Really Quick Mixed-flavor Pudding

First video is slide show; second video is motion.

Like creamy dessert without ice-cream chilliness? How about something convenient to make with few ingredients and implements? Pudding! You can customize for flavors and milks (fat-level content, lactose/lactose-free). Yogurt, custard, and soft-serve are additional creamy desserts without ice-cream chilliness, but this article is about pudding that uses instant pudding powder and milk.

My recent pudding batch used 2 4-serving boxes (chocolate, butterscotch) and 4 cups of 1% lactose-free milk. (Vary the ingredients as you'd like.)

Quick-glance Recipe Info

Use a mixing bowl and wire whip to combine (~90 to 120 seconds), occasionally scraping bowl sides. Pour the mixture into smallish jelly jars or 7-8 oz plastic or paper cups. Serve immediately or cover and store in the refrigerator.

Use a mixing bowl and wire whip to combine (~90 to 120 seconds), occasionally scraping bowl sides. Pour the mixture into smallish jelly jars or 7-8 oz plastic or paper cups. Serve immediately or cover and store in the refrigerator.

Because I think 4-oz servings are too small for my taste, I poured the mixture into 6 portions rather than 8. View videos (slide show) and (motion version) for the following step-by-step stages:

• Implements (bowl, wire whip, rubber spatula, small plate for holding the other three items)
• Ingredients (milk, pudding powder, optional chocolate chips)
• Process (assembling, mixing, mixture distributing, food-wrap covering, storing in refrigerator)

Caloric Considerations

Sugar free pudding powder has significantly fewer calories than regular powder. For an example, Jell-O Sugar Free Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix has 4 servings (powder only) at 25 calories each, but Jell-O Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix calories is 90.

Milk comes in fat-free, whole, and in-between low-fat-percentage varieties. Various other milks are available, such as soy and almond. (I have no experience with non-cow milk myself.)

Lactose Considerations

Lactose-free milk is good for lactose-intolerant people. Lactaid is a big name, but Mootopia and store-brand clones are also available. Not all milk-fat lactose-free milks are always available. Calcium-fortified lactose-free milk might or might not be available where you shop.

Some instant milk powders contain milk products, which can cause discomfort for lactose-intolerant consumers. Jello brand does not. (Jello brand costs a bit more than house brand, if you're considering price.)

Pudding Powder Sizes and Varieties

Box size options at the store vary. Larger boxes don't seem to be double-servings of smaller boxes. For instance at my store, the larger Jello box (5.1 oz, $1.18) claims to serve 6, and the smaller Jello box (3.4 oz, $ .87) claims 4 servings. You can get some savings by buying the bigger box, but not hugely.

The serving sizes calculate out to about 1/2 cup milk for each serving. A 4-serving box calls for 2 cups of milk; a 6-serving box calls for 3 cups of milk.

My local supermarket hit list for pudding mixes shows vanilla, chocolate, pistachio, lemon, and butterscotch. By getting smaller boxes, it's easy to mix and match suitable flavors.

Additional Thoughts

You can, uh, think outside the boxes, and add chocolate chips (as I did) or crumble Oreos or other yummies onto (into?) the mix. The pudding's set within minutes of mixing.

For another pudding idea, visit "Minty Choco Chip Pudding".

Whataburger Pancakes, Mix, or Scratch

Tried Whataburger pancakes? Yummy, quick, and economical! Know that you can buy Whataburger Pancake Mix at HEB? Have you tried making scratch pancakes? Also yummy, even more economical, but not quick! The scratch recipe, which I've used for many years (with slight occasional tweaks) comes from Pillsbury's Simply From Scratch Volume 2 booklet. This method of obtaining pancakes is yummy, slow, and economical, although surprisingly, more expensive that the Whataburger mix method.

Note: My article does not include info about other places that serve pancakes or other pancake mixes. (I do include a few links to scratch recipes farther down.)

Whataburger Pancakes—Buy at Restaurant
The least amount of effort for obtaining pancakes is going to Whataburger. The info doesn't state the diameter, but does state the calories as 720. Guessing the price might be less than $3, if available, as the pancake platter lists as $3.35. "Platter" indicates added sausage or bacon.

Whataburger Pancakes—Buy Powder and Make at Home
The next least effort for obtaining pancakes is making up a batch from Whataburger pancake powder. I bought a box (32 ounces) for $2.78. The batch had 2 cups of powder (~10 ounces) and 1 1/2 cup of water. One yield was 10 4" diameter cakes, another yield was 9 pancakes. OKaaaay. The box says that one serving is two 4" pancakes, totaling 180 calories—using 1/3 cup of powder.

