Taste Perception and Miracle Berries: How We Ate Lemons as Candy

If you haven't heard of them, Miracle Berries (or miracle fruit) are a bit of a nifty food. Rather than being faster than a speeding bullet or able to cure cancer, their miracle is the ability to turn sour foods sweet. In North America, they're not incredibly popular but you can find them online (I got a pack from Amazon) in tablet form. Most of the research on them seems to come from Japan, where they're being tested as a sweetener/additive suitable for diabetics and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. They're also used by foodies and neuroscience students as a "flavour-tripping" experience.

The plant is called Synsepalum dulcificum, and it's native to West Africa, where it's chewed before meals. Its disarming ability to alter the taste of food is due to a glycoprotein (a protein with saccharides stuck on to it) named miraculin, which was named either really creatively or not creatively at all. The pulp from these fruits contains this weird glycoprotein, and is freeze-dried and sold as tablets.

Not your standard charcuterie spread. I doubt they typically include items like shots of tequila and vinegar. Or tablets ordered over the Internet. I forgot to take a closer picture of the box, and now I can't find it.

But to understand how miracle berries can alter our sense of taste, a quick explanation (maybe not super quick) as to what normally happens when we taste food:

Food enters the mouth and we chew it up (or we should, if we listen to our mothers). Tastants (molecules we perceive as flavours) are released from the food- these are sensed by taste buds present in our tongues and in a band across the top of our mouths. 

This picture isn't to scale, unless you have a serious problem.

They're also released into the nasal cavity up from the back of our mouths. This is called retronasal olfaction and it's a way we experience flavour without thinking of it as a smell (our brains can tell the difference, somehow). Try putting a candy in your mouth while pinching your nose, letting it sit and then releasing your nose. You'll notice that at first it was sweet, but then when you opened up your nose (and letting the tastants flow back and upward) you could really taste its flavour. Weird, huh?

There are a bunch of things that contribute to how we perceive the flavour of food like smell, temperature, viscosity and whatnot, but for the sake of this post we'll be concerned with how tastants alter our taste buds.

As we all know from elementary school, there are four basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. While not entirely true (there are more, but these four are universally accepted), they're the best understood. They're grouped into first class (sour and salty) and second class (bitter and sweet) based on how they work.

Sour:
What we perceive as sourness is really acidity. Generally, acids aren't great for you (eroding your teeth, melting your skin off and making you a supervillain, etc.) but in small doses, they're pretty tasty. Think sour candy or pickles. Acidity in our food comes from hydrogen ions. They're tiny, positively charged, and either floating around free in our food or break off from a larger molecule within the cells in our mouths. These ions accumulating in our Type III taste receptor cells causes a signal to shuttle up through the cranial nerves into the brainstem.

Salty:
Saltiness in our foods comes predominantly from sodium (in sodium chloride, which is table salt). Sodium, when separated from chloride, is a positively charged ion that can enter cells through pores that selectively allow it to enter. Like sour tastes, saltiness is sensed by Type III taste buds, and enters the brain in a similar fashion.

Sweet:
A little more complex than sourness or saltiness, sweetness in our diet mostly comes from sugars. The sweet receptors are composed of two different molecules stuck together, and the resulting chain protrudes from the cell membrane of Type II taste receptor cells. This is important because sugar molecules are much larger than ions and can't enter the cell. The sweet receptors, when activated on the outside of the cell, trigger a cascade of events within the cell that results in the transduction of a signal. The signal then proceeds as with sour and salty tastes.

Bitter:
Bitter foods get their characteristic gross taste from a variety of molecules, although they seem to share a similar off-putting note. Like in sweet taste receptors, bitter taste receptors aren't a pore through which a molecule enters, but rather a switch that triggers events within a cell. There are some variations in the ability to sense bitter foods, and some theories to explain them, but the take-home message is that many different compounds can generate a bitter taste, and they're generally sensed the same way sweet ones are.

After the sensations are picked up by our taste receptor cells, the signal is carried through cranial nerves (in this case, the facial, glossopharyngeal and vagus) through the medulla. The medulla is a fairly basic brainstem structure with a host of regulating functions, and it serves as a relay centre for these nerves. It then passes through the thalamus, which is sort of a switchboard operator, but for your senses. Sensory information related to sound, taste, and pressure all go through the thalamus, then gets sent off to other regions. 

