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to cut food or other matter into small cubes

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The process of cutting food into small cubes of equal size so that the food is evenly cooked and/or pleasant in appearance for the recipe. Dicing, unlike chopping or mincing, is a precision cut that is consistent in size. Recipes with diced ingredients usually require the cubes to be no more than 1/4 inch square, however some recipes consider Dicing according to different sizes. When foods are Diced for recipes in different sized Diced cubes, a large Dice is 1/2 to 3/4 inch square, a medium Dice is 1/4 to 1/2 inch square, a small Dice is 1/8 to 1/4 inch square, and a fine Dice is 1/8 inch square or less.

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The process of cutting food into small cubes of equal size so that the food is evenly cooked and/or pleasant in appearance for the recipe. Dicing, unlike chopping or mincing, is a precision cut that is consistent in size.

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the temperature at which a liquid bubbles and turns to vapor.

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Made from milk and a white roux  often called a “white sauce”. it is often called the cheese sauce because, it is made out of cheese

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beat or stir with a light, rapid movement.

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an even mixture of butter and flour. Used as a thickening agent

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the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms, typically involving effervescence and the giving off of heat.

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fried quickly in a little hot fat

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parbaking is a cooking technique in which a bread or dough product is partially baked and then rapidly frozen for storage

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work into dough or paste with the hands, massage or squeeze with hands

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A pastry blender is a kitchen tool used to mix a hard (solid) fat into flour in order to make pastries.

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A pastry brush, also known as a basting brush, is a cooking utensil used to spread butter, oil or glaze on food.

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The biscuit method is one of the only mixing methods that does not require you to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Your fats and liquids should be cold for the biscuit method.

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working solid shortening into dry ingredients with two knives or a pastry blender until well mixed.

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sour cream can make the item sweeter and enhance its texture also it activates the baking soda

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a crumbly topping or filling made from fat, flour, sugar, and often cinnamon.

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A method of gently mixing ingredients-usually delicate or whipped ingredients that cannot withstand stirring or beating.

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the muffin method also known as the stirring method calls for measurement of dry and wet ingredients separately, then quickly mixing the two.

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molded cookies are made from a stiff dough. the dough is shaped with the finger. crescents are a popular shape

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made from a soft dough, they spread more than rolled cookies. an example is chocolate chip cookies

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made from a soft dough, chewy and cake like, an example is brownies

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used to scoop dough to make it the same size so it will cook evenly

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it stabilizes egg whites while you are whipping them

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a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor.

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The Maillard reaction ( ; French pronunciation: ​) is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor. Seared steaks, pan-fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, as well as many other foods, undergo this reaction.

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caramelization is the browning of sugar

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For me, the epitome of stovetop alchemy is making caramel from table sugar. You start with refined sucrose, pure crystalline sweetness, put it in a pan by itself, and turn on the heat. When the sugar rises above 320°F/160°C, the solid crystals begin to melt together into a colorless syrup. Then another 10 or 20 degrees above that, the syrup begins to turn brown, emits a rich, mouth-watering aroma, and adds tart and savory and bitter to its original sweetness.

That's the magic of cooking front and center: from one odorless, colorless, simply sweet molecule, heat creates hundreds of different molecules, some aromatic and some tasty and some colored.

How does heat turn sugar into caramel? Heat is a kind of energy that makes atoms and molecules move faster. In room-temperature table sugar, the sucrose molecules are jittery but standing in place, held still by the forces of attraction to their neighbors. As the sugar heats up in the pan, its molecules get more and more jittery, to the point that their jitters overcome the attractive forces and they can jump from one set of neighbors to another. The solid crystals thus become a free-flowing liquid. Then, as the temperature of the sugar molecules continues to rise, the force of their jittering and jumping becomes stronger than the forces holding their own atoms together. The molecules break apart into fragments, and the fragments slam into each other hard enough to form new molecules.

That's what I've thought for many years, along with most cooks and confectioners and carbohydrate chemists: heat melts sugar, and then begins to break it apart and create the delicious mixture we call caramel.

And we've all been wrong.

It turns out that, strictly speaking, sugar doesn't actually melt. And it can caramelize while it's still solid. So proved chemist Shelly Schmidt and her colleagues at the University of Illinois in studies published last year.

