail?

Generally;

1) Be prepared to fail at baking from time to time. No one gets it absolutely right every time. For serious.

2) Baking might be alchemy, but there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. Be prepared to edit recipes pre bake, based on common sense and experience.

3) Practice makes perfect. Never expect perfection from your first try at a recipe; give yourself time and ingredients to try again before it’s needed, if necessary.


And specifically, regarding salt;

Maybe I’m a heathen. Maybe I should be butchered in my bed for suggesting this, but I don’t think you don’t NEED, in my albeit limited experience, to put salt in nearly all sweet recipes. And most savoury ones too. It’s better for your health, for one. At most, a little sprinkle of sea or table salt is more than enough.

If you need to use salt, or want to, table salt has a much stronger flavour, and a much more ‘manufactured’ taste compared with sea salt. I wouldn’t use more than the minute-est sprinklette of the former in any sweet recipe, as it is even quicker to over power.

My top tip for getting around the risk of over salting, whilst using salt, is to use salted butter. Cut the salt out of the dry ingredients of the recipe all together. Salt is a taste enhancer; I’m led to believe its contrast with the sweet in the confection makes the flavours really pop. Unless you are making salted caramels or sea salt ice cream, lightly salted butter will give you that edge of balance whilst stopping the salt content from getting too high and too cloying on the palate.

But, to be honest, heathen though I may be, just don’t bother. Save it for your tatties.

Well, I’d best go and start writing up the slightly more successful version of the cupcake story. And see if the local wildlife fancies a salty sweet snack…

Please guys. Learn from my salty fail.