National Chiffon Cake Day
Many believe Chiffon cake is the ‘original’ wedding cake filling. A chiffon cake is a very light cake made with vegetable oil, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and flavorings. It is a combination of both batter and foam type cakes. The lack of butter means that chiffon cakes lack much of the rich flavor of butter cakes, and hence they are typically served accompanied with flavorful sauces or other accompaniments, such as chocolate or fruit fillings.
Five Food Finds about Lemons
- Cooking Tip: To get the most lemon flavor in a recipe, use the rind instead of the juice. It contains the lemon oils.
- Lemons are hybrids; first cultivated in the middle ages, it is a mix of wild limes and citrons.
- Generally, Lemons grown in more arid areas have more acid in them while those grown in wetter climates are sweeter,less acidic.
- Lemonade was a favorite of Chinese emperors long before its modern popularity in Western culture.
- Due to its high acidity, lemon juice is often used as a cleaning agent.
Today’s Food History
on this day in…
1886 Coca-Cola was created by Dr. John Pemberton.
1900 Charles Elton was born. Elton was an English biologist who first developed the idea of a ‘food chain.’
1848 A huge upstream ice jam stopped almost all water flow over Niagara Falls (both American Falls and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls) for several hours. You could actually walk out into the riverbed below the falls.
1903 R.I.P. Gustavus Franklin Swift. Founder of the meat-packing business Swift & Co., the inventor of the refrigerated railway car, and the first to ship ‘dressed’ beef to eastern markets instead of live animals.
1980 R.I.P. Walter H. Deubener. He owned the S.S. Kresge grocery store in St. Paul, Minnesota and invented the handled grocery bag.