Both baking soda and baking powder are leaveners, which means they make cakes and muffins rise. So what's the difference?
Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate. Not only will baking soda fluff up your muffins, it can also put out a grease fire, clean your teeth and deodorize your carpet. When you cook with baking soda, you need to balance it out with an acid like lemon juice or buttermilk. Otherwise, your muffins may have a bitter, soapy flavor.
Baking powder, which usually comes in a can, is a combination of baking soda and a few other ingredients, most notably cream of tartar, a dry acid. Out of baking powder? Make your own by mixing one part baking soda with two parts cream of tartar.
Leaveners or leavening agents are substances that are used to make bread and other baked goods -- such as cakes, cookies and muffins -- rise.
Bread rises thanks to yeast, a fungus that ferments when mixed with dough, converting sugar and starch into ethanol and carbon dioxide that allows it to rise. Yeast comes in fresh or dry forms.
Pure sodium bicarbonate, baking soda will not only fluff up your muffins, it can also put out a grease fire, clean your teeth and deodorize your carpet. When you cook with baking soda, you need to balance it out with an acid like lemon juice or buttermilk. Otherwise, your muffins may have a bitter, soapy flavor.
A combination of baking soda and a few other ingredients, most notably cream of tartar, a dry acid, baking powder usually comes in a can. Out of baking powder? Make your own by mixing one part baking soda with two parts cream of tartar.
Shortcake is a thick, sweetened biscuit with a crumbly scone-like texture that is used to make a classic American dessert.
Strawberry shortcake was born in the 1840s in the U.S. and was an excuse for 19th-century ladies to throw a party. The dessert consists of making a biscuit from flour, baking powder, sugar, butter or shortening (which some say is the "short" in "shortcake"), milk and occasionally eggs. The cooked biscuit is split down the middle and filled with sweetened whipped cream and sliced strawberries or other fruits, such as apples and rhubarb, peaches or blueberries. The sliced or cut-up fruit is usually tossed with sugar and left to macerate for awhile before using, so that it becomes extra sweet and creates a light syrup.
Because strawberry shortcake is such a popular dessert, you can find yellow individual sponge cakes or corn muffins with wells for fruit and cream in the supermarket that are marketed as ready-made shortcakes. Shortcake-loving southerners have been known to make shortcake with broken up pieces of pie dough.
