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. :-)

Waits N Measures, Baking Pans N Papers

I'm big on baking. I bake frequently enough to know what I'm doing, but still need to consult with recipes online and in books for quantities, capacities, and baking times and temperatures. I use cake mixes frequently for cooky recipes. I fiddle around with modifying basic cake mix recipes. Sometimes I change up ingredients. Sometimes I use different pans than the recipes call for.

I've included a table for using different baking pan cavities—square mini-cupcakes, mini-cupcakes, regulation-size cupcakes, and mini-loaves. For measuring capacity, I pulled out the pans and poured amounts of water into a well of each pan. The table has wait (bake) times and measures. Dimensions, capacities, and baking times are approximate. (I did mention in Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes recipe that mini-cupcake baking time is about 25% less than for regular cupcakes.)

Shape	Dims (")	Capacity	Wells /Pan	#min@ 325-375°
square silicone	1 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 5/8 dp	1 1/3 T (4 tsp)	24	15-16
mini- cupcake	1 3/4 U dia x 1 1/4 L dia x 5/8 dp	Less than 2 T	12	13-17
whoopie	3 dia x 1/2 dp	4T	12	15-16
standard cupcake	2 3/4 U dia x 2 L dia x 1 1/16 dp	5T	12	15 to 20, 22 to 27
mini-loaf	3 5/8 x 2 3/8 x 1 1/8 dp	8 T (1/2 C)	9	TBD
3 teaspoons (t) per tablespoon (T), 16 T per cup (C), 77 fluid drops per teaspoon

Caution: Recipes say to fill the wells about 2/3 to 3/4 full. Remember to differentiate advised-fill from capacity. If you fill the wells to capacity, the batter will expand during baking and spill over, making a BIG mess!

Actually, I still need to test for wait time for mini-loaves. I bought that pan several years ago, but I have yet to try using it. Visit Cake Mix Doctor and Duncan Hines topic links.

I recently acquired a couple of whoopie pans. I used one of them and one of my silicone pans for experimenting with a muffin recipe that calls for cake mix. The cake mix powder itself was a modification—half Red Velvet (Duncan Hines) and half strawberry (coincidentally, but not significantly, Pillsbury). More on the recipe in an upcoming article.

If using a cake mix powder, the box usually seems to specify baking times for 2 round layers, regular cupcakes (24), and a 9 x 13 sheet. In my experience, the mini-cupcakes yield tends to be about 2 1/2 as many—60. My Lemon Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes recipe yielded 77 units. (I'm positive that adding 2 T poppyseeds didn't contribute to raising the yield past 60.) In trying out the square mini-cupcakes, the yield would have been 24. More on that Red Velvet and strawberry cupcake experiment in an upcoming article.

For those who bake, the table is handy for planning the number of small-size baked items (assuming using an 18 1/4 oz. box of cake mix), the amount of batter to pour in, and how long to bake them. I am disappointed to say that, out of the three national brands of cake mix, only Duncan Hines mix has 18 1/4 ounces of powder for the normal 2-layer or 9 x 13 sheet cakes. The other two brands contain 15 1/4 ounces.

In my Internet travels, cupcakes and muffins, particularly small ones, cause confusion because of their similarities. Cupcakes are small cakes. You beat the batter. The cupcakes tend to have frosting. Muffins are quick breads, and the batter is best stirred gently. Muffins tend to have crumbs or icing drizzle. "Cupcakes Vs. Muffins: An Epic Battle and Some Big Questions" is an extensive article about their differences.

Standard paper liners seem to be mini-cupcake or standard cupcake sizes. Want to be cost-effective? For starters, don't pay extra for fancy colors or designs. The list has some quantities and prices to consider. (If the price was $[something].99), I rounded it up.

• Michael’s (undiscounted—40% coupon available online)
• 100 sm/$2 (~2 cents each)
• 350 sm/$4 (~1 cent each)
• 75 standard/$2 (~3 cents each)
• 18 short crown 2 ½ dia/$2 (~ 5.5 cents each) Yow!
• Make It Sweet (in Austin)
• 100 sm/$2 (~2 cents each)
• 500 sm/$6 (~1.2 cents each)
• 75 standard/$2 (~3 cents each)
• 500 standard/$9 (~ 1.8 cents each)

Looking for an alternative to short crown papers? Get large muffin papers and trim to size. Watch Todd Wilbur obtain shorter paper liners (at about the 1:41 mark) for making his peanut butter cup clones. Sure, he uses standard cupcake liners, but you get the idea.

Another Todd Wilbur video shows how avoid buying a Twinkie-shape pans for his Twinkie clone recipe by wrapping aluminum foil pieces around a spice jar. Move your pointer to about the :56 mark.

Mad About Word and FrameMaker

Sometimes when I use one of the tools, I wish the other had the same feature. I often wistfully wonder (and sometimes go/get mad)—

• Why doesn't FrameMaker have this Word feature?
• Why doesn't Word have this FrameMaker feature?
• Why can't blah do this task like blah-blah does?
• Why does blah make this task so much harder than blah-blah does?
• Would it kill blahtool to simplify some frequently used task by having a shortcut keystroke set instead of the user needing to constantly go to a menu and open one or more series of dialog boxes, select choices, and click OK in each of the boxes?
• For some other frequently used task that opens a dialog box, can more options be on the same dialog box instead of needing to open secondary dialog boxes?
• Can blahtool provide lots more task dialog boxes with preview capabilities instead of the current (seemingly) paltry few? (Example implementation: Preview, then click Apply. Click OK when happy with the view.)

I know some uberusers have encyclopedic memorization of shortcuts, and I wish I had that familiarity and proficiency. Unfortunately, I work with the tools just often enough to have memorized a smaller set of shortcut keystrokes. With some commands that are more obscure than others, I often Google for finding how-to's.

Over time that I've used FrameMaker and Word, I've thought, "I wish FrameMaker had [feature] or was as easy to [do something] as Word", and vice versa. Here is my list of features for comments and wishes.

Zoom View
I like FrameMaker's click zoom in and out and menu. It would have been nice If Word's magnifier icon provided dynamic zoom—Have right click zoom in and left click zoom out where the cursor is. Instead, the magnifier click method requires three clicks each time I want to vary zoom percentage.

*** New news (Mar. 5)! I discovered that Word does have dynamic zoom! The lower right part of the window has a slide switch. You can click and drag the slider, or you can click the plus and minus for incremental sizing. Woohoo!

Find
Would really like it if Word had just put in forward and backward options on the initial dialog box instead of requiring a click on More. (On March 11, a commenter mentioned a Word Find feature for simple forward/backward. Turns out Word 2010 has it. Word 2007 still uses the click-More method.) I like Frame's Forward and Backward options being on the Find dialog box. I like Word's search term buffer so I know what I've searched for previously, especially if I want to search for the term(s) again. If only FrameMaker had the same capability!

