Coin-Op Kitchen

Payday: A Brief History

2013-06-05T19:37:00.004-07:00

Today at work I had a conversation about the candy bar, PayDay. This has always been my favorite, which is rather inexplicable for me because I always prefer that my candy be chocolate. However, I have always been a sucker for the sweet-salty combination, and in that category, PayDay is a classic.

Our friends at Wikipedia tell us that the PayDay was introduced by Frank Martoccio in 1932. Martoccio served at the head of the Hollywood Candy Company in Centralia, Illinois. Hollywood was sold to Consolidated Foods in 1967, which later became Sara Lee. After the plant was destroyed by fire in 1980, the PayDay was produced by L.S. Heath and Sons Company until a new plant could be built. In 1988 the company was purchased by the Leaf Candy Company, which became part of Hershey in 1996.

In addition to this info, there was a big uproar in 1996 when the main plant in Centralia was going to be closed. There was a large and far-reaching campaign to save the plant. This is, of course, the same plant that is featured in Michael Moore's 1997 film The Big One. Many of you may remember the scene where the workers put the PayDay bars into the coffin in protest.

The plant was ultimately closed.

None of this explains the actual origins of the candy bar itself - why did Frank Martoccio make it? I guess that's what happens to history when the company is steeped in drama - it drowns out the rest of the history.

Pop Tarts: An Attempt

2013-02-07T19:58:00.001-08:00

Homemade Pop Tarts: Check.

There are a few tweaks I want to make on my next batch, and the final verdict won't be in until I can figure out if they hold up in the toaster.

Positives:

The dough was easy to work with and didn't require too much waiting time while it chilled (probably because my house is cold).
The dough tastes good - not too heavy and dry, not too sweet.
The filling is dead on - exactly like the brown sugar-cinnamon in a store-bought Pop Tart.
They sealed up well and no filling was lost to melting out in the oven - which is a good sign in terms of upright toaster reheating possibility.
They look pretty close to the store bought Pop Tarts

Negative:

The dough, while being easy to work with and good-tasting, is light and flaky, which to me is the opposite of store-bought Pop Tarts, which are dense and more like a cookie. More experimentation needed.
Sort of a lot of work for nine tarts. In the future I would double or triple, since they're probably going to need to be kept in the freezer anyway.
I didn't have any jam I wanted to open (my own fault, obviously), so I only made one filling.
With the filling recipe designed for filling the full nine tarts, it wasn't easy to half it. This wouldn't be a problem if doubling the recipe, though.

Unlike the homemade Doritos, I didn't have to cobble together a recipe based on the ingredients list of the store-bought product, and I already had all of the ingredients needed for this. As mentioned above, I didn't end up making any pop tarts with fruit filling because I didn't have any jam. Ok, that's not entirely true - I have a closet full of it that I made over the summer, including peach habanero (which I was excited to make into Pop Tarts, actually), but most recently I had opened a jar of clementine rosemary marmalade, which is still mostly full. We don't go through jam that quickly, and I didn't want to open a whole other jar just for a few tablespoons full. Next time, though.

So let's begin. I'm not going to bother re-typing the recipe up, because I didn't create it or really make that many changes, and it's just as easy to click through to The Smitten Kitchen and read it there - it even has a print version. The recipe can be found here.

This recipe, like all good pastries, calls for a lot of butter. The butter should be cold, and cut into pieces, and tossed into a bowl of flour, sugar and salt.

You have the option here of how you're going to incorporate the flour. I used my pastry cutter. I wonder whether that was responsible for the awesome, light and flaky and completely unlike store-bought Pop Tarts texture?

Once all that is mixed (but not too mixed), the dough divided in two and is wrapped in plastic and chilled in the fridge or freezer, depending on how much time you have. It can be refrigerated for up to two days. While that's chilling, you can mix up the filling. I mean, I guess you could technically do this any time, but why not use your down time, right? If you've already made the filling, I guess you could go watch tv, but good luck having the motivation to get up and finish the project...

