The joys of a kitchen scale

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Originally uploaded by thatgirljj

My kitchen scale is by far my favorite tool in the kitchen. I first got it to measure portion sizes, you know, figuring out what a 4oz piece of chicken really looks like, instead of going by restaurant portions. But it's oh so much more useful than that, especially for baking. Take the chicken pocket pies I made for dinner tonight.

When I went to the store on Sunday, I thought to myself "Oh, I have enough butter for the piecrust," then of course when I looked today, I had less butter than I thought. Poop. If you're new to baking, here's a tip. When you're cooking you can eyeball it, when you're baking, you need to measure properly or it will be a disaster. Thankfully, I had a substitute, I've been using coconut oil for pan frying lately (it's very stable at higher heats), and I knew that as a saturated fat, I could substitute it for a small amount of the butter in the pie crust. Time to pull out the trusty kitchen scale... 8 tablespoons butter should be 4oz, I had about 3.2oz, I just scooped some coconut oil in for the rest, and popped it in the food processor. Man, I LOVE making pie crust in the food processor, it's so much easier than by hand.

BTW: The pies in question were from the totally amazing cookbook Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys. There's only 4 in the picture because the others went in the freezer for the Bearded One's lunches. Beats the pants off a hot pocket, I'll tell you that much, they were pretty damn tasty.