Kitchen Experiments, part 1

This weekend my kitchen was the scene of many experiments. The first was my celiac’s fifth grade science fair project, which involves lots of cups with lots of teeth soaking in different beverages to study the effects on the enamel. As an aside, he keeps asking me where I got the teeth and I told him I have a good friend who is a dentist. In reality, what does the tooth fairy really do with all those teeth? With four kids, I have a macabre collection in my nightstand drawer…six little baby teeth won’t be missed.

The rest of our kitchen experiments included gluten-free mixes or flour and peanut butter. We were hammered with snow on Friday and for some reason, a snow day brings out the bakers in my daughters. My second oldest always wants to make brownies and that is a gluten-free mix I generally have on hand. This time we warmed up some peanut butter and swirled it through the dough before baking. They were gone by Friday night.

On Saturday, my oldest got a recipe for peanut butter cookies off the internet and used gluten-free flour to make peanut butter cookies. Maybe math really isn’t her thing because the “drop by rounded teaspoon on baking sheet” became “drop by hockey puck sized blobs on baking sheet.” They were unattractive at best, but they actually tasted like peanut butter scones. I just had the last one with my morning coffee.

Ironically, I was the one who was supposed to be experimenting with peanut flour, but I think the foul weather delayed the arrival of my peanut flour…so as soon as I get that peanut flour it will be my turn to experiment in the kitchen.

Kendall Egan