According to a Whataburger press release,

The 32-ounce pancake mix uses the same ingredients and recipe used in Whataburger restaurants. Customers simply combine the mix with water and follow the instructions on the label to enjoy the light and fluffy Whataburger pancakes they love. Each package makes approximately 32 pancakes.

Um, the info conflicts with the package I bought, which claims 36 pancakes. Even weirder is the online two-package bundle info:

Two 1.75 lb (794g) pouches. Each pouch makes approximately 32 pancakes. ... Price: $14.99 (Yow! My one 32-oz box cost only $2.78.)

So now we have three stats for weight and estimated yield of pancakes:

• 2#, 32
• 2#, 36
• 1.75#, 32

Proportionally, the 2#/36 and 1.75#/32 match up for weight and yield.

By my calculations, a 3-pancake Whataburger restaurant stack (720 calories) equals 4—FOUR powder-mixed pancake servings. ¡Ay, caramba! But wait! If I used 4 as a multiplier for powder stats vs. restaurant stats, the sodium ratios look to be way out of whack—1650 for restaurant pancakes, and 2560 for the powder-made pancakes. In any case, those sodium stats are way high!

Alrighty then. Because I made the middle range number of pancakes, the total calories came to 1080, ~540 for each of two people. Feeling better already that those two plates have fewer calories than two restaurant pancake stacks. Of course, I'm ignoring the addition of calories because of butter-type spread and syrup. Comparison of price: ~$6 vs less than $1 ($2.78 divided by 3 batches) if you supply your own labor.

Now inching towards discussing scratch pancakes. I use a half recipe from the Pillsbury scratch booklet, and I tweak it with added vanilla and cinnamon. The table below shows ingredients (but not quantity) mapped to Whataburger's powder:

Ingredient	W	Scratch
Flour	y	y
Soy flour	y	n
Sugar	y	y
Dextrose	y	n
Whey	y	n
Sodium caseinate	y	n
Milk	n	y
Vinegar	n	y
Cooking oil (whatever's handy)	n	y
Palm oil	y	n
Sodium bi aka baking soda	y	y
Baking powder	n	y
Sodium acid pyrophosphate	y	n
Salt	y	y
Corn syrup solids	y	n
Monocalcium phosphate	y	n
Egg white	y	n
Egg	n	y
Dipotasium phosphate	y	n
Monglycerides	y	n

In light of the Whataburger powder having so many more ingredients than my scratch ingredients, I think when I finish off the powder, I'll not buy more. Instead, I'll consider experimenting with other brands' powders that have fewer ingredients.

Scratch Pancakes, Tweaked From Pillsbury's Simply From Scratch Volume 2 booklet
The following tables list the main ingredients for my batch of scratch pancakes for amounts, cost, calories, and sodium:

Dry Ingredient	Cost, Calories, Sodium
~1 cup flour	9¢ (1.68/5#, using 1/4#), 450, 3 mg
1 T sugar	2¢ (2.78/4#, using 1/128#), 50, 0 mg
1 t baking powder	2¢ (1.18/10oz, using 8/473 container), 0, 480 mg
1/2 t baking soda	0¢ (68/16oz, using 4/908 container), 0, 476 mg
1/2 t salt	0¢ (62/26oz, using 2/491 container), 0, 1180 mg
1 t cinnamon	6¢ (2.49/4oz, using 1/40 container), 6, 1 mg

Wet Ingredient	Cost, Calories, Sodium
1 cup nonfat milk	25¢ ($2/64oz, using 1/8 container), 80, 100 mg
1 T vinegar	1¢ (44/16oz, using 1/32 container), 0, 0 mg
2 T cooking oil	5¢ (2.38/48oz, using 1/48 container), 240, 0 mg
1 egg	17¢ ($2/dozen), 70, 70 mg
1 t vanilla extract	18¢ (2.67/1.5oz, using 1/15 container), 12, 0 mg

Main Recommended Instructions for Making Scratch Pancakes

• Note that ingredients and quantities vary slightly from recipe to recipe.
• Have a separate bowl for mixing dry ingredients and one for wet ingredients.
• Grease or spray oil onto the pan or griddle.
• Make sure the pan is hot enough before pouring batter into it.
• For each pancake, watch for bubbles to emerge from the uncooked side before flipping it over.