Fortunately, biology-based disciplines no longer require artistic skill. The placement might be a bit off- as it turns out, drawing is hard.

In the case of taste processing, the insula (or gustatory cortex) receives thalamic input, which then continues on to the orbitofrontal cortex. The neurons in these regions are suggested to integrate sensory stimuli from different modalities like touch and smell, and contribute to how we experience our food.

Miraculin alters the way we perceive sourness. By itself, it doesn't really taste like much (it isn't sweet at all) but at a low pH (i.e. in an acidic environment) it produces a sweet taste. In recent years, this effect has been shown to be a result of its binding to sweet receptors. At a neutral pH, miraculin doesn't really have an effect, but at a low pH, it acts as an agonist (causes the sweet receptors to be more active).

For this experiment (this is an incredibly poorly designed experiment, but apparently it's science if you write it down), I recruited three friends to help me out. They opted to use code names- not to protect their identities, but because they thought it'd be funny.

The Panel:

Hector Cunningham. Part Irish. Part Scottish. Part beard.

Chet Manley. Watch out, ladies.

Randy. One word, like Cher.

The Food:

Lemons, raspberries, aged cheddar, jalapeño peppers, garlic dill pickles, apples, grapefruit, apple cider vinegar, orange juice, tequila. Not pictured: yellow mustard and sour cream.

We tried each of the foods before and after eating the miracle fruit tablets. Everyone got their own plate, because what's sharing?

Some highlights before taking the miracle berries:

Lemons: super sour.

Randy has a laissez-faire attitude towards dental health.

If his eyes were open, you'd be able to see the regret in them.

Grapefruit: bitter and kind of gross. Randy liked it.

The grapefruit was juicy, I guess.

Who even likes grapefruit, Randy?

Tequila: not that enjoyable in the middle of the day.

YOU get a poor life decision! YOU get a poor life decision! EVERYBODY gets a poor life decision!

The winner is: alcoholism!

Apple cider vinegar shots are a terrible idea.

Nobody trusted me after the tequila shots.

In this photo: Heartburn. So much heartburn.

What we learned with the miracle berries:

Lemons taste like candy!

Randy: blurry and loving life

Everything sour is sweet, but jalapeño peppers still burn.

Pictured: the face of regret.

Tequila still doesn't taste good. It might actually be worse.

We'd hoped that the miracle berries would make tequila taste better. We were disappointed.

If you take shots of apple cider and tequila, you may vomit.

We both had a significant amount of heartburn. Fortunately, no one ended up vomiting.

In the end, we decided that the miracle fruit tablets made everything really sour taste really sweet. They didn't really seem to have an effect on salty foods, bitter foods were minimally affected, but sweet things became even sweeter.

Our observations:

Somehow, my tables are even worse than my drawings.

While miraculin alters the taste of sour foods, it doesn't change the pH so they're still as acidic as they were before. We were all quite uncomfortable afterwards.


Further reading:
Human sweet taste receptor mediates acid-induced sweetness of miraculin. Kozumi et al., 2011 (PNAS)
Differential sweetness of commercial sour liquids elicited by miracle fruit in healthy young adults. Igarashi et al., 2013 (Food Sci Tech Int)
Sensation & Perception (Wolfe, Kluender, Levi, 2012)

Pretend-it's-Summer Semifreddo

If you're in Canada like me, you're probably experiencing a bit of frustration with the lingering cold weather we've got. I know I am. In order to forget about the terrible chill outside, we're going to stay in and create a wonderful chill inside. That chill will be in the form of a berry semifreddo, which is a light, "half-frozen" dessert. It's basically like a popsicle had a baby with whipped cream. Since we're freezing it, you can use frozen berries (in whichever proportions you prefer), it won't really make a difference. Berries tend to be expensive and not that great this time of year, so I went with frozen.

There are a few different ways to make a semifreddo, but ours will be composed of 3 parts:

1) Berry puree
2) Italian meringue
3) Whipped cream

The berries will be the source of most of our flavour. The meringue and whipped cream will help keep the semifreddo airy and light, with some rich smoothness coming from the whipped cream. 