Once the filling is made (or your tv show is over) and the dough is chilled, you can roll it out on a floured counter. What I feel honestly is that the dough is way easier to work with when it's a little warmer. If it feels too warm by the time you get it rolled and cut, you could always pop it back in the fridge or freezer before you assemble and bake.

Once you get these suckers rolled out, you have to get technical. I have a kitchen ruler for just the purposes. A lot of people scoff at my kitchen ruler, but it's come in handy more times that I can count. Anyway, you're going to roll this dough to 9" x 12", and about 1/8th of an inch thick. This always feels impossibly thin to me, but the kitchen ruler tells me I've nailed the thickness as well as the shape.

Ultimately what you're getting at here is cutting this dough into thirds both directions. You end up with nine rectangles about 3" x 4" each. Then you have to turn around and do the same thing with the other dough.

There's a catch here, though. To fill these tarts, you have to brush the insides with egg. These first four that I placed on the prepared baking sheet and brushed got awfully messy - egg was everywhere. I transferred them back to the counter and brushed them there, while they were all touching each other. This kept the egg on the dough. Once that was done, I transferred them back to the tray to pile on the filling.

The key, of course, is to get the egg all the way to the edges in order to help seal the lid. Once the lid is on, you can get as fancy as you want with the edges. I used a fork because it looked nice, but you could use anything. I wanted something, though, because I was afraid that just smashing them down with my fingers wouldn't make them stick.

Once you've finished this, you need to put some holes in these lids to let the steam escape. I used a toothpick. I should also note that before I did this, I brushed the remaining egg over the tops to make them shiny. The recipe doesn't call for this, but why waste the egg?

These are going into a pre-heated, 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. I was terrified that the filling was going to spill out, but it didn't! They came out golden brown, slightly puffed, shiny, and smelling delicious.

Once they cooled, I tried one, and I have to admit it was awesome. While the pastry was decidedly un-Pop Tart, the filling was dead on. I guess it isn't hard to get brown sugar and cinnamon right. When they were completely cool, I left one out for my husband and put the rest in a Ziploc bag in the freezer.

Pop Tarts: Dilemmas and Options

2013-01-20T09:55:00.002-08:00

Unlike the homemade Doritos, there seems to be no shortage of others out there online who have attempted homemade Pop Tarts before. Not just a string of individual bloggers, either. Even Bon Appetit and King Arthur Flour are in on the game. There are a lot of options out there, but the King Arthur dough recipe seems to be the most common recipe.

The concern that I have with this is that in all of the photos on the various recipes, the dough looks puffy and flaky and delicious... and that is essentially the opposite of an actual Pop Tart. The store bought Pop Tarts have a crumbly crust that almost reminds me more of graham crackers than of flaky pastry. I don't know whether this is because they are mass produced, or because they're full of preservatives, or because they're never actually fresh, and I don't know if that particular type of crust is possible to recreate or not. That could very well be. It is also possible that everyone assessed the situation and thought, well, you could make it like the store bought product, but why bother?

So I'm going to start with a recipe from one of my favorite cooking blogs: The Smitten Kitchen. This recipe is adapted from the King Arthur recipe, but differs primarily when it comes to the fruit fillings - King Arthur doesn't have one listed. This fruit filling notes that you should mix it with corn starch in order to thicken it. Not doing so causes it to seep through the edges of the pastries.

I have yet to come across a recipe that purports to result in a pastry that can actually be put in an upright slot toaster. I'm sure all of these would be fine in a toaster oven, but I'm not sure whether I'm willing to potentially wreck my regular toaster trying. Another thing to note is that most of the recipes that I came across indicate that if you want to freeze these pastries, you should do so before you bake them, which kind of defeats the purpose of a pre-baked snack that you just pop into your toaster. I think I'll bake them all and freeze half to see how they handle later on. Most likely I'll reheat them in the oven, but I may also try the toaster by laying it on its side.

Initially, I'm going to follow the recipe exactly, but I'm thinking that maybe in a later batch I would swap in some whole wheat, or white whole wheat flour. I'll initially try a jam filling and a cinnamon-sugar filling (why mess with the classics, right?), but I'll think of some more flavor combinations as I go.

