Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

I tried to bake Japanese cotton cheesecake and the result is not as satisfactory. So here is my review, possible mistakes, and how to avoid them next time.

Pros: 

1. The sweetness level is spot-on. I did try to reduce the amount of sugar I used, especially because I incorporated some white chocolate into the batter.
2. The taste and smell of orange zest came out beautifully in between bites, making this cheesecake taste fresh and less boring.
3. I baked this is a mini cake springform pan (4″). When you see a smaller cake, somehow they’re more appetizing 😀 (Sometimes I don’t eat my own cake more than a slice because I feel like I’ve had enough, not matter how yummy). Another plus is if you want to give it to someone, you will be giving them a whole cake instead of slices. If it were a chiffon, you could even frost and decorate it as a whole cake, hence preserving the look of a whole, finished cake.

Cons:

Issue#1: The top cracks

Possible explanations:

1. Temperature was too high
I have repeatedly baked Western Cheesecake (WCC) and I never had issues with cracked top. But Japanese Cotton Cheesecake (JCC) is different because it is the combination between chiffon cake and cheesecake. WCC texture is dense and it’s not going to rise much (or maybe none at all), hence I am guessing that it is not really sensitive to slight temperature changes. If the temperature is slightly higher (I’m talking about 10-30 F difference), it’s just going to cook faster (this is just my guess). Meanwhile, JCC has an element of chiffon cake to it because of folded meringue. If the temperature is slightly higher, the air bubbles in the batter will expand faster, making the cake rise quicker and the top will crack.

The recipe said to bake in 150-155C (around 305F). It didn’t say whether to pre-heat the oven in the same temperature or higher. I made an assumption that when the oven was opened when I put in the cake, the temperature is going to drop, hence I decided to preheat the oven at 350F. I preheated it quite long too, maybe more than 30 minutes, the same amount of time that it took to prepare the batter. After I put the cake in, I adjusted the temperature to be 305F.  I read that JCC needs to be cooked very slowly in low temperature so the cake can rise slowly. The slow rise won’t shock the top that much so it won’t crack. In my case, the oven was still too hot to start with, attributing to the quick rise and crack.

Solution: I should’ve preheated the oven at 305F

2. Water level in bain-marie not high enough
Another factor that might contribute to the cracking is that the water level in the bain-marie is not high enough. I was supposed to bake it in a deeper tray, but I couldn’t find it. So instead, I use a cookie pan (I know, what was I thinking) and fill the water almost up to the edges. Even though the pan is filled to the brim, the water level is not sufficient enough to give moisture, and that might contribute to the cracking. (again, this is my guess).
Edit: 10 minutes before the baking time is up, the water has all evaporated

Solution: I should’ve used a deeper tray for the bain-marie and poured more water to it.

Issue #2: I stopped baking at 42 minutes

The cracked top kinda panicked me. I thought because the top cracked, the cake was already cooked, event though the top looked very, very pale. I decided to stop baking because the cake jiggled a little, a sign that cheesecake was cooked. Instead of carrying on baking, I turned off the bottom heat and turned on the broiler to darken the top. When I poked the cake, the inside was still very wet. So I had to pop them back into the oven.

Solution: When the top looks pale, check the inside with skewer. If the skewer is still wet, continue baking until the required time. Don’t deviate from the plan or broil the top. Don’t panic because of the crack.

Additional Notes: 

1. I baked when I was hungry. Like, extremely hungry. Needless to say my better judgment was clouded by the hunger and I couldn’t think clearly 😀 I guess that was why I had too many mistakes. So don’t bake when you’re hungry or tired 😀
2. I have never tried JCC before, so I can’t really say whether the texture is right. Although, judging from the picture of sliced cake in the internet, my cake looks kinda similar. Some internet articles even said that the cake is eggy, and I second that.

   

Overall:
I like the texture of WCC better than JCC because WCC has a higher fat content (more cream cheese) while JCC has more egg than cream cheese (hence the egginess). I prefer to have more cheese in my cake than egg, thank you 🙂

Silence is gold

As I grow older, the most challenging thing I find is being silent. Refraining from voicing one’s opinion. It’s a slippery slope. When one’s not careful, his dignity may go away with the careless or offensive opinion that he publicly expresses.

Eat, Bay, Love.

I moved to California ten months ago when my husband was offered a position in Google. Living far away from home and family might sound daunting, but fortunately, I was rather trained in that. Or so I thought.

I come from Solo, a small town in Indonesia who recently came to spotlight since the mayor rose to become the newly-elect president of Indonesia. Right after high school, I moved to Singapore for my undergraduate study and spent one third of my life there. Still, Singapore is very much closer to Indonesia in terms of culture and proximity. It’s just a two-hour journey by plane from Solo, while California is totally at the other side of the earth. And one thing I miss the most besides family: The Food.

