I am not much of a cook, but I want to feed my family better quality meals. (My family meals consisted of nuking frozen dinners)Please bear with by dumb questions. 1. I found a recipe for scones. It calls for confectioners sugar. Could I substitute it for raw sugar? 2.I also have a recipe for apple puff pancakes. The directions says to mix flour and dry milk and other dry ingredients and pour it over apple mixture and bake. Could I use regular milk instead of dry? Well those are my 2 questions. You are probably thinking if I am for real asking such lame questions. Just keep in mind I am a novice cook.

-- Trish (inspiringwords@excite.com), October 12, 2001

Answers

Response to questions on condiment subistutes

Trish~

Good for your for trying!! The questions you asked weren't "dumb" at all for someone not familiar with cooking. Never be afraid to ask. What is dumb is to make a mistake when you could have asked for help. As for the sugar, no you cannot interchange. Powdered sugar is just that and regular sugar is crystal form. You must buy both. Same for the milk, you can buy powdered milk on the same aisle as the cooking supplies, i.e. flour, sugar, etc.. Good luck with your baking!

-- Ivy in NW AR (balch84@cox-internet.com), October 12, 2001.

Actualy, those are very good questions. I don't think you can exchange sugar-I wouldn't do that(I think I heard somewhere that you can pulverize regular sugar in a blender but Lets not go there).

As for the milk, usaually you can exchange it-BUT the way recipes work, you have to exchange a liquid for liquid, in other words, if you exchanged wet regular milk for dry powder, your recipe would be way too wet and won't bake properly. If your recipe is like this:

1 cup flour 1 cup powdered milk 1 cup water (plus other ingredients)

Then you can exchange regular milk for the water, (keeping liquids the same) and leave out the dry powder milk, though I'd probably add about a half cup of flour to keep the dry ratio about the same. I hope I'm making sense. If not, feel free to ask more questions.

-- Kelly in Ky (ksaderholm@yahoo.com), October 12, 2001.

Yes, you can easily make powdered sugar in the blender. It may save a trip to the store. Simply powder in the blender. If you want to store it for a while, mix in a little cornstarch. Add molasses to sugar to make brown sugar. Again, you may not want to do this on a regular basis, but knowing you can do it may save a trip to the store.

-- Barb Fischer (bfischer42@hotmail.com), October 12, 2001.

"Powdered sugar" aka "confectioner's sugar" is sugar mixed with cornstarch, so it has a thickening quality as well as a sweet quality.

The best book I've found to find substitutions in is The Joy of Cooking. Try to find one of the older editions--the new one (2000 I believe) took out a lot of good stuff recipe-wise, but it may still have the substitutions in it. Best book for the novice cook!

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), October 12, 2001.