Of Domestication

I felt so domesticated today.  This is what happens every time I either spend the day baking or try a new recipe.  But when I spend the entire day (intermittently) baking a new recipe?  Well, that's super domestication right there.

While I'll admit, I'm not quite a novice in the kitchen, I still find myself often feeling lost when pondering things such as the difference between cake flour and all-purpose (which, one would think, given the name, would be the catch-all - apparently the moniker can be misleading).  It's days like today when I wonder how any woman ever learned to cook without the internet. 

How would I know, for example, that my all-purpose flour could work in the absence of its counterpart, but only if I replace two tablespoons with cornstarch?  Or how would I know that what I know of as a cookie sheet is, in fact, a jelly roll pan designed to make the precise type of cake I was aiming toward?

Yes, my friends, the internet is the wanna-be chef's best friend.

But those "stiff peaks" forming in my well-beaten egg whites?  That's all me.  Beat that, Google.