Well, what are we waiting for? Get to the kitchen!

Pop Tarts: A Brief History

2013-01-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

According to the good folks at Wikipedia, Pop Tarts started out as an idea that the Post company had for a side to accompany breakfast cereal, and as a way to showcase a method of preserving food in a foil pouch, which had originally been designed for dog food. They apparently screwed up the timing of the release of the product, though, which gave Kellogg the opportunity to develop their own version six months later in 1964. The Kellogg version was so popular that they could not keep up with demand.

The original version was no frosted, due to a concern that a frosting could not withstand the heat of the toaster. Three years later, someone figured out that frosting could, in fact, hold up in the toaster, and a frosted version was released. The first Pop Tarts came in four flavors: strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon, and apple currant. It seems that apple currant fell out of favor, probably because no one knows what currants are anymore. Today, as we know, there are a variety of flavors, some of which seem slightly ridiculous.

Unlike some of the lawsuits that plagued our previous project, the only noteworthy legal drama that Pop Tarts had to deal with was a claim that the pastry caught fire in the toaster. Apparently, a university professor later performed an experiment proving that the Pop Tart could, in fact, produce a flame of up to one foot if left in the toaster too long. Consequently, Pop Tarts now have a warning on the packaging reminding you not to leave them unattended in your toaster.

There are also complaints from heath groups with criticize the product of falsely claiming any kind of health benefit because some of them are filled with "fruit". In times following this, the company has removed, and then added again from the packaging that Pop Tarts are made with real fruit. Personally, I'm not sure why anyone would be particularly offended to find out that a baked good, which is meant to be stored for a long period of time without refrigeration, is not actually good for you, but that's just me.

But I get the appeal. It's like a baked pastry any time of day or night. You can eat them without heating them up, you can carry them with you. They're just as good as a dessert or a snack as they are for breakfast. I don't think for a second that my homemade version will be as convenient, but it's worth trying them out, anyway.

Doritos: A Promise of Homemade Tortillas

2012-03-09T18:55:00.001-08:00

I took the week off. I needed to put a presentation together for school. I had the most intense craving for lemon-flavored desserts. I bought a filing cabinet and spent an entire Sunday going through the stack of boxes and organizing the cabinet. I just couldn't fit making tortillas from scratch into my weekend.

But this weekend. I promise.

I'm going to stick with the traditional Dorito flavoring this time. For the next round I have something spectacular in mind!

Doritos: First Attempt

2012-02-25T19:07:00.001-08:00

I've tasted success. And it tastes like Doritos.

Homemade Doritos using store-bought ingredients were a success. I'm actually pretty impressed with the result, but have some fine-tuning to do.

Positives:

The flavoring was great! Yes, I used the powdered cheese from the store, which was super salty and tasted a lot like box mac n' cheese. I added a lot of other powdered seasonings based on the ingredients list from the real Doritos - or what I could make out of that list, a lot of it sounds like chemical-ville.
The flavoring adhered to the chips better than I thought it would, and I didn't lose too much to the paper towel.
The shape and size of the chips was accurate, and for the most part they were crunchy.
I didn't burn my house down, burn myself, or make too big of a mess.
They look and taste like Doritos!!!*

Negatives:

As we learned from reading the history of Doritos, when they redesigned the chips in 1994, they made them thinner. You can tell, because these, while looking and tasting very good, are quite a bit thicker than your average Dorito.
While this is possible and quite easy with a pot full of oil, it would be easier with a proper deep fryer because the temperature would have been more consistent. Some of my chips could have cooked longer, and consequently came out chewy.
I should have at least bought a deep fry basket. I eyed one today and ultimately didn't buy it (idiot) and so I had to use various implements to scoop little triangles of tortillas out of the 300 degree oil, meaning some cooker longer than others.
My house smells like deep fry.

Before leaving for the store today I made a list of ingredients that I thought would make up the powdered flavoring. Wikipedia conveniently provided the full ingredient list, and while I didn't recognize most of them, I was able to put together a list that sounded pretty close to what Doritos taste like.