The most popular ways to make meringue are the French, Italian, and Swiss methods. For this recipe, we'll be using the Italian method, which consists of beating egg whites with hot sugar syrup (rather than mixing fine sugar with egg whites as in the French method, or mixing it all over heat, as in the Swiss method). Because the syrup is so hot, this step combines mixing and cooking so we don't need to put this mixture in the oven or on the stove. 

We're also whipping the cream ourselves because we're fancy.

What you'll need:

Frozen strawberries and blueberries, because what am I, rich?

You'll also need a small saucepan, a medium mixing bowl, a whisk, a large mixing bowl and hand mixer/stand mixer, a spatula, a loaf pan and a zester/fine grater.

First, line your loaf pan with parchment paper. 

You could also use plastic wrap, that's way easier. I nearly gave up like four times while trying with parchment.

Zest half a lemon (scrape off the outside stuff with a grater or knife) and sprinkle it over the bottom of the lined pan. Blend the berries into a puree with about a tablespoon of lemon juice. I forgot to take a picture of both of those steps. If you're using raspberries or blackberries, you may want to strain the seeds out of the puree to keep the texture of the semifreddo nice and smooth.

To make the meringue:

Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan with a pinch of salt and heat on medium to make syrup.

It'll start out looking like way too much sugar for the water and like I've been living life drinking super concentrated juice.

If we left this mixture at room temperature, the sugar wouldn't all dissolve in the water. There's lots of sugar (our solute, which is the stuff that breaks up in a solution) and not enough water (solvent, the stuff that dissolves the solute in a solution). At room temperature, this sugar-water solution is saturated (the solvent can't handle any more solute). 

However, we can force more sugar in by heating this mixture up, creating a supersaturated solution. The same could be accomplished by starting with more water and evaporating it off with heat, but we want to keep tight control over the amount of water we're using. It's important to keep the syrup heated; in normal, non-laboratory conditions, it's hard to maintain a supersaturated solution. Usually, a stray sugar crystal will find its way into the solution and yank all of the extra sugar out, forming crystals. You can see these start to form if you let the syrup cool and sprinkle a pinch of sugar over it.

While we're waiting for our syrup to boil, beat the egg whites until they're a bit foamy.

Just the whites. There's a joke in here somewhere.

Your syrup is ready when it looks bubbly and clear, like this:

Getting this picture was like flirting with third-degree burns.

With the mixer still running, slowly (and carefully!) pour the hot syrup into the beating egg whites. Beat the eggs on medium-high for about 2 minutes. The mixture will go from pale yellow to glossy white.

Someone please let me know if you can see a poorly-made GIF. I'm not very good at computers, or owning a camera.

After the egg white/sugar mixture becomes white and glossy, keep beating them until they're about room temperature.

This stuff is super sticky and gets everywhere, every parent's worst nightmare. Sorry, Mom.

Creating a meringue is really cool. We're taking egg whites, which are runny and look like snot, and transforming them into a fluffy, sticky product that reminds no one of illness. Except maybe diabetes.

The reason we need to beat the egg whites is to denature some of the proteins. In this case, ovalbumin. What we're doing with the mixer is adding energy that allows us to break up some of the hydrogen bonds holding the proteins in a specific shape. The hydrogen bonds are broken by the mechanical shearing forces from the mixer, and the sheer emotional energy coming from you crying about the never-ending Canadian winter. Removing those bonds allows the egg white proteins to stretch out, fold up, and tangle with one another into the stiff, bubbly meringue. 

The sugar keeps the egg white proteins in this conformation, stabilizing the new structure. Excess water and oil will interfere with this whole process; either or both may be found in the bowl or on the whisk, so wipe them off with a bit of lemon juice or vinegar if that's a concern and don't cry into the mixing bowl. Egg yolks, which contain greasy fat, will prevent the egg whites from doing their thing, so use a new egg if you break the yolk while separating it out.

To make the whipped cream:

We also need whipped cream for this recipe, so pour the cream into a medium mixing bowl and whip it up with the vanilla. Do this while your meringue is still cooling to room temperature, or keep the mixer going on low.

