Last night I made what I believe to be my best cake yet. It's a simple yellow cake, but the batter was so delectable I was willing to fight people off for the privilege to lick the bowl; I haven't been so excited to lick the bowl since I was a kid, but just tasting the batter was enough to make me as excited as a little boy in a candy shop on a free shopping spree. It is perhaps unfair of me to describe something which I cannot share, so I shall keep it to a minimum. Suffice it to say the cake came out tasting just as good as the batter. The end result is a double layer yellow cake with a vanilla filling and a ganache topping. Next time I need to find a better topping to compliment the cake.

The silly thing of it all was I was so jazzed about how well the cake turned out I couldn't go to sleep. The cake came out of the oven at 8:30PM and I couldn't sleep until well after Midnight. Holly had a friend over and the three of us all agreed the cake was very good; there is something so heartwarming rewarding in bringing pleasure to someone through food. I really like baking little treats when people enjoy them. I by no means want to quit my day job and become a baker; I'd never survive; I don't do mornings; I'd be known as “The Midnight Baker”.

There is now one thing I am beginning to recognize and want to change. I don't know much about the chemistry of baking. I can follow a recipe and turn out a good cake, but so can anyone else, so that's nothing special. Mind you, I still enjoy doing that much, and it's nice to just follow a recipe and know everything will turn out fine. But there is a part of me that wants to know what to do to change the results. If I want the cake to be more moist, what do I do? If I want my bread to be more dense or more crusty what do I do? How do I make something less spongy, or more spongy? What do I have to do to get a muffin that is more like a cake but still a muffin?

I know there is science at work in my food, and I'm fairly sure it's mostly chemistry, something I never took. I'd love to find a book that talks about what ingredients do, and what happens when you combine certain ones. I'd love to see something that takes a simple recipe and describes the changes in the finished product by changing the amount of the ingredients, so I might better understand my recipes.

I'm not looking to invent the next best cookie, bread, cake, or muffin, but I would like to know some simple food science so I can make alterations to recipes I have that would bring about a desired end result. I fear most bakers and cooking schools would chalk this up to experience, but I'm hoping there is something out there somewhere that will just tell me what I am looking for.