I am unable to find the Pillsbury Simply From Scratch recipe that I use. If you are somewhat experienced in pancake making, you can glean my list of ingredients. The milk and vinegar substitutes for buttermilk. The actual measurement is 1 T vinegar and 1 cup minus 1 Tablespoon milk. Numerous scratch pancake recipes are available through Googling and YouTube searches. Visit the following sites for ideas:

• Recipe that calls for nearly identical ingredients and amounts as mine (Scroll down about 1/3 of the screen for ingredients and instructions.)
  No Butter Homemade Pancakes
• One slightly different and highly touted recipe
  Essential and Easy Pancake Recipe
• YouTube video that demonstrates principles and calls for most of the same ingredients
  Pancakes Recipe Demonstration - Joyofbaking.com

Scratch Pancakes vs. Whataburger Pancake Mix Stats

• Scratch batch (9 to 10 pancakes): 908 calories, 2310 mg. $1.22 (excluding cinnamon and vanilla)
• Whataburger batch (also 9 to 10 pancakes): 1086 calories, 3840 mg, $ .93

Clearly, the Whataburger mix, although more economical but requiring the less mixing effort than scratch pancakes, uses A LOT of sodium. Also, the powder includes more mystery ingredients than the scratch recipe does.

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Additional pancake-theme articles:

• Delivery Pancakes or Not
• Instant Pancake Mix, Info Table, Etc., for 12 Brands
• Pancake-mIx Baked Donuts

Crustless Quiche Mini-Loaves

This recipe is flourless, thus, gluten-free. The filling ingredients are—besides evaporated milk and eggs—coarse-cut ham pieces, cut-up sliced Swiss cheese, and thawed and drained, previously frozen zucchini. Because has so much sodium, I decided Swiss cheese would contribute less additional sodium than cheddar or other saltier cheese.

I had spotted an intriguing recipe for crustless mini-quiche that used cupcake cups. I started poking around for additional crustless quiches, which I list some links at the bottom of this article.

My inclination to modify kicked in. Why not make the quiche totally gluten-free? With my crusted quiches, I was always adding one or two tablespoons of flour. How about, instead of using cupcake pans, I finally use my mini-loaf pan that I've had for years and not yet used? The one ingredient that nudged me to make the recipe items all come together? Zucchini! More zucchini from the co-worker who had already given me lots of!

My pixstrip shows eight image areas:

1. Implements
2. separate bowls of zucchini, cheese, ham
3. zucchini, cheese, ham combined in a larger glass bowl
4. eggs, evaporated milk, spray oil
5. mini-loaf pan, prepped with the spray oil
6. Combo pic:
   1. mini-loaf pan with the filling mixture parceled out into the pan wells
   2. evaporated milk and eggs whisked together in the measuring cup pitcher
   3. closer-in pic of pitcher showing the total amount of fluid
7. baked mini-loaf quiches
8. baked mini-loaf quiches, one dished onto a plate (yum!)

Implements

• mini-loaf pan
• wide-mouth mixing bowl
• measuring cup pitcher or similar
• wire whisk
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons

Ingredients

• Solid fillings, listed in the order that the 2nd pic shows
• thin-sliced zucchini, previously frozen, then thawed and drained to weigh 10 oz. (YMMV if you use fresh zucchini.)
• 8 oz shredded Swiss cheese (I used thin-sliced Swiss cheese that I cut into smaller pieces.)
• 8 oz cubed ham or similar (I cut ham pieces into small-cube size.)
• Wet
• 4 eggs
• 12 oz evaporated milk

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Spray oil into the pan wells. You can do this step any time before you add the solid fillings or fluids into the pan.
3. Prepare the bowls of zucchini, Swiss cheese, and ham. Stir together in a bigger bowl.
4. Divvy up the fillings into the mini-loaf pan wells.
5. Beat eggs and evaporated milk together in a separate bowl. (I used a large, plastic measuring cup.) If desired, beat the eggs first, then blend in the milk.
6. Pour the egg-and-milk mixture into the pan wells, being careful not to overfill.
7. Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick.
8. Use a cooky spatula or similar to press a mini-quiche's sides away from pan walls, then lift it onto a plate.
9. Repeat extraction for each quiche. You can store the rest of them by wrapping each individually in food wrap and freezing them.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
When I tried extracting a mini-loaf quiche (gingerly using a cooky spatula and plastic knife), I noticed some fluid at the bottom of the pan well. It's a good thing I had drained the zucchini before I mixed and baked.

