BUTTERMILK

Americans have a far sweeter tooth than us. Everything tastes sweeter in America, even Kellogg's cornflakes. When Jamie Oliver was doing a cookery tour of America his recipes were all deemed too sour by the American audience and needed sweetening up a bit.

The tart I make with a quarter of the sugar is sweet enough for UK tastes, any sweeter and it won't get eaten.

We have a kilo bag of caster sugar in the cupboard that has gone rock hard, it's been there so long.
It has a Churchill appeal for war bonds on the back.

He certainly gets about a bit.


Ohhhh yesss.

Oh yes!

When I said that, I wasnt endorsing the sweet tart, I was just commenting on how "They really are"
I pprefer a nice mixture where the sweetness and tartness are equally discernible and thereby, enjoyed. (Thats a Pa Dutch thing with their"Sweet and sour dishes")
I actually like things like strawberryy tarts or peach tarts where the two essences just bkend nicely.
Dessert foods should be on the sweet side but not so much that the presence of sugaryness gets so damn cloying (Something really sweet acts like an expectorant on me).

whats caster sugar?

Finer ground than granulated sugar.

For cooking.

something like 10X or "powdered sugar"?. Thats got corn starch in it over here and will set up like a brick if you leave it out

That's interesting. In Canada, the perception is that England is all about sweets.




and




When people go there on vacation, what they come back with is candy. Except for mints. English mints are too mild for Canadians. Even Marks and Sparks made a special stronger version of their curiously strong mints when they had a retail presence in Canada.

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anyoldways, interesting about the US and Jamie Oliver

canadian butter tarts are always redolent of mapley butteryness. Its more a smell than a taste

I stopped using the full amounts of sugar in american recipes in the eighties, often use 1/3 or 1/4 or occasionally less of that called for, and that includes honey, molasses, etc. Once in a while an american cookie recipe is saner than others with a similar description, so I might use 1/2 on the first try.

I learned that with my morning repasts on my first trip to Italy, skipping the albergo coffee and hard roll to go to a pasticceria or caffe/bar. To generalize, their stuff is much less sweet and when I got home to LA, I was first surprised with all the hefty sized people in the airport when coming out of the gate, which I had gotten unused to the sight of, and then hit by the sweetness of the next cookies I tasted that week. Not that I've never been hefty myself, just saying it was a visual surprise.

On the other hand, the italian food I had there made pretty heavy use of salt, or did in quite a a bit of my food ventures . I particularly remember one particularly salty roast chicken..
On the other hand, the italian food I had there made pretty heavy use of salt, or did in quite a a bit of my food ventures . I particularly remember one very salty roast chicken..

Nope, no corn starch, just refined (white) sugar, ground down to various grades. Granulated for tea and coffee, caster for cake baking etc, and really fine powdered sugar, called icing sugar, for icing on cakes, tarts etc.

Mine had just gone hard through age. The usual two adults in the house plus family and friend visitors use no more than a total of about three or four teaspoons of sugar a week.

The only time we tend to use sugar is when we're making various liquers in the autumn, with whatever berries are cheap in the shops, or free in the woods.
Sloe gin, Blackberry Rum, Cherry Brandy.....all ready for Christmas so that the family can spend a day or two falling over.

I wouldn't go so far as to say all about sweets, ebeth.

I think that tourists tend to stock up on them because we make a different type of chocolate to the rest of europe. We use a lot more stuff other than chocolate in our chocolate, which makes it not so refined (and expensive) as the top drawer pure chocolate bars, but munchy and yummy enough to make it extremely popular.
Anyone who has tried Cadburys Dairy Milk or your pictured Terrys Orange will know what I mean.

All these choco firms in Britain were basically started up by Quaker families, who went for quality, and never buggered about with the recipes too much. I know that milk and vegetable fat gets added along the way, but they must be doing something right because you can't just have one or two squares and then store the rest away for tomorrow.

That's why I rarely buy it. I am a chocoholic and my name is Aswas.

I'm talking about the perception here, not the reality there.




(Terry's is candy, not chocolate. I'm kinda stinky about that)

So are we. It's chocolate, that's why it's called a chocolate orange.

ya wants really great chocolate, you gotta kidnap a Belgian.

I wonder if anyone knows that Hershey Milk Chocolate is made with Buttermilk, hence that slight tng in a Hershey Bar.

MOST people who really love chocolate, hate Hershey Milk Chocolate, I love it, maybe its the Buttermilk coming through to me.

My next favorite (US style) is Ypremian's chockie truffles. They make the best butter rem truffles.
They also make a meyer Orange truffle that has a nice tang but is overwhelmingly a milk chocolate that is mixed with some kind of spackle to keep it firm even in hot wether

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/hersheys-cadbury-chocolate-ban-revolt

Kees in Manhattan makes phenomenal truffles. She only sells chocolate made that day. Definitely the winner on a chocolatiers tour of Manhattan I went on with a bunch of Fine Cooking people. Chocolate and truffles without stabilizers. Definitely the way to go.

I thought I hated chocolate before that day.

So were going to be taking taste advice from Sharon Osbourne? Maybe she has some recipes for bat.

Its Milton's own recipe that made his fortune. Cant argue with success. I can understand a taste preference based upon some haplogroup

People like the chocolate that reminds them of their childhood, so Americans like American chocolate, we like British chocolate and so on. I was never that taken with Belgian chocolate when I went to Bruges.

This place however is fantastic.