Fear of baking? Not to worry.
MILTON - As the saying goes, you're either a great cook or a great baker.
This is the fallacy that many of us live by, says Kathleen King, who's a baker. She's on a mission to deflate this notion, to let people who are afraid of baking know that they can make cookies, cakes, and tarts without fear.
King is the owner of Tate's Bake Shop in Southampton, N.Y., which has such success with its chocolate chip cookies that the shop now retails them in stores across the country. In a cooking demonstration recently at the Milton Fruit Center Marketplace, she describes her style as "very simple, but very delicious."
A case in point is her pumpkin cranberry loaf. "It's like a blank canvas," she tells the group. The pumpkin bread batter can be made without cranberries, and also without the other additions she tosses in, such as walnuts, chocolate chips, and raisins. She prefers the cranberries.
"I love the tart blast with the sweetness," she says.
She holds up a medium mixing bowl and a whisk. This - not a KitchenAid or another electric mixer - is all you really need to make the batter. Of course it requires some elbow grease, particularly when she combines all the wet and dry ingredients in the bowl at once.
King notes that bakers can toy with the amount of sugar in the formula. She recommends taking out no more than 25 percent, because more would begin to affect the texture and the moisture of the cake. (Sugar helps the batter spread. Skimping on the sugar could cause the cake to turn into a lump.) For a healthier alternative, apple sauce or apple butter can replace half of the oil. Or, if you're committed to fiber, she suggests replacing a small amount of flour with wheat germ, oatmeal, or flaxseed.
She's tried using real pumpkin in the batter and found it just OK, not thrilling enough to compensate for the effort of getting one, hacking it up, scooping out the messy seeds, baking, straining, and cleaning up.
As for the pans, use loaf pans, she says, or a rectangular cake pan or muffin tins. Decrease the oven temperature for the cake pan, since it's shallower, and increase the temperature for the muffin tins to give them a lift. The batter is forgiving and each novice baker should bring confidence and creativity to the job.
King has been baking since she was 11 years old, so she knows the importance of bravery in the kitchen. And because she's a shop owner, she also knows what truly fearful bakers do this time of year.
They go to people like her and buy sweets. 