Sunday, December 16, 2012

One Quart Equals Four Cups

I thought it was easy to change from  English to Metric but apparently even my Engineering degree couldn't help me out if the conversion occurs during transcription.  This is today's story.

I woke up early this morning because my mind was in the "I have to bake cinnamon rolls" mode.  Not having had much time to go around to shop but still wanting to give something to my officemates for Christmas, I had decided last week that I would bake something.   And that something was going to be cinnamon rolls.

I figured if I made a whole recipe of cinnamon rolls (recipe here), there would be enough cinnamon rolls to give away.  A whole recipe would make 4 dozen rolls.

I had gone around last weekend to determine where I could get foil containers to "house" the rolls but had not really thought things through at that time to make the acquisition.  

This morning, however, I decided it's now or never.  I trusted my pantry to have sufficient flour and sugar.  I knew I had not finished the yeast in the freezer.   I checked the ref and found an unopened 3 litre container of milk and several sticks of butter.   I should have no problem, I thought.  I've done this before.

I like to have my recipes on hand so I have a physical spiral notebook (actually I have several) which contains recipes I use.  Some notebooks have recipes I'd like to test but there is one notebook that contains recipes which have been tried and tested.  The cinnamon roll recipe was in this particular notebook.

I opened the notebook to the page with the cinnamon roll recipe and brought out our biggest stockpot.  This stockpot would provide sufficient rising room for the cinnamon roll dough if I made the whole recipe.  The last time I made the whole recipe, the mixed up dough filled up only half the pot but by the time the rising time was completed, the pot was filled to the brim.

I went through the recipe in my notebook and started measuring out the ingredients into the pot.  

Eight cups of milk, check!  One cup of oil, check!  One cup of sugar, check!

Heat until almost boiling then add the yeast.

Let sit then add the flour.  

The ingredients list had 8 cups (+1 cup) flour.

Hhmmmm...  one cup of flour to one cup of milk?   I thought it was quite strange for the volume of dry ingredients to be about the same as that of the wet ingredients.  But hey, that's what the recipe says.  
  
One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... six ... seven ... (I was approaching the bottom of my flour container) ... eight!  

Whew!  I estimated there to be more than a cup of flour left inside.  I figured I shouldn't have any problem completing the requirements for the recipe.

Mix well.  Cover and let sit for an hour.

I spent this time wisely.  I checked my mail, logged into FaceBook, started off the laundry, moved the pot aside so I could use the burner to start off breakfast, tidied up a little, etc.  The washing machine beeped so I proceeded to hang the clothes.  MacGyver came down and took over cooking breakfast.  He was scheduled to borrow the van from his brother and pick up some freecycle items we were getting but he said it was still early.  

After preparing breakfast, he coordinated with his brother and decided to leave early so that the car exchange could occur earlier and both of them could do what they needed.

MyGirl came down but said she wasn't hungry yet.  I asked if it was all right for us to just wait for her dad to come back so that we could have breakfast together.  She said she didn't mind, so she sat down and watched her Sunday morning K-Pop MTV while I checked on the cinnamon rolls and found that they had risen to almost 3/4 of the container.  Looking good, I thought.  My yeast is alive!    

Confident that my cinnamon rolls were going well, I returned to my email and FaceBook.  I don't  know what triggered it, but I decided to click on the shortcut to the website from where I got the original cinnamon roll recipe and go to that blogpost.  The website had pictures for each stage of the process.

When I got to the photo corresponding to where I was in my cinnamon roll step, I said to myself, my dough doesn't look the least bit like THAT.  That dough is dry, mine is really quite wet.  

Uh-oh, let me check the recipe again.

Her original recipe calls for 1 quart of milk, 1 cup of oil and 1 cup of sugar.

I go to my 4thinline blogpost where the recipe is halved.  

Yikes!  My blogpost says "2 cups whole milk".   

Even my young nieces and nephews could tell me that two times two equals four.  But I've got 8 cups in there!

Denial sets in and I google "quart to cups".  

Of course the conversion says 1 quart : 4 cups.

Oh dear!  Dear, oh dear!  Oh dear!

What should I do?

Well, there was only one thing I could do... double the recipe!  

Mind you, the whole recipe yields a massive amount of cinnamon rolls. I almost dreaded the thought of so many cinnamon rolls.  When I first made the whole recipe, I placed half of the rolls in the freezer because there was absolutely NO WAY we could consume all those rolls.   Subsequently, I have only made half the recipe for a more manageable yield.

However, given that I had nowhere to go but forward, I had no choice but to double the 'yields 4 dozen cinnamon rolls' recipe.

I was lucky to have found an unopened bag of flour in the pantry, as well as enough of all the other ingredients I had put in so far.  I added them into the pot and mixed.  By this time, the stockpot was practically full.

Practically full!  But the dough is expected to double.

Uh-oh! I was in big trouble.  That was my biggest pot.  There is nothing bigger in the cupboards.  And I knew that given the summer heat and the active yeast, that dough was going to rise whether or not it fit in the pot.

I quickly rang MacGyver and asked if he was still at his brother's place.  When he said he was still there, I quickly asked him to borrow their biggest pot.  

Luckily, my sister-in-law MumofFive is a master at cooking for a crowd.  She lent us this HUGE stockpot which was just perfect for my predicament.

We were able to go out and buy containers for the rolls.  They are all baked and packed now.  I just have to figure out how to bring so many containers to the office tomorrow morning.

Check out the photos to get a feel of the volume of dough and the number of rolls  involved.







Note to self :  Do not forget ...  one quart = four cups

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