I never cook. And when I do, I never get it completely right. Despite these unavoidable facts, I really love cooking – left unchecked I could spend the entire day watching Jamie Oliver sizzling up a pan of pasta or The Barefoot Contessa baking away, and left with an empty kitchen I could spend all day systematically massacring a lot of great recipes. Living in a family of four, I am never left in an empty kitchen, hence, my original statement. But a couple times a year I cook, or, bake. This weekend it was Julia Child’s Reine de Saba cake – a delicious almond-chocolate cake with a chocolate ganoche frosting. The thing about Julia Child is that she gives completely detailed instructions for every step of the process- like, how to properly whip an egg white. This is perfect for a perfectionist-slash-clueless-cook like me. But, after smudging chocolate over every imaginable surface, including myself and the walls, I bit into the finished cake and tasted a salt-lick instead of chocolate frosting. Yes, I had, as per my custom, ignored the instructions for “unsalted butter” and used salted butter in the frosting. The cake itself was delicious (with the frosting scraped off.) I proceeded to eat half of it myself.

But when Julia Child says unsalted butter, use unsalted butter.