Bullets and Numbering
I really like FrameMaker's capability. What you set up is what you get. The capability for a start number or letter, and separate capabilities for subsequent number or letter—flawless. Word's seeming unpredictability for numbering, indentation, and reversion has been a source of aggravation for me for years.

Format Painter
One of my favorite Word features. Select some text (usually line or paragraph), and "paint" the format onto something else. Much quicker than using even a Frame paragraph catalog selection, particularly if I have LOTS of styles, which often requires scrolling to the style I want.

Paste Special
Love being able to use Frame's Shift+Ctrl+v. Word had put Paste Special into the ribbon, prominently. However, it's not as convenient as Shift+Ctrl+v. C'mon, Microsoft. Even Open Office has that shortcut key combo.

Copy and Paste for Images
Both Frame and Word irk me when they offset the results of paste. Can either one of them implement a feature so that the to-be-pasted object sticks to the cursor until you actually do a followup click that releases the object where you want it?

Moving Images Around
Word seems much more friendly for setting up grid snap and scooting images (nudge). Press arrow buttons for moving images in increments.

Inserting Symbols
FrameMaker's offering is like looking at a nickel display case. Word provides a buffet, particularly for inserting special characters. I like finding the symbol I want right in the tool.

Formatting Images
I like Word's simplicity for formatting images. The ribbon version is ok, although I liked the older menu version better for simplicity. It seems I need to use more clicks to get to all the commands I want—size/position are now separate from Format Picture.

OTOH, Word's feature for the image to resize while I click spin box values is nice. Percentages and dimensions are chained together (as default options). Images scale up or down as previews. I can stay in the dialog box for previewing the results. It's like try before you buy.

FrameMaker! It's exhausting to constantly open the Graphics > Scaling dialog box and not have the length and width change when I change the scale. And no option to lock the aspect ratio or relative-to-original size option.

Arrowheads
Word's feature for arrowheads seem easier for shape, size, and direction than Frame's implementation. The only thing I prefer about Frame's arrowhead feature is the ease of selecting the arrow direction.

Tables—Borders and Shading
I find Word's table Borders and Shading dialog boxes very friendly and intuitive, but FrameMaker's clunky and unfriendly. Word provides previews of results.

Tables—Cell-splitting
Word's way is select a cell and split it. FrameMaker requires adding a column or row, then straddling cells. I think FrameMaker's difficulty with easy splits might have something to do with conditionalizing.

Tables—Column Width
I like Word's dialog box for changing column width and previewing when i click Next Column. I really dislike FrameMaker's lack of any sort of preview. It's exhausting reopening the table-width dialog box several times because I don't guess correctly about the width I wanted and how my selection affects the rest of the table. However, I really like FrameMaker's very easy shortcut for resizing the column width to text width—Esc t w (as in tech writer).

FrameMaker Features Only
Ahhh, if only Word had these features that only FrameMaker has!

Overlines
Word just plain doesn't do them. Showing active-low signals is easy with FrameMaker as simply another checkbox option. Word is a disaster waiting to happen if drawing a line over text.

Continuation Variable
One great FrameMaker feature is the continuation variable for the table heading title (aka table caption). Inserting the var ensures that a table that spans more than one page displays "continued" (however the FrameMaker user wants to define the text). The reader knows the table is a continuation, not a new table.

Conditionalizing
FrameMaker makes it easy to do variations of documents for hiding and showing text, figures, tables, table rows. FrameMaker's table rows conditionalizing capability might be the reason why implementing cell splits is difficult. Word doesn't do conditionalizing—oh, sure, maybe in some very primitive way. Comparing the two would be like comparing hopping on one leg to driving a car to get to a driving distance destination.

Importing Formats
FrameMaker's feature has loads of attributes for copying from one document to another. (I use this most often with book files.) Open a file that has attributes and also files for copying attributes to, (Click-shift to select.) In the dialog box, select the "model" file (Import from Document), the attributes to copy (Import and Update), and click Import. Word doesn't do import formats.

Both tools have a secondary means of "importing" formats, but rather primitive, and sometimes it works, and sometimes not. Try copying a style from one file to another if the other file does not have a style with the same name. With both files open, copy an entire paragraph, with paragraph mark, from source to destination. The destination file now includes the source's paragraph style name and style characteristics.

Word features I Wish FrameMaker Had or Had More of
I've noted some of the features in passing, but the following features run throughout in Word that makes me appreciate Word over FrameMaker.

Split/Merge Screen
Word's feature makes it very convenient for copying and pasting items from one part of a document to another. I can copy from the first screen, paste to the second screen, and click the first screen where I left off. Another good use is inserting cross references that originating phrases or icons are all in one spot, which can sit undisturbed in one screen while I hunt for the target that I want to cross reference to.

Spin Boxes
Set field values by clicking arrow buttons for incrementing numbers up and down. Even better, preview the effects. Yes, this is related to images.

Preview Dialog Boxes
View thumbnailish representations of changes before clicking OK, particularly pertinent to images and tables.

What's your madness about FrameMaker and Word?

New Year Ham Day

About the time I bought the turkey that I roasted a couple of weeks ago, I spied the supermarket coupon offering $10 off for purchasing a spiral half or whole ham. Hmmm, I hadn't baked a ham in maybe a few years, and the discount looked reasonable if I could find a ham that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Soooo, a couple of days before the coupon expired, I managed to find a ham priced $26.37.

The price per pound wasn't that bad—$2.99. My ham weighed 8.82 pounds. After the coupon discount, the price per pound came to $1.86. Woohoo!

On the day I prepped the ham for baking, I unwrapped it and found two packets—brown sugar and glaze. Hmmm, so how much of my $1.86/pound went for the sugar and glaze? It depends on how much you trust the alleged weight on the packets? OK, I did not weigh the ham in the store, trusting the marked weight on the pricing label.

I weighed the sugar on my kitchen scale. The scale's weight reasonably matched the label, with some flexibility for possible parallax and slop because the scale being analog instead of digital. (It's old!)

The glaze was another story! It was marked as 7 ounces. It weighed 12 ounces! I decided to weigh the sweeteners together and also toss in the prep instructions for good measure. Holy moley—a pound of non-ham stuff! Soooo, recalculating my purchase, my ham cost $2.09 a pound, although buying glaze and brown sugar separately might have been just as costly. Still a good deal.