The first major success was that I found a packet of powdered cheese at the store. There is was, on a bulk spice rack, looking suspiciously like it had been liberated from a box of Kraft Mac n' Cheese. What can I say, it's the Midwest. It looks horrifying. The downside is that this was from the bulk spices and was distributed by my local grocery store. Is it available everywhere? I have no idea. It looks and tastes a LOT like the packet of cheese you get in a box of Mac n Cheese. Maybe that would be the alternative?

The second big success was figuring out how to deal with an ingredient listed as 'tomato powder'. Tomato bouillon, of course! I have never actually cooked with tomato bouillon before, but I see it every time I look for vegetable bouillon.

Other than those two, the tortillas, and some extra vegetable oil, I had the rest of the ingredients at home already. It's actually not a bad blend of spices.

Among the ingredients listed on the real Doritos is sugar. I don't know whether that's the seasoning or the tortillas, but I like sweetness to bump up and contrast the other flavors, so I decided to add some. But then, even though it wasn't an ingredients, I wanted to add paprika for color, especially after I saw how bright orange that cheese powder was. Since I only had sweet Hungarian paprika, I nixed the sugar. Good move.

The list of ingredients on the cheese powder included both onion and garlic powder, so I went easy on those. I used chili powder because these are supposed to be nacho cheese (thoughts: cumin might have been nice), black pepper and cayenne pepper for color and kick, and about a quarter of a cube of the tomato bouillon, since they were the two cup kind. The brand that I bought is a lot softer and more moist than other types of bouillon that I've used, so it took a lot of crumbling to get it small enough.

When I whisked them together, they actually took on the color, scent, and taste of what you find on your fingers after polishing off a bag of Doritos. I had to adjust and add quite a bit more chili powder than I was expecting to get it dark enough. And to get it to stop tasting like mac and cheese.

Once I was satisfied with that, I poured a disturbing amount of vegetable oil into a pot. Could I have used a better oil? Probably. Was I prepared to figure out how to cook with one of these other, healthier oils? Not today. I know vegetable oil. I can handle it. We're just testing the waters today, guys. Next I cut a stack of tortillas into eighths. I started small and only put a few in.

Again, the problem of not having a deep fryer was that it was hard to tell how hot the oil was, and my first small batch was a little dark. Then I discovered the dilemma of not having a deep fry basket, or any kind of big mesh scoop, which meant that while I frantically tried to scoop the chips out with my slotted spoon, the ones left behind were cooking away. The next batch I didn't leave in as long, resulting in the first chips I took out being under cooked and chewy, and the last chips being too dark. This is probably just a perfection of technique issue, and having the right tools would help. And you can still eat them; they just taste a little stale. No big deal, everyone's eaten stale chips.

After I pulled these out, I put them on a big baking sheet lined with parchment and paper towels. I didn't let them drain/dry for too long, though, because I was afraid that the seasoning wouldn't stick.

To season, I used my sifter - the one with the little crank handle - but I didn't put a lot of the seasoning in it. It fell right through and dumped straight onto just a few chips.

I was too much of a coward to put all the seasoning in there because I had a lot more chips to cook, so I just kind of finessed it by tapping the side with a spoon until they were mostly coated.

I took them from the tray and dumped them into a big mixing bowl. Partly to free up the tray for the next batch of chips, and partly so I could toss the chips and get them more evenly coated. It kind of worked. As more chips were added they got coated a little better.

I kept repeating this process until I had used about 20 tortillas. I never put more than 4 tortillas in the pot at a time, and they definitely cook better with less in there. It's also easier to season them, so I think it's safe to say that it's worth it to take your time and not rush through this.

*I should note that I did not actually buy a regular bag of Doritos for comparison purposes. Doritos are one of my favorite snacks, so I'm thinking that I've eaten enough in my lifetime that the memory comparison should be sufficient.

Store Bought Homemade Doritos

1/4 cup Cheese powder, or dehydrated cheddar ground into fine powder
1/2 tsp Chili powder
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp paprika
1/4-1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, more if you want it hotter
A pinch of black pepper
1/2 cube of tomato bouillon

20 corn tortillas
oil for frying

Whisk all spice ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside. Cover a baking sheet with paper towels.

