Baking skills have very realistic science applications. I'm making some goodies* for the telescopes today, fresh from the oven at the AICO!

*dessicants

Today's seasonal-fruit #BakingTip -- if you know what you're going to make with your fruit then it's a good idea to pre-portion out the fresh fruit before freezing it. For example, the blueberry pie recipe I like takes 20oz of blueberries, so when I got things ready for freezing (you can make most fruit pies with frozen fruit just fine) I divided the berries into pie-sized portions so when it's time to make the pie I can just grab one bag of berries and be done.

Some random useful things I have learned from my first attempt at danish making:

1) Pastry cream works really well as a filling if you don't want to mess with sweetened cheese
2) Pastry cream does get a bit thicker when baked so it's fine to start out with a not-totally-firm cream
3) Pastry cream flavor doesn't really change, so alternate flavors (like lemon or apple) should work fine
4) Jams do get a bit thicker/sweeter, so removing seeds from raspberry jam's a good idea.

1/N #BakingTip