Each wrapped mini-quiche weighed about 4 ounces. Hmmm, snack size!

On occasion, I've thawed one a few hours or overnight in the fridge, then microwave it for about a minute, using a nearly ancient, low-power, 700-watt oven). I'd still get fluid, which I concluded came from the ham. (I've reheated ham slices from the same ham and wound up with fluid.)

One friend, more patient than I, reheated one mini-loaf quiche that I gave her. She placed hers inside a dish and lid set, and heated it in a regular oven. Hers came out fine, without extra fluid.

What did I do with the fluid? Sipped it like it was a broth. Tasty!

My recipe is versatile enough for using different ingredients, different baking shapes. You could even try pouring the ingredients into a pie shell for a regular quiche. For that matter, try the cupcake-sized wells as several recipes say to use.

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The following webpages attracted my attention while I searched for ideas for crustless, mini, and quiche:

Crustless Veggie Mini Quiches
This recipe uses Egg Beaters pourable eggs. Yields cupcake-sized quiches. Some good advice about ingredients:

Use your favorite vegetables in these mini quiches. Firm vegetables such as carrots, broccoli or asparagus will need to be cooked in the microwave a few minutes and then chopped finely so they will be tender at the end of the baking time.

Mini Loaf Pan Quiche Lorraine
This recipe calls for loads of ingredients, including flour. (This recipe makes crusted mini-loaves in individual pans.)

Crustless Quiche Lorraine
In contrast to the previous recipe I listed, this one makes a full-size quiche that calls for a pound of bacon, a whole onion, and six eggs. The author does mention using a 12" ceramic quiche pan. She suggests cutting the ingredients by about a third if using a pie pan.

Crustless Quiche for One
This crustless mini-quiche is flour-free and free of cow dairy products, using soy milk and soy creamer. Even though using vegan and soy cheese, the author suggests alternatives of mozzarella or cheddar.

Mini Crustless Quiches
The recipe looks heavy on the eggs (5) and light on the milk (1/4 cup). The yield is six muffin-size mini-quiches, but I can't tell the muffin well size. The author makes a statement about about types of veggies to use (similar to another sentiment):

you can add whatever veggies you like {or tolerate} or happen to have on hand in your home

Mini Quiche Recipe
This recipe is light on both the eggs (1) and milk (1/2 cup). She uses a mini-muffin pan for 15 crusted quiches.

Update, as of 9/10/2014

• Original zucchini amount: 2 cups prviously frozen zucchini, thawed to measure 2 cups
• Original baking time: about 30 minutes, then test for doneness

Square Mini and Whoopie Muffin Experiment

Previously in my Waits N Measures, Baking Pans N Papers article, I mentioned my experiment of using a whoopie pan and a silicone pan that has square wells. I had cake mix powder left from Valentine cake mix cookies for trying this experiment.

I'd not yet tried using cake mix for making muffins. Well, why not try? Use up my half batch of Red Velvet and strawberry cake mix powders. Try a cake-mix-to-muffin recipe. Try a couple of different pan shapes and establish baking times and temperatures. As for pan choices, I had two thoughts:

Square mini-shapes could be cute, especially if the batter flowed over the rim just enough like muffins should. The recipe that came with my whoopie pan made my eyes glaze over—too much information, too many ingredients, too many steps. Soooo, how about using whoopie wells for making Seinfeldian muffin tops? (Take a trip down memory lane about the muffin top episode.)

The Duncan Hines Cake Mix Muffin recipe that I used provides additional recipe suggestions. (I almost always modify recipes that I try.) My only deviation for this one is the cake mix flavor(s), baking pan shapes, and baking time.
My pixstrip shows seven image areas:

1. Implements
2. Dry ingredients (flour, cake mix, baking powder)
3. Wet ingredients (eggs, oil, milk)
4. Silicone pan and whoopie pan with paper liners
5. Batter in the pans, not all wells filled, unused liners removed
6. Baked square (20) and whoopie (2) muffins
7. Closer look at 8 square muffins and the two whoopie muffins (Seinfeld-esque muffin tops)

In my experiment, I used 1/4 box each of Red Velvet and strawberry cake mixes for making a half batch of muffins. You can use a whole box of any flavor. The ingredients I list make a whole batch, which can yield 48 square mini-muffins or 24 muffin tops. If you try round mini-cupcake pans, the yield number will be similar to using square silicone pans, but the tops might not billow over the edge as much.