It's dismaying to think that so many could be so wrong for so long about such a basic ingredient and process! But it's also a rare opportunity to rethink the possibilities of the basic. Here's a plateful of possibilities; scroll down for more.

Professor Schmidt's group made their discovery when they tried to nail down the precise melting point of sucrose. The figures reported in the technical literature vary widely, and it wasn't clear why.

The melting point of a substance is the temperature at which it turns from a solid into a liquid while maintaining its chemical identity. When solid ice turns into liquid water, for example, the molecules of H ₂O move fast enough to escape the attractive forces of their neighbors, but they're still H ₂ O. And it doesn't matter how fast the substance heats up: the melting point is the same. Ice melts at 32°F/0°C. Always.

After careful analysis, Professor Schmidt found that whenever sugar gets hot enough to turn from a solid into a liquid, some of its molecules are also breaking apart. So sucrose doesn't have a true melting point. Instead it has a range of temperatures in which its molecules are energetic enough to shake loose from their neighbors, and a range in which the molecules jitter themselves apart and form new ones. And these two ranges overlap. Whenever sugar gets hot enough to liquefy, it's also breaking down and turning into caramel. But it starts to break down even before it starts to liquefy. And the more that sugar breaks down while it's still solid, the lower the temperature at which it will liquefy.

When we make caramel standing at the stove, we use high heat to liquefy and then brown the sugar in a few minutes, and the liquefying temperature can be upwards of 380°F/190°C. But Professor Schmidt's group found that when they ramped up the heat slowly, over the course of an hour, so that significant chemical breakdown takes place before the solid structure gives way, the sugar liquefied at 290°F/145°C.

I made the caramelized sugars in these photos by putting crystals and cubes in my gas oven at around 250°F/125°C, shielding them with foil above and below to avoid temperature extremes from the cycling heating element, and leaving them there overnight and longer. In the large sugar crystals, which I got in a Chinese market, it's clear that breakdown and caramelization is fastest in the center. That may be because the center is where impurities get concentrated as the crystals are made, and the impurities then kickstart the breakdown process.

Caramel makers have long known that, as is true in most kinds of cooking, the key to caramelization is the combination of cooking temperature and cooking time. But the the temperatures have typically been very high, the times measured in minutes. Now we know that you can caramelize low and very slow and get something different. Sugar breakdown even occurs at ambient storage temperatures, though it takes months for the discoloration and flavor change to become noticeable. For a manufacturer this is undesirable deterioration. But for a cook in search of interesting ingredients, it could be desirable aging.

In a follow-up to her initial scientific reports, Professor Schmidt wrote in Manufacturing Confectioner that

from a practical point of view, caramelization can be thought of as browning of sucrose by applying heat for a length of time. Thus it may be possible to better control the caramelization reaction by identifying the time-temperature conditions that optimize the production of desirable caramel flavors compounds, while minimizing undesirable ones. Confectionery manufacturers and sugar artisans, armed with this new scientific knowledge, may be able to push their craft in unforeseeable directions.

For example: aged sugar, roasted sugar, caramel-center crystals. Let the pushing begin!

Schmidt, S.J. Exploring the sucrose-water state diagram. Manufacturing Confectioner, January 2012, 79-89.

Lee, J. W. et al. Investigation of the heating rate dependency associated with the loss of crystalline structure in sucrose, glucose, and fructose using a thermal analysis approach (Part I). J Agric. Food Chemistry 2011, 59: 684-701.

Lee, J. W. et al. Investigation of thermal decomposition as the kinetic process that causes the loss of crystalline structure in sucrose using a chemical analysis approach (Part II). J. Agric. Food Chemistry 2011, 59: 702-12.

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Caramelization: new science, new possibilities

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For me, the epitome of stovetop alchemy is making caramel from table sugar. You start with refined sucrose, pure crystalline sweetness, put it in a pan by itself, and turn on the heat. When the sugar rises above 320°F/160°C, the solid crystals begin to melt together into a colorless syrup....

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 the technique of softening solid fat, like shortening or butter, into a smooth mass and then blending it with other ingredients.