kristi atkinson — crumbs…
Name: Caihley Baker
Specialty: Baking
Favorite dish to make: Cupcakes
Caihley Baker has been in the kitchen since fourth grade.
Food science senior Colin Cassard makes his favorite chocolate creation makes his favorite chocolate creation, cayenne beehives, Monday in his home. Cassard said he's been creating sweet treats since he was 8, but his expertise is not limited to just chocolate. Cassard said he is also known for his cakes and cookies. Alex Aguirre | rawr
“My grandma was really into baking, then my mom was really into baking, then my sister wanted to be a chef,” Baker said. “So all of my Christmas and birthday gifts have been baking stuff.”
Baker received a Kitchen Aid mixer from her mom during college. She said she is trying to buy more cooking staples while studying at the University of Idaho.
“In the past six months, I’ve bought a zester and different ice cream scoopers because they are good for more than ice cream,” Baker said.
A medium one is the perfect size to measure cupcake batter, she said, and the small one is good for cookies. Baker also bought a kitchen scale for accuracy, portion control and doubling recipes.
“Precision will affect your results,” Baker said. “A lot of people think they may be bad at baking because they don’t get good results, but it’s just because they don’t know how to bake.”
Flour is the perfect example of imprecision, she said. Too much flour will make cookies end up dry and crumbly.
“You can end up having almost twice the amount of flour that you actually need,” Baker said. “The safest way to do it is to use a scale.”
Flour has an expiration date, so Baker said to store it in a sealed container because it will affect the quality of your product.
“If something calls for cake flour then you need cake flour because it’s a lot more refined,” Baker said. “It’s milled from softer wheat so it gives it a higher volume and it’s going to affect the texture.”
Baker said baking from scratch shouldn’t be intimidating because you know what is going into the food you are eating.
“If you have the staple ingredients, you can pretty much make anything, especially for dietary needs.” Baker said. “Where with a box mix, you don’t have options. It’s limiting.”
Baker said the best thing to have on hand is parchment paper because it speeds up the process of baking multiple batches.
Baker reads a lot of blogs for inspiration. Her favorites are Annie’sEats.com and MyBakingAddiction.com
“Annie’s Eats is good for more than just baking. It’s a more of a do-it-yourself articles and My Baking Addiction is good for tutorials,” Baker said. “Pinterest.com is also good for inspiration.”
Name: Colin Cassard
Specialty: Desserts and Confections
Favorite dish to make: Chocolates
When Collin Cassard was 8 years old, he wanted french toast.
“My parents didn’t feel like making it for me so they gave me a recipe and it just went from there,” Cassard said.
Cassard, UI food science major, said initially, his cooking habit was just making foods the way he wanted to eat them.
“By high school time, it developed into a focused effort to make the best cookies and the best foods,” Cassard said. “That then developed into my career.”
Cassard decided to start his own business in high school.
“It got to the point where every time I saw a baked good, I would try to figure out if I could make it,” Cassard said. “I one day realized I had no idea how to make chocolates. “
He researched the process, purchased textbooks and began making chocolates.
“The actual chocolate-making process was simple, but the problem (is) you need to temper the chocolate, and if you do it wrong you can get chocolates that don’t come out of the mold, chocolates that have a white-powdery outside and don’t look good,” Cassard said. “They all tasted good, but appearance wise, there was a lot of work to do.”
Tempering is the process of heating and re-cooling chocolates so the fat crystals and cocoa butter form a specific shape. If you do it right, the chocolate won’t melt in your hands, but in your mouth, he said.
After a year, Cassard said he started to fully understand the chocolate-making process.
His inspiration came from his sweet tooth, he said. Most of the recipes he uses are his own.
“I got a lot of help from the CIA textbooks,” Cassard said. “I can also ask my teachers here questions if I have any trouble.”
Cassard said he plans on attending the Culinary Institute of America after he graduates. After that, he wants to develop recipes forfood processing companies to use for grocery store products or become a culinary teacher and teach at a culinary institute.
Name: Tessa Scott
Specialty: Baking
Favorite dish to make: Cinnamon Rolls
Every meal Tessa Scott consumed as a child was homemade.
“I started baking when I was 6 because my mom was a really big cook,” she said.
Scott experiments with gluten-free recipes.
“I experiment every night, but don’t follow recipes,” Scott said. “I kind of just get the general idea of what things consist of and then just throw in whatever I think will work.”
She was raised to make healthy recipes, she said.
“It’s on default for me,” Scott said. “I’m generally pretty healthy anyway.”
Scott uses olive oil instead of canola oil, tapioca flour instead of other flours, and uses a lot of flax seeds in her recipes.
“I can tell if someone has used canola oil instead of another oil, but I don’t think many people can,” she said.
Scott likes to keep her ingredients cheap, and her pantry is always full of sugar, honey, flour, butter and salt.
“Just with those alone you can make a lot,” Scott said. “I like to play around with different spices.”
She likes to focus more on the taste than looks, she said.
“Most of the time, if it tastes good, I will leave it at that,” she said. “If it’s for me, I won’t bother, but it’s for someone else then I will go the extra mile.”
Scott’s inspiration comes from PoorGirlEatsWell.com.
“I find a lot of the blogs derive from organic ingredients and it’s hard because we only have the Co-op and it’s expensive for a college student,” Scott said.
Scott said she would like to take classes after school but wouldn’t like to pursue a professional baking career.
“For me, cooking is a joy and I don’t want to make it something that I have to constantly do for other people,” Scott said. “I like to selfishly keep it to myself.”
First published November 11, 2011 in Rawr.