Unlike the egg whites, which became bright and glossy, we're whipping the cream until it's thick and dull.

If you did this by hand like I did, you may need to seek treatment for your impending carpal tunnel syndrome.

The temptation exists for some (horribly misguided) people to lower the fat in this recipe by using milk. Too bad. Ironically, we need to use the full fat if we want the dessert to be light. The fat in the cream holds on to air bubbles as we introduce them by whipping, which lets us increase the volume (therefore, decreasing the density) of the cream and give it its light texture. However, if the whipping continues, the fat will glob together and make butter - that's great, but not what we're going for today.

This picture taken lower than the rest, because of the tired arms.

Assembling the semifreddo:

The rest of this recipe is pretty simple. Just fold the berry puree into the egg whites,

One part Italian meringue, two parts crime scene.

fold in the whipped cream,

Add a swirl of fruit puree if you're feeling fancy. I wasn't.

and pour it all into the loaf pan.

Try not to drip it all over, like I did.

Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for a few hours.

It's edible from this point, but try to exercise restraint. Or don't. I'm not your mom.

The loaf can be neatly sliced for serving, or clumsily scooped out like a tub of ice cream. You could also use a round springform pan, or a muffin tin lined with plastic wrap to freeze it in individual portions that I eat three at a time.

Berry Semifreddo
(makes 1 loaf or 1 round cake or can be divided in smaller portions)

4-5 cups mixed berries (will be less after pureeing and straining)
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
Pinch of salt
2 egg whites
1 cup whipping/heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tbsp lemon juice
Zest from 1/2 a lemon

Line pan with parchment paper or plastic wrap. Sprinkle the lemon zest in the bottom(s) of the pan.

Puree the berries with the lemon juice in a blender or food processor. Strain out the seeds, if necessary.

Make a syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until bubbly. While the syrup heats up, start beating the egg whites in the mixer until foamy. Pour the hot syrup in the egg whites, while still beating to create meringue, continue beating on medium-high until glossy and white. Continue beating until cooled to room temperature.

While the meringue cools to room temperature, whip cream until thick and dull in colour. The cream should be able to maintain firm peaks. 

Once the meringue has cooled, fold in the berry puree. Fold in the whipping cream. Pour mixture into pan(s), cover with plastic wrap.

Freeze for several hours and slice before serving, if necessary.

Bread, Beer and Wine: Humanity's Ages-Long Yeast Affection.

Let's talk about yeast. Specifically, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. More commonly known as baker's or brewer's yeast, S. cerevisiae is a fungus (really, a few variants but we can consider them as one here), and a fantastic one at that. It's used to make bread, donuts, beer and so much more. It turns flat bread into fantastic bread, and grape juice into wine (not that flat breads and grape juices aren't great either). Biology/biochemistry students will be quite familiar with this little powerhouse- if not because its fermentation pathway is taught in first year classes, then because of the drinking that accompanies those first year classes. 

Even without knowledge of the specifics, humanity has taken advantage of this pathway for countless years. In ancient times (though its discovery stories are somewhat muddy), this special little organism had been used for both baking and brewing; today, we use distinct, specially bred strains for each of its many purposes, including biomedical research (for its availability, size, generation time, cost, etc.). 

In this post, I'll detail a recipe that uses baker's yeast to make a delicious cinnamon pull-apart bread, which is a long recipe, but it'll be made while taking advantage of brewer's yeast products.

What you'll need:

The unlabelled white powders are sugar and flour. The beer and the wine aren't required to make the cinnamon bread, but they're definitely recommended.

In addition to these ingredients, you'll need a medium and a large mixing bowl, a small saucepan, a loaf pan, a few small bowls, a dishtowel, and a rolling pin.

Start by activating your yeast in warm water (above room temperature, but you should be able to stick your finger in it without discomfort) with a pinch of sugar.

It gets all clumpy and is difficult to mix, so feel free to crack open your first beer at this point.

Then, grease your medium mixing bowl and loaf pan. I use butter and just smear it on with my fingers like an animal, but you could probably use cooking spray or a brush or something if you're in the mood for something a little more civilized. 

