Need help with what these ingredients are! (from UK cookingbook)
Hey all!
I have some UK friends and one of them gave me the baking book called "The Complete Cookies, Muffins & Cakes Cookbook" since I love to bake!
However, when I'm reading the recipes, since I'm not born english speaking, there are some words/ingredients that makes me confused and I wonder if maybe some of you could help me out here...
First off - All the different types of sugar! This is confusing... What is 'raw sugar' compared to 'caster sugar' and Soft Brown Sugar firmly packed compared to Soft Brown Sugar lightly packed?
And of course - All the different types of flour! If the sugar-part was confusing, this is just nuts in my head ;p Is self-raising flour the same as baking powder/baking soda? In Sweden we have 'normal' white flour and graham flour. We have a thing called "baking flour" but you only use very little of it to make the dough rise and normally we mix it with the normal flour at first but in a recipe that says for example "1/2 cups of self raising flour", how much of my "baking flour" should I mix with the "normal" flour in that case?
What is corn flour? flour made of corn? And is it used as 'normal' flour?
What is rice flour? flour made out of rice? And is it used as 'normal' flour?
Yes, sorry there is more... :p
"Add 1 tablespoon of mixed spice"..What is mixed spice? What is "allspice"?
And some ingredients that seem to pop up often throughout that cookbook are:
- Buttermilk (is that something you can buy in the UK? Or can you just blend milk and butter by yourself if you don't live in the UK?)
-Glacé apricots, glacé ginger (what is the glacé-part? :p )
- White vegetable shortening (don't know this either :p)
- In one recipe it said that I needed "copha" and "marsala" (not in the same recipe, but still, what are those?)
I think that's all, I really hope someone can help me out with this so that I know what it is that I am baking ;D