Fun Gifts for Food Lovers

Hi Guys, we have a guest writer here, Jon D, and expert at cookware.com
He gives us clues to decide what gift we are able to choose for our friends or relatives.
I hope you'll enjoy it.

Some people are easier to shop for than others. Luckily if the person you are shopping for happens to have a passion for food and drink, then you have a wide variety of fun options to choose from. Items like kitchen appliances, dinnerware, and cookware are somewhat impersonal gifts. Kitchen gadgets on the other hand are an ever popular gift choice for foodies because they are fun, useful, and relatively affordable. The key is to find a gift that is fun and practical, but also appeals to the person’s particular kitchen passions.

Anyone who is a fan of cooking with fresh ingredients would love to have their own indoor herb or veggie garden. The Aero Garden hydroponic growing system allows people to grow their own fresh herbs without all the hassle and dirty work of working with garden soil. You can even buy special seed pods to grow your own Italian herbs, lettuce, and salsa veggies. People that enjoy gardening can grow herbs year round in the comfort of their own home, which makes this a great gift for foodies who also have a green thumb.

Unique bottle, can, and wine openers also make excellent gifts as people are always looking for easier ways to open their favorite beverages. Modern openers and cork screws have options like pressurized handles that help take the pain out of uncorking a bottle or removing a bottle cap. These types of openers are especially helpful for elderly persons who may have trouble opening bottles by themselves.

Small kitchen gadgets like fruit slicers, cheese cutters, and pizza cutters can also make for a unique gift idea. Most kitchens are already stocked with traditional staples like pots, pans, and knives, but there is always room for more helpful gadgets. Lots of brands have unique takes on items like pizza cutters and cheese cutters and these tools can be a great way to add a little character to san otherwise traditional kitchen.

Making Cakes, Tips I’ve Learned

1. At first, make sure the ingredients are all ready to use, all are not passing the expired date, and all are in good shape which mean in good conditions.

2. Making cake, we always use egsg. So we have to take more attention about eggs we use, and how we handle them. Never use eggs direct from refrigerator. We have to set them aside in room temperature before crack and whisk them.

3. Do not whisk the egg too long or too short in time. The longer, our cake more crumby. The shorter, our cake wouldn’t expand well. It will be deflated as immediately as we take them out from the oven. Practices make perfect, we’ll find a perfect time to stop whisk it. I did it.

4. When you need to stir the batter with spatula, stir it in one direction. Don’t be too long, it will make it down. Mix others ingredients first before pour them to the batter/whisked egg.

5. Never leave the batter too long. Bake it immediately after you finish prepare the batter.

6. Set in the middle rack of your oven to avoid over heating in the bottom or in the top rack.

What is Coconut Milk?

If there are somebody get curious about what exactly coconut milk is (maybe), that's the reason I write this then. Coconut milk or santan (in Bahasa Indonesia) is made from grated coconut fruits. That fruits must be old enough to produce juice. Of course, it is juice not milk like cow’s milk or sheep’s milk. People in Indonesia use the coconut milk almost in everyday cooking (and baking). There are many recipes using this coconut milk.

How to produce this kind of juice? You know what, it is not fresh juice inside the young coconut. First the fresh coconut fruits are peeled. Then we find the hard shell of coconut, crack it. We will get an inner of coconut fruit which is white. Grate this part. Add water to the grated coconut, squeeze it, use strainer to get the juice.

Thick coconut milk made from 1 grated coconut fruit (400-500 grams) and 120 ml water. It produces 250 ml thick coconut milk.

After this add water little by little. Next squeeze will produce the thin coconut milk. Until we get about 800-1000 ml thin coconut milk.

For me, I never measure the water level. I just see what it looks like. If it is thick so it is THICK. When I need the thin one I just pour some water into the thick one.

I prefer to use fresh coconut milk that I bought from market. However, I always have several packs of coconut milk, powder and liquid, just in case I need coconut milk when I couldn’t find the fresh one. Of course the powder will last longer than the liquid one.

Bad Result While Following Instruction of Recipe, How Could Be?

An amateur tries to bake usually ends it with failure result instead of succeed. I do too. There are several kinds of possibilities, such as:

1. You don’t read or pay more attention on the critical point. Read the instruction one more carefully. Maybe you’ve left something.

2. You have no idea about the expired date of your raw materials. Check them again on the package. Perhaps, you shouldn’t use them any longer. If yes, just throw in your garbage can.

3. Maybe you don’t keep the raw material in appropriate needed condition. If you store them in the wrong place with wrong condition such as high humidity, room temperature, direct sunlight or something, they will be broken faster than they used to. So, check again on their packages what condition they really need, maybe they must keep in the refrigerator after you open it, or just keep them in dry place, without any sunlight, etc.

4. You don’t use right equipment. In some cases (but not always), the right equipment takes the roll.