Pour oil into a wide heavy pot or deep fryer. I used my wider soup pot because it allowed more tortillas to fit without overlapping. I poured in about a half an inch worth of oil. I was hesitant to use more because I'm secretly terrified of burning my house down.

Heat the oil over moderately high heat. The experts (and by that I mean the internet) recommend 300-330 degrees. My only cooking thermometer, the one for meat, only goes up to 220, so once I hit that, I waited another 5 minutes and figured it was good. Meanwhile, cut a stack of about 4 tortillas into 8 wedges. I used my pizza cutter.

When the oil is hot, carefully add the tortillas. The oil will start to bubble up right away. Try to move them around so that they are evenly layered over the top of the oil. Cook for 1-2 minutes until oil stops bubbling and chips have darkened slightly. Remove from oil. If you don't have a basket or a large wire spoon, work as quickly as possible because the pieces left behind are still cooking. Dump the chips onto the paper towels and let them cool for just a minute.

While the chips are cooling, spoon some seasoning into a mesh strainer or sifter. Do this over the bowl so that you don't lose any, then carefully shake the seasoning over the chips to coat. Turn them into a large bowl while you make more chips.

Repeat this process until you run out of either tortillas or seasoning. When you are finished cooking, toss the remaining chips with any leftover seasoning.

Sit down and enjoy... until your basketball team starts losing.

Doritos: An Interruption

2012-02-24T05:31:00.000-08:00

Alert! Alert! My stove is broken!

And by 'broken' I mean 'working really really way too well' because it won't actually turn off.

Fortunately (well, from a cooking standpoint, extremely unfortunately) I have an electric range, so the quick fix for this is to just go down into the basement and throw the circuit. This means that, for the past week, any time I've wanted to cook something, I have to head down to the basement, flip the switch, and then go back down when I'm finished. In the larger scheme of things, this isn't actually a big deal. I should be able to proceed with my first test run of homemade Doritos this weekend.

However. I am still waiting for someone to come out and repair the stove. I don't actually think that they would come on a Saturday, but you never know.

Doritos: Dilemmas and Options

2012-02-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

The way I see it, there are four options for creating these homemade Doritos:

Make both the tortillas and the powdered cheese from scratch
Make the tortillas from scratch, buy the powdered cheese
Make the powdered cheese from scratch, buy the tortillas
Buy both the tortillas and the powdered cheese

Obviously, the true spirit of the project dictates that I make everything from scratch. On looking into it, it seems like this is actually possible to make both the tortillas and the powdered cheese from scratch. I mean, obviously it is because someone, somewhere has to actually make these, but there is often quite a difference between the tools, ingredients and techniques available to commercial food producers, and what's available to you in your home.

So first, the tortillas. I once watched a TV food show, I forget which one, where a lady makes her own tortillas. She had this round, flat press that shaped the meal into a tortilla and it was uniform in thickness and size. I obviously don't have one of these, so I rendered this task an impossibility. A little research, though, lead me to this website that has a recipe not only for homemade Doritos, but it include the recipe for the tortillas, too. It seems that you use the rolling pin to shape the tortillas, and that doesn't seem too hard.

Now, the powdered cheese. Apparently all it takes is about 10 hours in a dehydrator, then a spin through the food processor to turn the dried cheese into powder. And therein lies the problem. The food dehydrator. I looked into this a bit further and, while it seems possible to use a basic oven like a dehydrator, it takes quite a bit more work and the end result isn't consistent. Some sites even recommend things like propping the oven door open and putting a fan in front of it. And running the oven for 10 hours? Count me out.

But buying a dehydrator? I don't know. At this stage, it's sort of a level of commitment that I'm not quite prepared for. Not that I have any thing against buying additional cooking gadgets - not that at all! But a dehydrator has never even been on my list of somedays. Also, truthfully, I'm concerned about the possibility of making my own jerky, and what that would do to my world.