Note: Yield can depend on the cake mix weight and recipe that you use and how full you fill the wells.
Implements

• large mixing bowl
• medium small mixing bowl
• mini square silicone pans
• mini-cupcake paper liners
• whoopie pans
• regular cupcake paper liners
• pastry blender
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• additional spoon for ladling batter if desired
• rubber spatula(s)
• cooling rack for done muffins

As part of the pre-preparation, I shaped some regular cupcake liners for the whoopie muffins and mini-cupcake liners for the square minis. For each whoopie liner, I pressed a liner between a peanut butter jar lid or similar size lid and a whoopie well. For the top- and bottom-row square wells, I preshaped each liner by pressing a square cookie cutter into liners that I put inside the wells. For the middle rows, I simply inserted and finger-pressed the liners. (After I dropped the batter in, I removed the liners that I didn't use.)
Ingredients

• Dry
• 1 box cake mix
• 2 T flour
• 1 t baking powder
• Wet
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 C milk
• 1/3 C oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place paper liners into cavities.
3. Pour the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, using the pastry blender to blend well.
4. In the smaller bowl, mix the wet ingredients.
5. Pour the mixed wet ingredients into the larger bowl and stir the ingredients until they're moistened.
6. Scoop about a rounded tablespoon spoonful of batter into each paper-lined square well or two rounded tablespoonfuls for whoopie pan wells
7. Bake for about 16 minutes or until the muffins are lightly browned. (Use toothpick test for doneness if desired.) I initially baked for 8 minutes, checked, and baked another 8 minutes. I thought it was nice that both muffin shapes baked in the same amount of time.
8. Transfer the baked muffins onto cooling rack.

It's nice to be able to use cake mix for baking muffins. The number of ingredients are not much more than baking cakes or cupcakes. The density is only slightly more than cake. In the future, if using mini-cupcake silicone pans, mini-cupcake liners easily fit and work fine. One huge difference between using a mini square silicone pan vs. a mini-cupcake pan—24 wells vs. 12, respectively. With the silicone pan, I put a cooky sheet underneath for supporting the floppiness and in case the batter dripped over. Maybe I'll skip the cooky sheet the next time.

If you don't have silicon pans and want to read up on advantages and disadvantages, two sites you can visit are Silicone Vs. Metal Bakeware and Silicone vs metal for shaped pans.

In my Waits N Measures article, I note that whoopie well capacity is 4 tablespoons (12/pan) and regular cupcake well capacity is 5 tablespoons (12/pan). Enough volume similarity to think of whoopie shapes as flat and wide cupcakes or muffins (muffin tops!).

Thinking that I'm more likely to use the whoopie pan more for baking muffin tops than whoopie cookie halves that the pans are originally for. The whoopie pan might be a really good way to bake muffin tops and not wind up with stems like the ones Elaine couldn't get rid of. :-)

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Mini-muffins

This snack is a hybrid of chocolate chip cookies and muffins—a long-time favorite cooky, but softer, and in a smaller, bite-size shape. The cooks.com recipe that I derived my recipe from does not provide the size of muffin pans to use or the expected yield. Fortunately, I have enough experience in baking to infer some unstated information.

• The amount of fluid and flour (+ oatmeal) looked to be enough to equal about one box of cake mix.
• The stated baking time of 22 minutes seemed appropriate for normal cupcake size.

Recipe deviations from the cooks.com recipe
I tend to deviate from recipes that I try out. For instance, I might substitute an ingredient that I have on hand. Deviations and disclosures follow.

• Granulated sugar instead of brown sugar
  (If you'd rather use brown sugar and find yours is brick-hard, you can use the info in my oatmeal cooky recipe for resoftening it.)
• Replacement of 1/8 of oil with sesame oil
  I had hoped to add a nutty flavor, but the nuttiness didn't seem apparent in the results.
• Regular-sized chocolate chips instead of mini-chips
• Mini-cupcake pans and paper liners, baking the batter for 17 minutes instead of 22
• Double-recipe batch, which yielded 72 mini-muffins.
  I made enough to tote to two events that coincidentally occurred on the same day—a workplace potluck lunch and an evening professional organization meeting.

My pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients (dry, wet, and chocolate chips)
3. Batter in pans
4. Baked mini-muffins on cooling rack
5. Baked mini-muffins in goodies tin

Implements

• large mixing bowl
• medium small mixing bowl
• mini-cupcake pans
• mini-cupcake paper liners
• pastry blender
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• additional spoon for ladling batter if desired
• rubber spatula(s)
• cooling rack for done mini-muffins

Ingredients

• Dry
• 2 2/3 C flour
• 2 C uncooked oats
• 2/3 C granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• Wet
• 2 C milk
• 1/2 C oil
• 2 eggs
• 12 oz chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Place mini-cupcake paper liners into each mini-cupcake cavity.
3. Pour the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, using the pastry blender to blend well.
4. In the smaller bowl, mix the wet ingredients.
5. Pour the mixed wet ingredients into the larger bowl and stir the ingredients until they're moistened.
6. Stir the chocolate chips into the batter.
7. Scoop about a rounded spoonful of batter into each paper-lined well, about 2/3 to 3/4 full. (I filled two batches of 36 wells. YMMV.)
8. Bake for about 17 minutes or until the mini-muffins are lightly browned. (Use toothpick test for doneness if desired.)
9. Transfer the baked mini-muffins onto cooling rack.

Waffle-grid Tortilla Recipe to Avoid

Instead, make use of some tortilla and biscuit recipes that I compiled links to for ideas. My previous blog article was a recipe for making tortillas by using a waffle cone iron. It was an experiment for omitting sugar in cones and saving loads of calories. The sugarless cones did not harden or keep their moldable shapes like the sugary ones, so I decided to call them waffle-grid tortillas and use them for wraps and foldovers.

I wanted to be able to present a recipe that made use of an online recipe for flour tortillas, using my cone waffle iron as a means to cook both sides of the tortilla. The panfry method requires frying one side of a tortilla and flipping it to cook the other side.

As I researched flour tortilla recipes, I noticed a commonality of ingredients, five items: all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, fat, and fluid. Somehow, I veered into looking up biscuit recipes, many of which had the same five ingredients. The major difference between flour tortillas and biscuits were as follows:

• Biscuit dough—at least twice as much fat as tortilla dough
• Tortilla dough—much more handling (kneading/rolling) than biscuit dough (minimal mixing)
• Tortilla dough—one to two "rest" periods of about 10 to 20 minutes each, depending on recipe, but none for biscuit dough
• Pre-cooking shapes—tortilla dough sheet, to dough balls, to flattened shapes; biscuit dough sheet, to shapes cut with a measuring cup or biscuit cutter

I followed a simple tortilla recipe for ingredients, up until flattening the dough balls. Instead of using a rolling pin or palote, I used thumbs and fingers. Instead of pan frying each tortilla, I baked it in my waffle cone appliance, pressing the clamshell down with a couple of hot pot holders. The results looked decent, although a bit thick. I even took pictures of the stages, so optimistic that waffle-grid tortillas (II) would turn out well!

What a surprise and disappointment to discover they are tough! Not one to throw out food, I've been eating some in small bites, spread with butter and lightly heated. I'm emphasizing that these tortillas were not good results! If you infer the process and try your own batch, don't be surprised that you come up with the same chewy results. If you do come up with more tender results, let me know!

Revisiting some of the recipes, biscuit recipes warned of toughness from overhandling, but the tortilla recipe instructions seemed to contradict, seeming to require dough-playing. Another thought that came to mind was compressing the dough while cooking might have contributed to the less-than-desired results, as the actual recipes indicate airy heat.

The following recipe links that I compiled call for the ingredients in common of all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, fat, and fluid:

Flour Tortillas

• http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0%2C1757%2C130189-249197%2C00.html
• http://www.food.com/recipe/flour-tortillas-diaz-101601 (scalable)
• http://allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-flour-tortillas/ (scalable)
• http://www.texasrollingpins.com/tortillarecipe.html

Biscuits

• http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,164,151169-240195,00.html
• http://oldfashionedliving.com/biscuits.html
• http://vegetarian.about.com/od/breakfastrecipe1/r/biscuit1.htm

The recipes that called for shortening or lard instead of oil required cutting the fat into the dry ingredients before mixing in the fluid. The recipe I used called for oil, which I stirred into the fluid (milk). Most of the recipes called for water for the fluid, but some called for milk. Maybe some knowledgeable cook can enlighten about using milk vs. water, aside from nutritional benefits of using milk.

All my previous articles featuring recipes were successes. This time, I wrote about a failed recipe. In failure, however, lessons learned, with curiosity for a different approach in the future, is an experience gained.