I did not consider the bone as non-ham weight. Intact hams include the bone anyway. Eh, I should have weighed the bone and fat that I cut after I portioned slices and pieces afterward, for curiosity's sake. Maybe next time. Anyway, "Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham" is a good resource for reading up on hams, and it has a handy pig diagram.

On the day the coupon was to expire, I told some lunch buddies about the deal. One friend told me later that after luch was over, she went to her neighborhood supermarket, but did not find any coupons. She said a cashier told her that they tend to pull coupons a few days before the expiration. The next day when I went to the supermarket near me, I saw coupons, even though expiered. Looks like different stores might have different policies for removing coupons.

As in my turkey preparation from last month, I looked up oven time. On Google, I encountered advice that ranged from an hour to several for the same approximate weight. The ham recipe on the tag specified an hour after oven preheating. I was amazed that the ham did take only about an hour to heat.

My pixstrip shows the empty pan, a pixstrip of the items on the scale that shows the non-ham weight, and progression of the ham preparation.

Note: Not shown—For lessening fluid evaporation, I put in foil before putting on the ritzy ham. :-) I had narrow foil, so I used two sheets, one overlapping the other one.

1. I laid out pineapple slices to see how they'd take up space, poking a toothpick at the core's hole about 2/3 way into the ham to keep the slices somewhat in place.
2. I speared a cherry onto each of the exposed toothpicks, nudging pineapple slices as needed.
3. I tore off an additional, smaller piece of foil, placed it on the ham, and wrapped the other two sheets over it and the ham.
4. After the hour of baking time, I pulled the ham out of the oven and opened up the foils. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

I heated the glaze and sugar as directed. It seemed a better idea than fussing with more complicated recipes that I found on the web. I especially decided I didn't want to try recipes that included having to score the ham and jam in cloves.

The next day, the glaze was so thick that when I dipped a spoon in and pulled it out, it resembled caramel-colored warm taffy. I poured in the leftover pineapple and cherry juice, microwaving and stirring until the glaze was manageable. Good enough to smear on leftover turkey also! (I'm talking abut the turkey from last month that I parceled into serving sizes and froze.)

I was amazed that the ham yielded as much meat as it did. The fact that it was spiral-cut helped the parceling-out process a lot. Now I have packets of ham in the freezer to keep packets of turkey company.

New Year Turkey Day

Turkey Day came almost two months after Thanksgiving. The meal was tasty, the timing was just about right, with the only menu item requiring reheating being the oven-roasted veggies. And the dinner guest brought in flowers in a vase and meal accompaniments—oranges, cranberry sauce, and Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake.

It'd been a few years since I decided to roast a turkey—maybe since I underwent a long period of being unemployed and had lots of time on my hands during the holidays. Another year, the refrigerator konked out about a week or so before Thanksgiving. Mercifully, it died before I bought all sorts of food in preparation for the holiday. We went out to a standard-fare TDay meal, reasonably tasty and economical. (Burp!) Brought the dessert home. (Burp more!)

I'd tried using a rotisserie at least once, as I'd mentioned in "Holiday Gadgets to Inspire or Not". I was almost tempted to retry that method this time, as I spotted some frozen turkeys at my supermarket last week that came VERY close to the 10-pound maximum for the appliance. However, my brain kept retrieving that video image from a few years ago of the turkey thump thump humping against the window with every rotation shortly after the start of roasting.

I had considered a week before the dinner that turkeys for sale would be frozen. I recalled that frozen ones seemed to require about four days to thaw in the refrigerator. One source said 24 hours for every 4 pounds, another said a day for every 5 pounds.

When it came to deciding how long to roast, I consulted a BIG-NAME paperback cookbook, which recommended 4 to 4 1/2 hours for a turkey 8 to 12 pounds. The turkey label, however, recommended 2 3/4 to 3 hours for the same weight turkey. What a time difference between the two sources!

The store excursion for the bird made me rethink about roasting a turkey after the holidays, as they were all frozen. Brrrrr!!!!! They were in a vertical, reach-in frozen food case and awkward to turn for viewing the weight and price. After turning over maybe 10 of them and finding most were slightly over 10 pounds and a couple about 18 pounds, I settled on one that weighed slightly more than 11 pounds.

I brought the bird home and made room for it in the fridge to thaw for 4 days. Settled on using a roasting pan because its oblong shape fit better in the fridge than a round pan. Almost thought about using that pan for the roasting. By the time I washed the bird on the 4th day, removed the giblets and neck, which were in different parts of the bird, I decided I'd go ahead with the round pan and lifter method.

After washing the bird, placing it in the round pan and latching the lifter ends, spraying some spray oil, and starting the roasting process (325° preheated oven), I fretted over whether to roast the veggies (celery, onions, carrots, crookneck squash, zucchini) at the same time or start them later. My sense of experience thought that three hours would be excessive, so decided shorter was better.

After an hour of prepping the veggies—cutting, washing, peeling as appropriate, I distributed them into the already-heating pan. More spray oil, including on the veggies. Some foil over the drumsticks and sternum. A second hour passed. More spray oil over everything.

About 2 1/2 hours of the bird roasting in the oven, I saw that the thermometer reading was fast approaching the poultry-done temperature. I turned the oven down to 300°. (The project manager in me told me it was time to start the brown rice, which has a cooking time of 35-45 minutes.) After about another half hour, the temperature already read slightly past done. OK, it was time to shut the oven off, remove the pan, and set it out for the half-hour recommended time for juices to set.

It was time to start the gravy, starting with making the roux (heating flour and oil together in a frying pan) for making gravy. The turkey lifter was handy for raising the bird so I could easily scoop broth for making the gravy with. Yum!!!!

The veggies cooled down, so I scooped the veggies with some of the broth into a Pyrex bowl and microwaved them. Afterward, I strained most of the fluid into the gravy. About the time our guest took pix, I thought hmmm, maybe I could get an article out of the event if one of the pix looked suitable. The profile view is the one I picked for the pixstrip. Amazing to me is that everything came out ready when they were supposed to. And, yes, yummy!

During the meal, our guest mentioned her attempt to prepare a turkey dinner one summer day. She was unhappy with the results—dry, weird tasting, and some other unsavory adjectives. I wondered if maybe the turkey she bought had somehow thawed and refroze before she bought it. The wrapper might also have had a hole that allowed freezer burn or odor contamination. The caution might be to buy and cook turkeys around the winter holidays when turkeys are plentiful in coming to market.

Well, I think I will roast turkeys more often than once every few years. The more often I do them, the more easy it will be to remember what to do. And I'll have blog articles like this one to remind me. :-)

Read a different type of Thanksgiving story ("Mom & A Thanksgiving Turkey: Story"). Her family's turkey flew out of the oven as though it were possessed.

Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers 2

Back in August, I published my recipe for Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers that I used test tubes for helping shape the cooked wafers. (I wanted to use my waffle cone appliance to make shapes besides waffle cones.) This time, I used a 3 x 8 grid text tube rack for holding the shapes. The rack is open air, better for air circulation and avoiding trapping steam than the set of test tubes I used previously. Also, the 24 vertical cavities means I can stand up a lot more tubular wafers.

My pixstrip shows the following images:

1. Equipment and utensils
2. Ingredients and mixing
   1. Eggs and salt, to be mixed together first
   2. Sugar, to be added to the eggs and salt mixture (Yes, I'm reusing this and the next pix of ingredients.)
   3. Rest of ingredients
3. Process completion
   1. Batter baking process (1st and 2nd image in the 2nd row)
   2. A rolled baked wafer
   3. Finished tube wafers in the test tube rack (My batch of 18 includes a few substandard ones for cautionary note.)

Equipment and utensils (spray oil being a bridge from equipment to baking process)

• Waffle cone maker
• Mixer (I used an electric hand mixer.)
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Rubber spatula(s)
• Plastic spatula
• Mixing bowl(s)
• Cooling rack
• Test tube rack, available online for less than $10

Ingredients and mixing (from the Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones recipe of the Bella Recipe Guide)

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 C of water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 C cake flour (can sub with 1 C flour -2 T flour +2 T cornstarch)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Recommended: Spray oil application about every other wafer or so.

1. Beat the eggs and salt.
2. Add the sugar and beat it. :-)
3. Add the water, oil, cake flour (or replacement flours), and vanilla.

Process completion (baking, etc.)
Prepare the iron as instructed with your appliance. Because I've used mine a few times, I've only wiped the cooking surfaces with a clean, warm, damp kitchen rag for cleaning preparation, sprayed the cooking surfaces, and plugged the cord. Heating time is a minute or so.

For each disk, pour about 2 T batter, close the lid, and heat for about 30 seconds. Move the cooked disk onto the cooling rack, roll it up, and slide it into a cavity. Continue the batter dispensing and baking process until you use up the batter. My calculations for calories, about 93 calories for each tube.

Some Verb-ose Observations 2

As I was set to publish my initial article about conjugations and other verb-ose observations, I kept thinking it was getting pretty long. Splitting the observations into a main one about conjugations and a second one seems sensible. (Visit "Conjugations--Some Verb-ose Observations"!) This part of my verb-ose observations pertains to mostly infinitives and gerunds, a couple of verb forms.

The noun infinitive seems more familiar to people than gerund. Gerund is merely the noun usage of the same word that is easily recognizable as a present participle. Baking. Walking. Eating. I'm [gerund] at 5 o'clock. [Gerund] is a fun activity.

Closely related to gerunds are other noun forms that are rooted (!) in the same verb. For example, conjugating and conjugation are both nouns, but they differ. I consider conjugating as a generalized action, but conjugation as a process. Thus, I use conjugation in my blog title instead of conjugating.

As I looked for differentiations of -ing vs. -tion or -ation, I was sidetracked by usage of gerund vs. infinitive, a dilemma that occurs frequently. The English, baby! website explains "only gerunds follow prepositions" To split hairs, the English Teacher Melanie website explains about purpose of something or someone.

Regarding infinitives, I find it curious that Spanish and French infinitives are single words. In English, however, the infinitives are verbs preceded by "to". That complicates conjugating. A Hub Pages article uses a famous phrase in discussing split infinitives. Well, I think it's fine to boldly go where no one has gone before! :-)

Conjugations--Some Verb-ose Observations

Occasionally, I think about conjugation as either a second-nature reflex or a throw-up-the-hands convention for rolling the eyes at. I have no problem with writing, editing, and verbalizing subject and verb agreement and tenses in English. But my recall for almost anything in Spanish and French (my foreign language electives from way back)—well, fuggedaboutit.

I studiously and happily conjugated away, and made great grades. These days, however, I'm lucky to remember more than one or two conjugated forms. And I'm pretty much limited to third-person simple present indicative tense.

I think it's actually appealing to just drop all the subject-verb number agreements. Let's just have one verb, as number is already accounted for with the subject. What's wrong with the following?

I work.
We work.
You work. (Skip y'all work.)
He, she, or it work.
They work.

I also find it curious that singular for a verb would be adding an "s" for third person singular. Yet, most cases of making a single noun plural is adding an "s" or "es" at the end.

A baker bakes.
Bakers bake.

It'd be simple to just use one verb and let the noun take care of the number.

A baker bake.
Bakers bake.

Come to think of it, future and past tenses don't differentiate the verb form for number.

A baker baked.
Bakers baked.

A baker will bake.
Bakers will bake.

To take this observation even further, check out the conjugation for "to bake". The only differentiation for subject-verb number agreement is in the present tense and the present tense variations! And for only third-person singular vs. plural!

The basic online conjugator site looks good for mechanical conjugation. Fill the field with an infinitive, select French, English, Spanish, or German, and click the Conjugate button. For English, you can just enter a root verb, omitting "to". For that matter, you can enter a non-verb, and the site conjugates anyway. I discovered that anomaly when I stumbled onto the site, and history was already in the input field. Maybe "history" autofilled because of my poking around the web with "history" as a keyword.

The silver lining to the silliness of conjugating "to history" is gleaning the patterns and technical terms for conjugation groups themselves, which the site nicely shows in a mostly logical grid pattern. After I got over the initial surprise of seeing "to history" conjugated, I appreciated the layout for mostly orderly groupings. Curiously, the future tense conjugation was not near the present and past conjugations as I would have expected. Present and past (noted as preterite) were grouped as Simple form, along with infinitive, imperative, present participle (historying), and past participle (historied).

Ah, the Compound form group also has a past participle, but it's listed as having historied. Curiously, the future tense is in the compound grouping. To complicate matters, the group also lists present continuous, past continuous, past perfect continuous, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect continuous, future, future continuous, future perfect, past perfect continuous. Not sure why the grid arrangement.

The second part of my verb-ose observations pertain to mostly infinitives and gerunds. Visit Some Verb-ose Observations 2.

