I didn’t know a cheesecake had cheese in it!

[CormoranStrike]

Okay, not these days, cos I’m a sophisticated and cultured woman now, but I can clearly remember being utterly astonished as a teenager to find out a cheesecake had cheese in it.

In my defence, the only cheese in my house till then had been blocks of cheddar, or cheese slices. I had no idea that cheese could be anything other than orange!

What were your WTF discoveries, which seem even more bizarre through the lens of time?

I did not know that about mules, I thought it was another name for a donkey.

@StCharlotte, your acquaintance was right, it is sometimes made with beetroot. From a very quick check of a few recipes, it seems early recipes for red velvet cake relied on a chemical reaction between cocoa powder, buttermilk and vinegar to get the red colour. That doesn't work now because most cocoa powder is made in a way that makes it less acid, and also darker, so you don't get the batter going red naturally. The usual recommendation now is to use food colouring, but some recipes incorporate beetroot in some form or other as an alternative.

Mostly I expect it isn't made with beetroot, though, I should add - so I hope you get to try some soon! I've only had it once and wasn't blown away but I'm feeling I should try it again now.

To all those Tongue Eaters - I think what puts me off eating it is knowing that it's already been in someone's mouth.

Inspired by this thread, I have just made Nigella’s London Cheesecake

I grew up thinking being 17 was going to be the most amazing experience. ‘I Saw Her
Standing There’, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Love Changes Everything’... all these pop songs couldn’t be wrong.

It was a great disappointment when I realised ‘seventeen’ just had an extra syllable.

I’m really sorry @MacDuffsMuff I do genuinely feel conned. I love cornflakes but now I think they’re sly.

The cornflakes thing has really blown my mind. I always thought that the corn in the name referred to wheat rather than to maize.

@cariadlet, didn't you notice they're a different colour and have a different taste from wheatflakes?

I never really thought about the colour (although that does seem an obvious giveaway now that you mention it) and have never heard of cereals called wheatflakes so haven't had any to compare the taste.

But ... they’re called cornflakes. It’s built right into the name, in the very first syllable.

I could compare them to bran flakes (which would be more brown) but I too have never heard of wheat flakes. I didn’t know corn flakes were maize. Despite growing up where corn means corn and wheat means wheat (no tricksy ‘maize’ necessary). They are very orangey yellow aren’t they !

@sashh

What are you saying @UnitedRoad? I love cornflakes, hate sweetcorn with a passion. I don't want to research this now lest it ruins all my future breakfasts!

Basically put a sweetcorn kernel on your work top and flatten it with a rolling pin.

Then bake in the oven.

You do know rice krispies are rice don't you?

And why these are called 'breakfast cereal'?

Mind. Blown.

I’m 41 and I still struggle with the fact that cream cheese is actually cheese. I just can’t get my head round the fact that it’s the same type of thing as cheddar/mozzarella and all the other types of cheese that I classify as ‘smelly cheese’. It just seems so different to them!

@UnitedRoad

I don’t eat sweetcorn. I can’t bear the smell, and have never even tried it.

I’m 49 and THIS YEAR, my daughter showed me a video of how cornflakes are made. I love Cornflakes and had honestly never made the connection. I feel like I’ve been duped.

Oh wow how have I never made this connection? As per other pp I thought they were made from corn like you see in a corn field (that is actually wheat )

@UnitedRoad I am also not a fan of sweet corn, but what I really don’t like are those baby corns you get in stir fries etc because randomly they remind me of scaly chicken feet (shudder) I think it’s the texture.

snooks you have singlehandedly explained my decades long loathing of baby corn - that is it EXACTLY but I didn’t ever realise.

I thought cornflakes were made from wheat

I also though originally they were made for farm food (for the animals not the farmers) go no idea how I came up with that

@Five67Eight

But ... they’re called cornflakes. It’s built right into the name, in the very first syllable.

I think that in the US, corn refers to what in the UK is called maize.

But in the UK, corn can refer to the seed of any cereal crop including maize, wheat and oats.

I never realised Timbuktu was a real place. The same with Bali, until I was in my 20s.

@Five67Eight Well I see that now. 😂

[quote Aroundtheworldin80moves]@ememem84 Gotham is a real place too... It's a village outside Nottingham[/quote]
But batman's American

Looks like there's a Gotham in uSA too, in Wisconsin. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham,_Wisconsin

The original Gotham is in the UK (as in The Wise Men of Gotham) but it's also been a nickname for New York for a couple of hundred years. I think Washington Irving used it first. Gotham City is modeled on New York City.

@HeronLanyon

snooks you have singlehandedly explained my decades long loathing of baby corn - that is it EXACTLY but I didn’t ever realise.

@HeronLanyon I know, I didn’t make the connection until a few years ago. Ugh. It must be the scale of them? Like chicken cankles.

I posted a thread on this years ago, under a slightly different username (can’t even find it now myself!)

But, I never realised til my early 40s that the letter W (a double U) was in fact only “a double U” and not a letter in its own right. Well, obviously it is now, in our alphabet. It was a fairly long thread and not everyone had made the connection either. Some lovely posters mentioned that the W as a letter was a historically recent English letter. Wish I could find my thread!

Disclaimer: I could read before I started school and in 1976 I think they just let me get on with reading and I didn’t do the 1976 phonics things ( whatever they were )