The Luscious Creamed Filling inside the Golden Sponge Cake, far from being an incidental, nice-to-have bonus, is actually the Main Event of the Twinkie, and to a great extent of the NOT-winkie.
 |
| The Creamed Filling, too, is worthy of the Gods. |
In Twinkie, Deconstructed, author Ettlinger claims the filling likely comprises more or less sugar, shortening, corn syrup, water, polysorbate 60, and salt, plus the key ingredient cellulose gum.
As described earlier, cellulose gum, aka sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), is indigestible synthetic stuff derived from wood pulp. Say what you will about the utility of CMC in baked-goods fillings, but the bottom line is that it has no drop-in natural equivalents or replacements, and therefore no relevance to the NOT-winkie.
Sleuthing Again For Fillings
Nosing around for information of and ingredients in commercial snack-cake fillings, the following ingredient list for White Creamed Filling popped up:
- Sugar
- Vegetable shortening:
- partially hydrogenated soybean and palm oils
- mono and diglycerides
- polysorbate 60
- Water
- Corn syrup
- Corn starch
- Modified food starch
- Emulsifier:
- mono and diglycerides
- TBHQ (antioxidant)
- citric acid (antioxidant)
- Salt
- Natural and artifical flavor (including milk derivatives)
- Sorbic acid
- Even more Polysorbate 60
Anybody who has already perused the original Twinkies Ingredients List will recognize most of these ingredients as Old Friends. What is not so obvious is the traditional-recipe basis for these synthetics and additives.
What I’ll call formula Type 4 of commonly-cited home-made or small-bakery Twinkie-like fillings includes the following recognizable foods (additives and their functions):
- Wheat Flour (starch, modified starch: thickening)
- Milk, fluid (water, flavor, emulsifiers: moisture & mixing)
- Vanilla extract (flavor)
- Butter or Margarine (fat, flavor, emulsifiers: fats)
- Shortening (fat, emulsifiers: fats)
- Sugar (sugar, corn syrup: sweet!)
- Salt (salt: flavor)
In the Type 4 process, the flour and milk are cooked until a starchy paste is formed, whereupon the vanilla is added. Separately the sugar, butter/margarine, shortening, and salt are whipped, the paste added, and the final mixture whipped some more.
It should be noted that there are numerous patents pertaining to the use of starch gels as fat-replacers in baked goods. It seems ironic that much of this so-called intellectual property could be invalidated in patent courts, due to the prior traditional use of wet-cooked (gelatinized) flours and starches in fillings etc.
Filling Functional Criteria
A successful Golden Sponge Cake filling formula will lie within the all-natural limitations of the NOT-winkie Project, while striving for that je ne sais quoi of the authentic Twinkies’ Luscious Creamed Filling.
- Excellent taste, texture, and aroma
- Right balance of sweet and salt
- Attractive color
- Not custard-like, heavy, or frothy
- Lack of gummy or greasy mouthfeel
- Stable over reasonable temperatures, freezing & thawing
- Long life in-cake without going rancid or off-flavor
- Not especially supportive of microbial growth
- Will not migrate into cake
- Will not gain or lose moisture
- Will not break down, separate, curdle, or harden
So it is just a matter now of admitting je ne sais pas exactement comment, getting over it, and mucking about until it comes out right. No worries, then!
“—” ‘—’’
No comments:
Post a Comment