Halloween Music Baker's Dozen Matter

YouTube playlist for this article, playlist compilation article

Near the end of October, I published Baker's Dozen Halloween YouTube Links, a compilation of Halloween songs. One of my fellow tech writers responded to my blog post with a humongous list of video and audio clips. He generously provided YouTube hyperlinks, and also steered me to a couple of prominent audio download places that were new to me—Juzp and Grooveshark. ("I did not know that!", to swipe a famous and oft-spoken Johnny Carson utterance.)
YouTube links

• Halloween, Halloween
• Steady Freddy, The Electric Company
• Sinister Footwear II, Frank Zappa
• The Other Woman, Ray Parker Jr.
• The Ghost Town, Specials
• Speak No Evil, Flora Purim
• It's Only Halloween, Butch Patrick
• Satin Wears a Satin Gown, Frankie Laine
• Too Much Blood, Rolling Stones

Juzp links

• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
• Reggae Christmas Eve in Transylvania, Count Floyd
• Cubanismo, Marie Laveaux
• Twilight Zone, Manhattan Transfer
• Stratosfear, Tangerine Dream
• I Walk on Gilded Splinters, Dr. John
• Tide, Greenslade
• Oblivion, Astor Piazzolla
• Dinosaur, King Crimson
• Neurotic Behavior, Psyche
• Brujeria, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico
• Doin' the Zombie, Chubby Checker

Grooveshark links

• Crepuscule With Nellie, Thelonious Monk
• El Chupacabra, Randy Garibay
• Dinner Music of the Gods, Al Di Meola
• Sign in Stranger, Steely Dan
• Spider, Herbie Hancock
• Witchcraft, Johnny "Guitar" Watson
• Monsters Lead Such Interesting Lives, Mel Torme
• It's October, Oscar Brown Jr.
• Fee Fi Fo Fum, Wayne Shorter
• Saguaro, Austin Lounge Lizards
• Crescente/Cavaleiros do Ceu (Riders in the Sky), Milton Nascimento
• Vampiros Modernos, Ivan Lins
• The Dominant Plague, Allan Holdsworth

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For more articles about Halloween, enter "Halloween" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "Halloween" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section).

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.

Baker's Dozen Halloween YouTube Links

YouTube playlist for this article, playlist compilation article

So many spooky-creepy songs to pick from! I compiled a list of maybe 30 songs before I even started to poke around Google for ideas. I decided to stop vetting YouTube videos after listing links for 13, a nice number for Halloween. The collection being eclectic, I listed the titles alphabetically.

• Addams Family Theme
• Ghost Busters, Ray Parker Jr.
• Ghost Riders in the Sky, Vaughn Monroe
• Haunted House, Jumpin' Gene Simmons (no Kiss here)
• Laurie (Strange Things Happen in This World), Dickey Lee
• Monster Mash, Bobby Pickett
• Munsters Theme
• Night on Bald Mountain
• Purple People Eater, Sheb Wooley
• Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor, Big Bopper
• Spooky, Classics IV
• Thriller, Michael Jackson
• Werewolves of London, Warren Zevon

** Bonus addition! Nature Trail to Hell (In 3D), Weird Al
Speeded-up video of Weird Al being drawn as a startled uniformed scout in the woods, being terrorized by someone thrusting a stick with marshmallows at him. The song itself is incomplete, but the image creation from start to completion is beautiful to behold.

The next two lists include honorable mentions, suggestions for songs or videos that you might consider for your own playlist.

Magic and mystery

• Magical Mystery Tour, Beatles
• Magic Carpet Ride, Steppenwolf
• A Whole New World (on a magic carpet ride), Peabo Bryson/Regina Belle
• Do You Believe in Magic, Lovin' Spoonful
• You Can Do Magic, America
• Oh Oh It's Magic, Electric LIght Orchestra
• Magic, Olivia Newton John
• Old Black Magic, Louis Prima/Keely Smith
• Supernatural, Santana
• Superstition, Stevie Wonder
• If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot
• Can You Read My Mind, Maureen McGovern
• It's Gonna Take a Miracle, Royalettes
• It's a Miracle, Barry Manilow

People, people to creep out people

• Devil Woman, Marty Robbins
• Devil Woman, Cliff Richard
• Evil Woman, Electric Light Orchestra
• Witchy Woman, Eagles
• Black Magic Woman, Santana
• Magic Man, Heart
• Witch Doctor, Alvin & Chipmunks
• Abracadabra, Stephen Miller
• I Put a Spell on You, Nina Simone
• Every Breath You Take, the Police
• I Always Feel Like (Somebody's Watching Me), Rockwell

Visit the following sites for more Halloween music and video links.

• Top 100 Halloween Songs
  Features autoplaying audio of the 100 songs but listing of only top 10. The top 10 songs have links to play and buy. Site includes links to other top 100 songs of varying themes and years.
• 13 Required Songs For Your Halloween Party Playlist (and Their Refreshingly Spooky Alternatives)
  Features Youtube links.
• Top 10 Halloween Songs
  Features Amazon, YouTube links.
• 15 Greatest Halloween Party Songs
  Features YouTube links and summaries.
• The 20 best Halloween songs of all time
  Features YouTube links and very short blurbs. Not sure why the site has a second section with duplicated blurbs without YouTube links.
• Top 100 Halloween Songs About Witches, Devils, Ghosts, Vampires, and Horror
  Features list and links to other Halloween song lists.
• 80s Halloween Songs
  Features YouTube links and summaries.
• Halloween Party Playlist: 15 Spellbinding Songs for Your Bash
  Features YouTube links and summaries.
• Monster mash-up: The top 25 Halloween songs
  Features list, but links to only 8 audio tracks via Spotify.

Images in pixstrip obtained from http://apps.corel.com/paint_shop_pro_photo_studio/tubes.html and http://www.freetubes.com/artxyz/halloween/index.html.

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For more articles about Halloween, enter "Halloween" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "Halloween" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section).

4-ingredient Raspberry Chocolate Fudge

This recipe is a variation of the Convenient Fudge recipe that I published nearly a year ago. Caramel, peanuts, and chocolate were in the fudge, although I omitted brand IDs. This time, I'm calling out brand names and products—Duncan Hines' Frosting Creations mix of raspberry powder {"Flavor MIx") and the base frosting ("Frosting Starter"), Kraft marshmallows, and Wilton meltable candies (chocolate this time).

I'd run across various complaints about the Duncan Hines (DH) base frosting. Bakers loved the powder, but complained about frosting sliding off cakes and not having the characteristics of normal frostings. Well, because I had two of the base frosting and two of the flavor packets, I thought making fudge might be a good way to avoid cake disasters. The results were very nice for taste and mouthfeel.

