Cakes worth baking
Thanks so much for the recent story on baking cakes (“Just Like Mom Used to Bake,” May 7). I have vowed only to cook cakes from scratch after the last complicated recipe I made called for a cake box mix, and after spending hours on the recipe, it ended up tasting like chemicals. I’m going back to simple flour, sugar and eggs. What’s so complicated about that? It’s not hard and the taste is so much better.
Shirley Remes, South Elgin
What is it with these light and fluffy cakes people want? I want a cake with weight and mass, one that you wouldn’t trust setting down on a card table. I have been looking for ways to make the box cakes meatier by adding extra eggs, oil and pudding, but it doesn’t quite seem to get there. Thanks for your article.
Jane Nesbo, Shelby, Mont.
Variety, varietal
I’m hoping you can help me in my one-man crusade to promote the proper use of the term “varietal.”
At the risk of sounding like a nitpicking jerk, here’s the deal. The term “varietal” was created to describe wines that are made with predominantly one grape variety, whose name appears on the label. It is often used to contrast the regionally named, often blended, wines of the Old World to the single variety wines of the New World.
The term “varietal” is an adjective used to modify a noun, as in varietal wine or varietal labeling. Therefore, grapes do not come in different varietals; they come in different varieties. Wines are not made from various grape varietals; they are made from various grape varieties. A wine can be a varietal, but a grape cannot.
The term “varietal” serves a very useful function in that it is a single word that conveys a lot of meaning, meaning that is lost when the term is commonly used to signify something else. Please join me in my efforts to restore the term varietal to its rightful significance.
Kent Benson St. Cloud, Minn
Editor’s note: Benson is a Society of Wine Educator’s Certified Specialist of Wine and owner of Swirl Wine School in St. Cloud, Minn.
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