Twinkle cream uses

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” wrote 19th-century French gastronomist Jean Anthelme Brillat-­Savarin. But without a Ph.D. in chemistry, who among us can figure out what we’re eating? To see what gives life (and shelf life) to today’s processed foods, writer Steve Ettlinger tackles a case study: the bewildering ingredient list of a Twinkie. In Twinkie, ­Deconstructed (Hudson Street Press, $23.95), we learn the secrets of producing iron-enriched flour (hint: you’ll need the kind of oil that comes from a well), what making soap has to do with baking a cake, and where those ubiquitous “natural and artificial flavors” come from. Here, Ettlinger describes two tricksof the trade: The Creamy Filling Despite Hostess’s secret recipe, most food scientists will tell you that while the main ingredients in the filling are superfine sugar, shortening (oil), corn syrup, water, polysorbate 60, and salt, the key is that old pastry standby, cellulose gum, which can absorb 15 to 20 times its own weight in water. A pinch sprinkled on water floats like a jellyfish. A moistened spoonful becomes a clear,gelatinous, slimy glob in a matter of minutes. Cellulose gum hangs on to the water in Twinkies’ filling, and thus,like so many other ingredients, keeps it slipperier longer. Its fibers plump the filling up, replacing fat (that is, real cream) with a moist,glossy, fatlike texture, without contributing a single calorie to the cake, because cellulose gum is not digested. It...

Scrambled eggs, in particular, are, as she says, "finicky" and The creamy dairy product can give you some wiggle room in the event that you get momentarily distracted and miss the mark. "If you accidentally overcook your egg by two seconds, you still have creaminess from the cream cheese, so that texture is still there," Yeh explained. "If you're just kind of nervous about getting that perfect consistency, you have that insurance plan of the cream cheese that will allow you that similar creamy textural experience."