So, for the time being, it looks like options 1 and 3 from the above list are off the table. I think that, since we're at the very beginning stages of this project, I should maybe take the easy way out, just this once, and buy both the cheese, and the tortillas. If I manage to pull them off (including if I manage to find some form of powdered cheese), I'll try making the tortillas from scratch. And all the while, I will contemplate the idea of buying a food dehydrator.

Doritos: A Brief History

2012-02-19T10:42:00.000-08:00

Some facts about Doritos (per the internet - I should state here that I tried to do some research on a Doritos factory tour, and this does not seem to be a thing, so the internet will have to suffice):

Created by Arch West in 1964 (fun fact about Arch: His family sprinkled Doritos over his gave when he died in 2011*)
Launched in the US in 1966
The first tortilla chip to be launched nationally in the US
Doritos made up 1/3 of total sales for Frito-Lay in 1993
The product line was "redesigned" in 1994 to make the chips larger, thinner, and to have a more powerful flavor
Someone sued the company because he cut his throat eating the chips (how about slowing down next time, guy?)
The first flavor was taco; nacho, the most popular flavor, was launched in 1972
Cool ranch was released in 1986 (fact: as a kid, I loved eating the cool ranch chips with extra sharp cheddar cheese)
Marketing for Doritos includes celebrity endorsements, Super Bowl ads, and sending chips out into space (seriously)

Today, Doritos offer a kind-of-absurd variety of flavors, many of them for a limited time only (90% marketing, 10% taste, right?). To their credit, they have completely removed trans fats from their recipe. The ingredients list still contains a host of things I can't pronounce, though, so in reality, who knows what's actually going on here. After all, they are a mass-produced snack food with an impressive shelf life.

Now, let's deconstruct this a bit:

Tortilla chips, the obvious basic component of Doritos, got their start in Los Angeles in the 1940s. They are kind of a spin-off of the Mexican tostada, though usually cut into triangular pieces from a corn tortilla. Credit for this goes to Rebecca Webb Carranza of the El Zarape Tortilla Factory, who was looking for a way to use the broken pieces that couldn't be sold.

So Doritos combined the tortilla chip with the flavor into one convenient bag, making it tasty and accessible to Americans everywhere. This is exactly what I will attempt to do at home. As soon as I unlock the secret to powdered cheese...

*I'm just cribbing off the internet, you guys. If any of this isn't accurate, blame Wikipedia.

about the kitchen

2010-04-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I was having a bad day at work. I stood up from my desk and declared, "That's it! I need some Pop-Tarts!" and marched down to the third floor vending machines to buy them. My day got a lot better after that. Well, maybe not better, but tolerable.

A few days later, a colleague made a similar declaration.

Not long after that I heard a story on the radio about bake sales. It seems that in New York, schools are no longer allowed to have bake sales to raise money for sport teams or special event if those bake sales include homemade baked goods. The reason being that there is no way to tell the nutritional information on a baked good made lovingly by a parent. Prepackaged foods, the radio went on to state, such as Pop-Tarts, are acceptable.

I was baffled. A cookie or a brownie, made from scratch with real ingredients and no preservatives, is worse than a chemically produced, overly processed flavorless piece of nothing with more preservatives than real food? Just because it has the fat and calories listed on the label?

We discussed this at work later, and my colleague and I both agreed that there are virtually no circumstances in which we would choose a pre-packaged Pop-Tart over something made from scratch. Unless the Pop-Tart was made from scratch. Uh-oh.

And so it began. The idea that every vending machine option has a made-from-scratch equivalent that is no doubt better. But does it? Sure, homemade potato chips are better, but can anyone recreate the bar-b-que coating? Is a homemade Snickers bar really better than the one in the vending machine for 75 cents? And how the hell do you make Cheetos???

Well, maybe the idea isn't that you can make it better yourself. Or that it's easier. Or better for you. Maybe there is a statement here about knowing your food and how it's made and where it comes from. Maybe the idea is that we've allowed ourselves to believe that snack companies are the only people who can make things like French Onion Sun Chips. Snack companies aren't the only ones who can make snacks. And I'm not one to back down from a challenge.