I always look for recipes online to try something new.
I don’t have any particular chefs that I follow, and I always randomly find something yummy to cook.
One day I found this website, called “Scientifically Sweet by Christina Marsigliese,” which caught my attention. After the website loaded, first thing that caught my eyes were chemical structures drawn behind the title.
I am a chemist; I deal with chemical structures every day. I got curious who the owner (or the chef) of this website is.
The chef, Christina, is a food scientist, and she includes scientific background in food as well as delicious recipes.
The other day, Matto’s best friend, JoJo, posted news about Christina’s first book, Scientifically Sweets, on her Facebook page.
Why did she post the news of Christina’s book?
Because Christina is a JoJo’s sister-in-law!
I was really surprised when I found out that the owner of the website, that I randomly found, was related to our friend.
Seriously, how small of a world is this?
Her cooking book can be purchased at either Amazon or her eStore.
Last week, Matto got me the Scientifically Sweet, and it was delivered to us today.
I just started reading the book.
This book is very unique.
What kind of chef talks about background of cookies using 2 pages?
What kind of chef talks about background of brownies using 4 pages?
What kind of chef talks about acid-base reaction or Maillard reaction of food in their recipe books?
This book contains lots of yummy baking recipes with pictures.
She also talks a lot of the food science behind the ingredients throughout the book, which is very interesting and fascinating.
To honor her book, I decided to use one of her recipes as a dessert for a dinner with our friends. The recipe is called Devil’s food cake.
I should have used her original recipe, but sorry, I made a few modifications.
I cut 1/3 of sugar in sponge cake, and used the cream that was used in filling as icing as well, instead of ganache.
I’m sure it would have been delicious if I followed the original recipe, but my husband is on diet right now and I have to cut as many calories from wherever possible (no baking isn’t an option by the way).
Overall, it was still delicious!
Over time, it gets harder to cut when the cake sits at room temperature due to a large amount of whipping cream content, so keep it refrigerated when it is not in use.
For the cake:
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
¾ cup boiling water
½ cup full fat sour cream
2/3 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs
For the filling and icing:
6 tbsp cocoa powder
6 tbsp sugar
3 cup 35% whipping cream
1 pint fresh raspberries, rinsed and dried
Details of this recipe can be found at this site.
