All About Cream of Tartar
 

I've always been curious about cream of tartar. I knew it helped stabilize egg whites and that you could use it along with baking soda for baking powder substitute, but at was the depth of my knowledge about this weird spice/additive/chemical that I always have in my spice cupboard. I did not know what it was made of or, that it is a bi-product of making wine...humm. I looked it up this am and found some other interesting uses:

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/cream-of-tartar/

~ C

My Mum would use it with baking soda when she did not have enough buttermilk to make soda bread. Not sure of the ratio though, buttermilk was nearly always available.

I remember when my friend and I made a birthday cake for her mother. We were about ten, I think. The recipe called for 8 teaspoons of baking powder. we put in 8 teaspoons of baking soda and after mixing, we realised what we had done. "Aunt May" next door came to our rescue and tild us to put in 8 spoons of cream of tarter. It came out OK. A bit high and fluffy though. Nola's mother was 35 and we put 35 paper flags and 35 candles on the cake -- Instant bonfire!!!!

Baking powder is a dry combination of an acid and an alkali. When they get wet, the leavening happens. Baking soda is just the alkali. Cream of tartar is just the acid.

Well, I now know more about Cream of Tartar that I thought I needed to know. Thanks for your curiosity. It fed mine.

I use it in snickerdoodles, my son's favorite cookie.

Thank you for searching about cream of tartar, useful information.

That was a good article. Thank you very much. I bookmarked it.

Another hobby of mine is wine making. If the wine is too acidic it can form tartaric acid (what cream of tartar is made of). The first time it happened, I simply strained the wine to remove them when pouring from the bottle. I now know that I need to cold crash the wine and the crystals will form and drop out before bottling. Cold crashing is taking the wine carboy (mine was 5 gallons) after it is done fermenting and placing it in a cold environment for a few days. It is then filtered out when bottling. I am not sure how they do it commercially in large vineyards.

Wine making is one big science experiment with its own language and I enjoy making wine and now I have added beer making.