Your roommates might laugh at you as you struggle to document this step without getting your phone greasy or dropping it.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in your large bowl. Melt your butter in a small saucepan with the milk. When all the butter's melted, remove the pan from heat and add the water and vanilla.

It smells really good. You might be tempted to drink this mixture. Don't.

At this point, a few minutes will have passed and hopefully, your yeast will look like this:

Learn from my mistakes and use a bigger glass, or do the same and proceed quickly from this point.

If it doesn't, your yeast may be dead. If you used the envelopes of yeast, try another one and be careful about the temperature (too cold and it might not activate, too hot and you've just boiled them to death). If you used yeast from a jar, abandon all hope/go back to the grocery store.

Pour the yeast mixture into the dry ingredients, and mix with a rubber/silicone spatula. It'll be a bit lumpy, don't worry about it. 

If you've ever worked in a bakery and cleaned a proofer, you may feel sick at this point. Continue drinking your beer.

Pour in the milk mixture, stir until combined, and whisk your eggs up in a bowl. 

If your arm is tired at this point, you need to work out more. Not that I'm judging you or anything.

Pour the eggs into the dough, mix it all up a bit.

It's gross looking, I know. Finish your beer.

Add some more flour and stir it all up until it's combined. Transfer this mixture to your greased medium mixing bowl. 

It could probably stand to be mixed some more, but I didn't really feel like it.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, then with a tea towel. Leave it in a warm, draft-free place for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. It's winter, and my kitchen is cold, so I boiled a full kettle and left it beside the bowl.

I also opened up a bottle of wine.

Locate your bottle opener or twist-off bottle of wine. Pour yourself a glass. 

Melt some butter in a pot and brown it (stir it until the milk solids give way to delicious, caramel-y goodness, and remove it from heat). 

You'll know it's ready when it goes from smelling delicious to smelling even more delicious.

Flour your greased loaf pan (sprinkle the pan with flour/shake it/tap it until all of the insides are covered with flour and the excess knocked off) and your counter (a section approximately as big as a large pizza). This will help keep the dough from sticking to everything. Otherwise IT WILL STICK TO EVERYTHING.

Mix up your cinnamon and sugar for the topping. Don't eat the cinnamon.

Congratulate yourself for remembering to do this before your dough's ready.

At this point, curl up with your glass of wine and read about why we put yeast in our dough:

Baker's yeast is a variant of S. cerevisiae used as a leavener for bread and other baked goods. It makes foods airier and softer by converting available sugars into carbon dioxide and ethanol (the type of alcohol humans can drink). When incorporated into a dough, the yeast will use the sugars around them; carbon dioxide bubbles will form around the yeast and increase the overall volume of the dough. I'm fairly sure that the alcohol just evaporates, based on the very scientific method of eating a bunch of bread out of the oven and asking myself if I feel drunk.

Years and years ago, yeast was transferred between batches by incorporating old dough into new dough. With modern advances in microbiology and technology, yeast is both easy to synthesize and widely available, eliminating the need to retain old dough to leaven a newer batch.  

Proofing is a means of maximizing the use of the yeast in baked goods, and understanding this process allows bakers to manipulate certain qualities of their finished products.We're trying to get as much air into our dough as we can so the bread is light and fluffy (but it won't have huge bubbles in it like ciabatta bread since we're kneading it and rolling it out). We're also not using old dough to inoculate this batch, because this isn't the sort of thing you make every day and no one wants nasty old raw dough going into their nice fresh dough.

Brewer's yeasts are variants of yeast utilized for their fermentation pathway. Brewers tend to use yeast in somewhat more controlled conditions; the alcohol produced in brewing is retained (and distilled, for stronger spirits), as well as the carbon dioxide produced (it provides carbonation for the beverages). Despite the name, brewer's yeast isn't only used to produce beer. It can be used to make wine, mead, as well as the basis for distilled spirits. I've never used brewer's yeasts, but I definitely appreciate what they do.

The most notable difference in different strains of brewer's yeasts are top-cropping (which includes S. cerevisiae, used for ales) and bottom-cropping (used for beers like lagers), classified according to whether they float or sink in the brew.

Regardless of whether S. cerevisiae is being used to eat or to drink, the pathway being exploited is:

Yes, I drew this, and yes, I have a massive pack of coloured Sharpies.

