R&D Sauced Vs. Baked

As I mentioned yesterday I haven't put an incredible amount of time into making and decorating cakes. But alas here I am preparing to go into this adventure of making an awesome cake. I also mentioned that I am going out on uncharted territory by making a Pink pumpkin cake. Now I'm absolutely sure that some of you are saying well there's nothing new about pumpkin cake. The thing that is new about it is the variety and color of the pumpkin that I am using. The variety is called the porcelain doll and has a pink exterior and as of the 2013 growing season coming up, will only be the 2nd year it's available. So now that all of you are caught up on the info. from yesterday here we go with today's post.

Research and development, r&d for short, when it comes to cooking, can be a lot of fun and also has the ability to create new trends in the cooking or baking world. I personally love r&d because in this day and age with so many resources available due to the internet, I can get instant input on ideas about how to do a recipe and what ingredients make it better and why, as well as look up and compare and contrast recipes that have been posted online. Back in the day, I know some of you are still shaking your head saying "HE'S ONLY 21!!! HOW CAN HE EVEN BEGIN TO SAY BACK IN THE DAY!!!" but I digress and say even 10 or 15 years ago if someone wanted to do some r&d to prep. for a presentation, such as I'm doing, or create the latest trend in the culinary world, it usually involved looking through dozens of cookbooks, calling friends and stealing their recipe cards etc. Now Kid Mitch loves the "old school" way of doing things and frequently prefers this methodology over the modern ways. But it's always cool to have the limitless resources of the internet on your side and in all honesty I use the "net" for r&d as well.

Now r&d for baking and sauces varies drastically as most of you may know. I personally prefer doing r&d on sauces because they are easier to modify, for example if I am trying to do a new spaghetti sauce I get together my recipes and compare and contrast and create my base recipe, or what they all have in common, after that I throw that into the pot and start stirring and heating the sauce, from there I will throw a slew of the varying ingredients in the pot and start tasting, always noting what and how much I'm putting in. The contrast for baking is that after developing your base recipe and putting in your secondary "flavor hint" ingredients that you have to bake it and taste it before you can tell if you have a true winner.

Now as I've been researching for this recipe most pumpkin cake recipes I've found share the same base ingredients and they are as follows:
1. Flour
2. Canned Pumpkin*
3. Vegetable oil
4. Sugar
5. Eggs
6. Baking powder
7. Baking soda
8. Salt
* I put an asterisk next to canned pumpkin because I am going to step it up a notch by using fresh pumpkin.

So now that I have the base ingredients next comes the fun part of finding out the right ratios of each.

I'm off to do more research and will share more details later.
-Kid Mitch