From past experience with chocolate chips and Wilton candies, it seems the Wilton candies have a lower melting temperature or density than chips. The results seem less hard than when using chips. Using both DH AND Wilton resulted in fudge that was quite soft. The Other prefers more fudge firmness, which is doable by refrigerating the fudge instead of keeping it out at room temperature.
My pixstrip shows images for utensils, ingredients, mixing, and post-mixing. (The images inside the dashed section show preliminary preparation before the microwaving.)
Utensils (spray oil being a bridge from utensils to processing)

• Large mixing bowl
• Large cooking spoon
• 2-cup measuring cup or jar
• Butter knife (for mixing flavor powder into base frosting)
• 8" x 8" pan, prepared with spray oil
• Cooky spatula (for cutting fudge into pieces)

Ingredients

• 16 oz. Duncan Hines Frosting Creations base frosting
• Duncan Hines Frosting Creations raspberry flavor packet
• 12 oz. Wilton chocolate meltable candies
• 1 1/2 cups Kraft marshmallows or 15 large marshmallows (one of my few instances of brand loyalty)

Instructions

1. Using a butter knife, make a deep hole into the frosting and stir the powder into it.
2. Melt chips or other meltable candy the large mixing bowl in the microwave oven, using reduced power. Check about a minute or so for about two rounds of heating.
3. Add the mixed frosting to the bowl. If necessary, microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
4. Add marshmallows to the bowl. If necessary, microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
5. Blend the ingredients with the spoon.
6. Pour ingredients into the spray-oil prepared pan.
7. Refrigerate for no more than two hours. (If longer, the fudge could be difficult to cut.)
8. Cut into 64 pieces (8 x 8) or fewer. (FYI, the paper cups are available at craft stores and baking supply outlets.)

Note: Instead of waiting 2 hours and cutting the fudge block with a knife, you can wait 1 1/2 hours for cooling, then use a cooky spatula edge, pressing down. The pic shows the 8 x 8 fudge grid and spatula. If edges of middle fudge pieces look a little warped, lightly shape them.

October 29—Fudge variation: Made a mint fudge, using the mint white chocolate powder instead of respberry, and Wilton green meltables instead of chcolate meltables. Raves all around!

Contextual Train

Now and then, I'd think about words that had seemingly unrelated multiple meanings. I'm listing just a few that came to mind in the last few days. For that matter, "train" has bobbed up and down in my consciousness for probably years.

Train
Choo-choo train, fancy bridal-gown train, train of thought, the verb for teaching and often showing how to do something.

Lime
I had a recent discussion with a co-worker about soup she thought was too acidic from too many tomatoes. I remembered just enough about acids and bases from school days and piped up about lime, recalling that it was somewhat alkaline. I then recalled that the lime fruit, it being citrus, would be acidic, like its skin brethren, oranges and lemons. Then I recalled that the lime I thought of pertained to limestone. Bad idea to use THAT lime to counter soup acidity! But interesting that these lime meanings are so unrelated.

Light
About the same day my co-worker and I talked about her soup, which she lessened the acidity by adding parmesan cheese and black beans, I noted "It's kind of light in here." I immediately recognized the ambiguity. I had meant that I perceived fewer cafeteria customers than usual. As the sky was overcast, my statement could have meant room brightness. Speaking of brightness, "bright" could pertain to illumination, or intellect, or instance of apparent intellect.

Base
We can be talking about alkalinity aspect of the pH scale, soup base, political base (firing up the base), basing feelings on certain influences, baseball base. Reaching way back, I recall "Mr. Bass Man" by Johnny Cymbal. All through the song life on the radio, I had never seen the song title in print, and was too young to buy records. I was fairly unaware of lyrics and bass singing levels. I actually used to think the song was about baseball—Mr. Base Man!

Bass
We could be talking about a musical instrument or voice level. Or a fish. Bass can be very ambiguous in written form. If spoken, the long-vowel word can be confused with base, its homophone. See base.

Left and Right
Left and right are paired for directions when used as adjectives, such as left turn and right turn. More recently, when used as nouns, left and right refer to political leanings. Left can also mean remaining items—"how many are remaining" for "how many are left". Right can mean right turn or correct turn when someone confirms a direction with someone else. (I use "correct" rather than "right" in automobile traffic navigation.)

Straight
Within the last 40 years, I have seen "straight" evolve in reference to cultural attitude (vs. hippie) to sexual orientation (vs. gay). The song "Straight Life" by Bobby Goldsboro seems so out of date now, when I think of its context when it came out.

Timing can also cloud the meaning of "hippie". Before the term became so popularized in the 60s to indicate a usually counterculture youth, it derived from "hip", a term for coolness, associated with jazz. "Mohair Sam" by Charlie Rich had lyrics that did not seem to confirm a counterculture image, particularly in the context of his 1965 appearance on Shindig, with his slicked back hair and tuxedo.

Counter
At home, I had occasionally referred to the kitchen island as a table while actually meaning its top surface, but the other party calls the island a counter. I suppose differentiating helps to distinguish the island from the table where we eat. "Counter" seems an odd word for a kitchen furnishing, as I think of integrated circuits called counters. The difference between table and counter seem more obvious at a diner. I previously mentioned counterculture. In this context, counter means opposite of.

Rear
I'm now bringing up the rear of this article, the caboose, so to speak. Besides "rear" as a position descriptor, it also means "bringing up" offspring. Rearing offspring, however, might be less common than raising them.

Creating a YouTube Playlist PDQ

In April, I wrote an article that provides step-by-step instructions for creating a YouTube playlist. In this article, I emphasize using repeatable steps with minimal keystrokes for creating a playlist—my PDQ (pretty darn quick) method.

For my Dreamy Music article from a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to create a YouTube playlist quickly so I could roll out the article and playlist at the same time. The biggest speed factor was having already vetted my list of YouTube links—for destination AND order. You can whip out a YouTube playlist similarly.

Prerequisites for creating a YouTube playlist PDQ:

• You know how to use browser rightclicks to open the menu choice for copying a link location. Examples: Copy a Link Location, Copy Shortcut, Copy Link Address, …
• You have an account at YouTube.
• You know how to save a file as an HTML file.

Note: Familiarize yourself with info for creating a Youtube playlist as necessary.

Prepping your list of YouTube videos into an HTML file

1. Open a blank email page or word processor application (Open Office, in my case).
2. Copy and paste a URL of a YouTube video you want in your playlist. Enter a video title adjacent the URL so you instantly know where the link goes.
3. Skip a line for readability.
4. Repeat the previous two steps until you have all the videos you want, periodically saving the collected info as an HTML file. (For convenience, save the file to your desktop.)
5. Rearrange and cull entries until you're happy with your list. Do a final save-as, overwriting your HTML file.

Setting up your new YouTube playlist

1. Log in to your YouTube account.
2. At the upper right of your account page, click the arrow to the right of your account name to open the main menu, and click Video Manager.
3. At the left menu, click Playlists.
4. At the upper right, click New playlist, type something in the Playlist title box, and click Create playlist. (If you want to add or change info, you can do that later.)