If you've ever studied cellular processes, you've likely encountered ADP/ATP, NAD+/NADH, and pyruvate, but the take-home message is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced from glucose on its way to becoming ethanol. Yeast takes sugar, a good thing, and transforms it into alcohol, an even better thing. There's lots of great stuff going on here. 

Acetaldehyde, in addition to being fermented into ethanol, is produced when you metabolize ethanol (the inability to process acetaldehyde is what makes some people turn beet-red after a drink, causing them mild embarrassment in their late teens and early twenties). When you drink methanol, a similar reaction takes place but instead produces formaldehyde, which can cause blindness. 

Steer clear of moonshine, mouthwash, and counterfeit alcohols, unless you really, truly think that the world is an ugly place.

Back to baking!

Your dough should have about doubled in size. That's the yeast releasing CO2, which is trapped in the dough.

It's way larger and bloated, just like me after the holidays.

Sprinkle a bit of flour over the top, knead it in, then re-cover it and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Roll the dough out on the counter, about 30x50 cm. Brush the browned butter all over the top.

The specks are the browned parts of the butter, like caramel freckles.

Spread the cinnamon sugar over it and try to cover it evenly. Cut it into six strips. Don't lick the sugar off your fingers because 1) you're handling dough with raw eggs, and 2) you're preparing food and that's both gross and super inconsiderate if you're sharing.

Try not to eat all the cinnamon sugar. If you leave some out to put in your coffee, that's great too.

Stack the strips and cut them into six. They make a ffffffft sound, it's great.

Try not to knock it over, like I did.

Arrange your dough stacks into your greased and floured loaf pan. I take the fallen sugar from the (clean!) counter and any left over in the bowl and pour it over top. Cover the loaf pan with the towel and leave it in a warm place for about 30 minutes, or until it's about doubled. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you're not excited for cinnamon bread at this point, you might be a psychopath.

Bake for 30-45 minutes. Make sure it's really golden brown- when it is, it's probably done. Any earlier and it might be undercooked in the middle. Let it cool for about half an hour in the pan before removing.

Resist the urge to just pull pieces out as it cools. It's really good like that too.

This recipe is adapted from Joy the Baker, a food blogger/cookbook author/photographer based in the US. Her photos make my mouth water, and every recipe of hers I've tried has been a great success. I'd definitely recommend checking her site out. A lot of her recipes call for browned butter, and that's a good thing.

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 envelope/ 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water
2 eggs (large)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
2 tbsp butter (browned)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg (I couldn't find my nutmeg, so I used extra cinnamon. Still good.) 


Activate your yeast in 3 tbsp warm water and a pinch of sugar.

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour with the sugar and salt. Set aside. Whisk eggs in a small bowl and set aside.

In a small saucepan, melt butter and milk until butter has just melted, then remove from heat. Add water and vanilla. 

Pour the yeast into the dry ingredients, stir to combine. Once the milk mixture has cooled to a touchable temperature (please, for the love of all that is good, wash your hands before you prepare any food), pour into the dry ingredients. Stir to combine, then stir in the eggs. Add 3/4 cup flour, then stir until combined. It'll be sticky.

Transfer dough to greased medium mixing bowl, cover with plastic and towel. Let sit in a warm place for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. 

Melt the butter for the filling in a small saucepan, and allow it to brown. When it smells like caramel (don't let it burn!) remove it from heat. If your pan holds on to heat, transfer it into a small bowl.

Combine sugar for topping with cinnamon and nutmeg (if using). Grease and flour the loaf pan. Flour the work surface.

When dough has doubled, add 2 tbsp flour, knead it in then re-cover and let rest for 5 minutes.

Roll the dough out 30x50 cm on the floured work surface. Brush with browned butter and spread cinnamon sugar over it evenly. Cut into six strips, layer them, then cut again into six stacks. Lay the stacks into the loaf pan, cover with the kitchen towel, and let rest in a warm place for 30-45 minutes until nearly doubled.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake for 30-45 minutes, until deep golden brown. Let rest in the pan for about half an hour, then remove to serve (inverting over a plate works fairly well).

Store in an airtight container, or do what I do and eat all of it the same day.

Enjoy!