Entering your HTML list of videos to your new Youtube playlist

1. At the YouTube Editing playlist window, accept or change Privacy and Settings choices, and click Add video by URL. Click Save at any time.
2. Open your HTML playlist file in a browser.
3. Rightclick a URL and put the link into the clipboard. Examples: Copy a Link Location, Copy Shortcut, Copy Link Address, …
4. Paste the URL into the YouTube space—Ctrl+V or rightclick Paste, and click Add. A successful add states that the video is now in your YouTube playlist.
5. Repeat the previous two steps until you finish adding all your YouTube links to your playlist.
6. Click Save.

Repositioning video order if necessary

Near the checkbox at the end of each thumbnail, when you hover the mouse until the cursor turns into a cross with arrowheads, you can click and drag the video link to another position. If you want to move a video directly to the top or bottom of the list, you can select the action in the Actions menu.

Dreamy Music

YouTube playlists for this article (1, 2),
playlist compilation article

Songs with the word "dream" conjure mind wanderings. It's difficult to be asleep AND think or mentally sing songs about dreams and dreaming. However, one song that could fit the bill might be one about daydreaming, such as "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees.

List 1 of 2 (compiled late August 2012)

• Dream (song used in Nightmare on Elm Street, long after the song's original release)
  Everly Brothers
• Dreams
  Fleetwood Mac
• Dreamweaver (now immortalized as the Adobe web design tool)
  Gary Wright
• Dream Lover (song used in Charlie Sheen's Hot Shots movie)
  Bobby Darin (pink-tinted, but complete film w/Ed Sullivan intro)
• Dream Baby
  Roy Orbison
• Dreamin', I'm Still Dreamin'
  Johnny Burnette
• Dream On (different from Steve Tyler version)
  Herman's Hermits
• Dream On (different from Peter Noone version)
  Aerosmith
• I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night (long clip that includes other stuff on Mike Douglas show)
  Electric Prunes
• California Dreamin'
  Mamas & Papas
• Dream a Little Dream
  Mama Cass (serenading Dick Smothers, who does the whistle solo at the end)
• #9 Dream
  John Lennon
• Elusive Butterfly
  Bob Lind
• Spill the Wine ("I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie")
  Eric Burden and War
• Sweet Dreams (song used in a Simpsons episode regarding Artie Ziff courting Marge via snore suppressor.)
  Eurythmics (androgynous Annie Lennox look)
• I Can Dream About You
  Dan Hartman
• Dreamboat Annie
  Heart
• I Like Dreaming
  Kenny Nolan (intro by Dick Clark)
• I Have a Dream (English, Spanish—aka "Estoy Soñando")
  ABBA
• I Dream of Jeannie TV show theme
• I Dream of Jeannie Season 1 Theme
• I Dream of Jeannie (pre-TV show, 1937 recording)
  Richard Crooks

List 2 of 2 (compiles and added early October 2012)

• Sh-Boom
  Chords
• Sh-Boom
  Crew Cuts
• Send Me the Pillow You Dream On
  Hank Locklin
• Send Me the Pillow You Dream On
  Dean Martin
• Just a Dream
  Jimmy Clanton
• Dreams of an Everyday Housewife
  Glen Campbell
• Dreaming (Blondie at Apollo Theater in 1979)
  Deborah Harry
• If I Can Dream
  Elvis
• I Dreamed a Dream (from Les Miserables)
  Lea Salonga
• The Impossible Dream (from Man of La Mancha)
  Richard Kiley
• Beautiful Dreamer
  Bing Crosby
• White Christmas (lyrics & slide show)
  Bing Crosby

Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers

These tubes are soft rollups that you can spread frosting or other sweet filling in. The softness comes from rolling up baked waffle-cone wafers and dropping them into cylinders that are narrow enough for steam to stay in. For my recipe, I used color-coded 1-inch diameter test tubes. The recipe is actually from the waffle-cone machine manufacturer for making waffle cones. I wanted to try making tubes, as I don't keep ice cream in the house. If you want crispy tubes, roll each baked waffle around a dowel or chop stick and hold them together for a few seconds. (For my next experiment for making crispy tubes will be trying a fortune cookie batter recipe, a test tube rack, or both.)
My pixstrip show the following images:

1. Equipment and utensils
2. Ingredients and mixing
   
   1. Eggs and salt, to be mixed together first
   2. Sugar, to be added to the eggs and salt mixture
   3. Rest of ingredients
3. Process completion
   
   1. Batter baking process (1st and 2nd image in the 2nd row)
   2. A set of rolled baked wafers
   3. Finished tube wafers
   4. Some tubes and frosting (filling optional)

Equipment and utensils (spray oil being a bridge from equipment to baking process)

• Waffle cone maker
• Mixer (I used an electric hand mixer.)
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Rubber spatula(s)
• Plastic spatula
• Mixing bowl(s)
• Cooling rack
• Cylinders (I used test tubes—aka "test tube shooters"—that I bought at Urban Outfitters, which are also available online.)

Ingredients and mixing (from the Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones recipe of the Bella Recipe Guide)

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 C of water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 C cake flour (can sub with 1 C flour -2 T flour +2 T cornstarch)
  

  Note: I'm 'fessing up to having putting only 2/3 the amount of flours because I, duh, misread my list of ingredients

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Recommended: Spray oil application about every other wafer or so.

1. Beat the eggs and salt.
2. Add the sugar and beat it. :-)
3. Add the water, oil, cake flour (or replacement flours), and vanilla.

Process completion (baking, etc.)
Prepare the iron as instructed with your appliance. Because I've used mine a few times, I've only wiped the cooking surfaces with a clean, warm, damp kitchen rag for cleaning preparation, sprayed the cooking surfaces, and plugged the cord. Heating time is a minute or so.
For each disk, pour about 1 T batter, close the lid, and heat for about 30 seconds.

Note: If you want to make cones or bigger tubes, which won't easily fit into test tubes, pour 2 T. With 1 T batter, the lid locks fine. More than 1 T at a time, the lid tends to not stay locked. In my past recipe for waffle-grid tortillas, I held down the lid, using an oven pad for each hand. (Warning: The lid gets hot.)

Move the cooked disk onto the cooling rack, roll it up, and drop it into a cylinder. Continue the batter dispensing and baking process until you use up the batter. (My pixstrip shows a set of six filled, poured out tubes, and tubular wafers.)

I wound up with 22 tubes and some 2-T batter disks. Those disks didn't last long enough to make it into the picture. :-) My calculations for calories, considering my reduced amount of flours, came to about 50 calories for each tube. Placing about a teaspoon of frosting nudges the calories by another 25. IOW, the plate of four as shown in the pixstrip amounts to about a 300-calorie snack, about the amount in a good-sized candy bar. Eater beware!

Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies

This oatmeal cooky recipe uses the minimal amount of ingredients, for those who want a nekkid cooky that has lots of oatmeal, and no raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, white sugar, extracts, or whatever additional ingredients. The ingredients are simple—oatmeal, flour, baking soda, oil, eggs, and brown sugar. As a bonus, I include information for resoftening a brown sugar brick into its spoonable form. (How many of you bakers have found your brown sugar dried out like I did?)

Most oatmeal cookies call for butter (saturated fat!). A few call for oil. In both types of recipes, they seem to call for way more oil than I want to use. After having poked around several online and oatmeal box recipes, I've come up with a recipe that reflects fewer steps and fewer calories. Forget having to let butter soften and creaming it with sugars, in the cream-butter-and-sugar instructions.

The recipe that came with my oatmeal box was appealing because it called for the most oatmeal and claimed the yield to be about four dozen. It was weird that the oatmeal company did not list the calories. I had to look elsewhere for the recipe AND caloric info..

Oddly, I have two oatmeal box lids with the same-name recipe. The only difference is that both call for 1/2 pound of butter, but one lists 2 sticks and the other one lists 1 stick and 6 tablespoons. Cooking measurements typically show 1/2 pound to equal 1 cup to equal 8 tablespoons when talking about water or fat.

My upper pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients, dry and wet
3. Mixed ingredients in one bowl
4. Dough spoonfuls on pan
5. Baked cookies

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• mixer
• large mixing bowl
• medium small mixing bowl
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• additional implements in case of needing to resoften brown sugar
• rubber spatulas
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients (adapted from Dale Goodman's Food.com webpage)

• 2/3 C oil
• 1 1/3 C brown sugar, firmly packed (See note in Instruction 4 if you first need to resoften the brown sugar.)
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 C Quicker Quaker Oats or 3 C Old-Fashioned Quaker oats, uncooked

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the flour and soda into a large mixing bowl, using the pastry blender to blend well.
3. Add the oatmeal, blending well.
4. In the smaller bowl, mix the oil, eggs, and brown sugar.
   Note: If you need to resoften the brown sugar, refer to 10 Ways To Soften Hard Brown Sugar. (I used Quick Tip #1, the 7th suggestion—illustrated in the Brown sugar resoftening pixstrip at the top of this article.)

   Need it soft now? Put it in a container and set in the microwave with a small bowl full of water beside it. Microwave for about 1 minute–check. If it’s still hard, try for another 30 seconds. You can keep doing this until it’s soft, but watch that you don’t melt it.

5. Pour the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, brown sugar) into the larger bowl.
6. Use the pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
7. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough.
8. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet.
9. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
10. Transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Calories

The recipe yielded 56 cookies. Initially, I calculated the calories to be about 63 calories each. I've started to include a calorie and sodium table to be more accurate.

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"Pt 1 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Plain and Chocochip Batch"

"Pt 2 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Closer Looks at Process"

"Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies"

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Macaroons (egg whites replacement)

Last month, I offered up cake mix macaroon cookies, and I mentioned gluey coconut clumps in context of macaroons. I still think macaroons are gluey and clumpy, but my results taste better than macaroons I remember from way back. This recipe includes information for substituting egg whites with Wilton meringue powder. It also includes my best guess for coconut calories, espite the coconut package squishiness for numbers of servings and calories.

In researching macaroon recipes, I noticed many used egg whites. I myself prefer to avoid recipes that call for only egg whites or only egg yolks—arggghhhh, leftover egg yolks or leftover egg whites! I recalled I have a container of Wilton meringue powder, which I used for making meringue cookies once. (They came out light and airy, but were not a big hit in the household.)

Macaroons should be a good way to try using up some of the powder, I thought. The container showed substitution information of 2 teaspoons of powder and 2 tablespoons of water for one egg white. Interestingly, I could not find macaroon recipes that showed substitution. I encountered macaroon recipes that specified beating egg whites lightly to beating them to stiff peaks. I decided to beat the egg white substitute to a froth.

I looked up macaroon recipes mostly for fewest ingredients, which is my main standard for simplicity. The Scribbler macaroon recipe is intriguing for both simplicity and complication. The blog owner was gracious and prompt in responding to some questions I posted.

The simplicity was in the basic ingredients. The complications lay in the decorative areas, nicely detailed for those who like to add flair to their macaroons. The Scribbler recipe shows several appealing pictures and lists steps to achieve the visual effects.
My pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients, dry and wet
3. Mixed ingredients in one bowl
4. Dough spoonfuls on a parchment-lined pan
5. Baked macaroons

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• mixer
• medium-large mixing bowl
• small mixing bowl
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• rubber spatulas
• parchment paper
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients

• 3 C flaked coconut (~10.5 oz, 3/4 of 14-oz. package)
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/3 C flour
• 2 T and 2 t Wilton meringue powder and 1/2 C water
  (You can use 4 egg whites.)
• 1 t vanilla extract, optional (I forgot to add it!)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Line the baking pan with parchment paper.
3. Pour the coconut into a medium-large mixing bowl, breaking up the lumps.
4. Add the flour and sugar into the coconut, using the pastry blender to blend well.
5. In the smaller bowl, mix the water and meringue powder together. (I mixed on low speed for one minute, then medium speed for one minute.)
   Note: For using only egg whites, lightly beat them.
6. Add the extract, if you want extract, (Or fuggedaboutit it like I did.)
7. Pour the beaten egg whites or egg-white substitute ingredients into the larger bowl.
8. Use the pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
9. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough.
10. Drop the spoon's dough onto the parchment-lined cooky sheet.
11. Bake for about 15-17 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
12. Transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Calories and coconut servings
The recipe yielded 34 macaroons, calculated to about 66 calories each, 40 that come from coconut—almost 2/3 of each macaroon's calories. YMMV. The coconut was the most problematic ingredient for calculating calories. The package of coconut contains 14 ounces (396 grams).

The nutritional table shows 70 calories for every 2 tablespoons (15 grams) and claims 27 servings for the package. If dividing 396 grams by 15 grams, however, the total servings is 26.4. The front of the package prominently claims to contain 5 1/3 cups. If calculating VOLUME servings at 8 servings per cup (16 tablespoons per cup), the number of servings should be 8 x 5.33, or (gasp!) slightly fewer than *43* servings.

November 14, 2013: I made a double batch to take to a workplace potluck. Instead of using a pastry blender, I wore latex gloves to blend the dry ingredients, then later used a couple of large cooking spoons to stir the egg-white replacement fluid into the dry ingredients. My yield was 84 cookies, about 52 calories each.