When I was back home, good foods are so abundant, even if I don’t feel like cooking. The streets are literally lined up with rows and rows of food peddlers which offer a great variety of dishes and all you have to do is choose. If you come from Asia, I am sure you could relate and might take a journey down the memory lane of your own too.

A localized street food area in Solo called “Galabo”

You can get as lazy as you want and still you won’t be starving. Even if you can’t come to the food, the food will come to you. It’s normal to see food peddlers biking their wagons around the blocks like this.

Most big to middle-sized towns in Indonesia have very vibrant night life. But no, you won’t really find bars and discotheques there. Instead, you can fulfill any craving you have, even when it’s past your bed time. In fact, some of these food peddlers only start their first order at 2.00 A.M. These food peddlers sell the best gudeg in town. Gudeg is a dish made of young jackfruit which is braised in coconut milk and spices and cooked over low heat for hours, which makes is so fragrant. Although they only start to serve their customer during the wee hours, people have started queuing an hour before the opening time because the food are so popular that they’re gonna be sold out before rooster crows at dawn.

So you see… All my life, I have been having easy access to Indonesian food. It wasn’t even difficult to find when I was in Singapore, which makes moving to Bay Area a big change. There’s no more lazy days around: If I want it, I gotta cook it. I’ve got no choice but to rely on nobody but me. Thanks to the Asian stores who are scattered with things I thought I only could find back home, now I can recreate the magical dinner spread that I could only had in my dreams. Most Asian stores like 99 Ranch, Lion supermarket, and smaller asian grocery stores are so easy to find in Bay Area. They even have some aisles dedicated to ingredients and packed foods that originated from several countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Not only that, the Indonesians living in Bay Area taught me a lot of things about cooking. They are generally great in terms of cooking, perhaps because like me, they wanted to still have a taste of home but they’ve got nobody to buy it from. Hence they learned to cook everything by themselves, and they become masters at it.
In fact, I recently learn how to cook gudeg which I find it quite an achievement since I thought it was impossibly hard to make. Talk about the power of having to do everything on your own! My friends even persuaded me to make it especially for a fundraising for the landslide victims back in Indonesia. Had I not moved to California, this couldn’t have happened.

P.S. There are some Indonesian restaurants in Bay Area that you might want to give a chance on one of your weekend eat-outs. Here is some listings that I found in Yelp and I think you should definitely five the five-star ones a try. I have only been to Padi Restaurant but I can tell you their food is great.
http://www.yelp.com/list/indonesian-food-in-bay-area-san-francisco-2

Cabe Oh Cabe

Salah satu hal yang bikin saya excited ketika grocery shopping di sini adalah ketika nemuin bermacam-macam jenis cabe. Kalau di Indonesia adanya cabe hijau saja, di sini cabe hijau pun banyak variannya. Ada jalapeno, serrano, anaheim, dll. Kalau di indo cuman tau cabe merah, di sini jadi tau cabe fresno, hungaro, habanero, etc. Dan tingkat kepedasannya pun beragam. Dari yang nggak pedas sama sekali sampai bisa dicemilin gitu aja, sampai yang puedes banget. Alhamdulillahnya sudah terlatih dengan cabe rawit merah (kalau orang Singapur bilang chilli padi) yang pedes banget, jadi nggak kaget kalo makan yang pedas pun.

Kelebihan lain dengan adanya banyak varian itu adalah kita jadi punya kontrol lebih terhadap spending. Misalnya mau bikin balado, tapi cabe fresno harganya sedang naik, tinggal pilih cabai tipe lain. Kebetulan di pasar dekat rumah cabe hungaro sedang murah. Harganya sekitar Rp 25 ribu rupiah saja per kilonya.

99 sen per pound, atau sekitar Rp25rb/kg

Setelah ditilik, tingkat kepedasan cabe hungaro dengan fresno ternyata sama. Saya juga baru tau cabe itu ada ratingnya, namanya Scoville scale. Setiap cabe diberi nilai dalam satuan Scoville Heat Unit (SHU).

Anyway, ketika ngobrol2 sama mertua, katanya cabe sedang mahal, sekitar Rp 100 ribu sekilo. Wah sedih juga, apalagi untuk orang minang yang sering masak balado atau orang yang nggak bisa hidup tanpa sambel terasi XD
Tadinya saya pikir pindah ke Amerika bakalan susah menemukan bahan untuk memasak makanan tanah air. Alhamdulillah ternyata pilihannya justru lebih banyak, sehingga kita bisa terus menikmati hidangan dalam negeri dengan tetap berhemat tentunya.

Kisah Perjalanan Sebuah Pempek

Ketika saya masih kuliah dan belum bisa masak, rasanya bisa menikmati hidangan nusantara ketika jauh dari tanah air itu sebuah keistimewaan sendiri. Selain karena jarang keberadaannya, makanan tersebut juga biasanya menguras kantong mahasiswa saya yang memang sudah tipis, karena berarti saya harus membelinya dari rumah makan Indonesia yang harganya lebih mahal. Alternatif lebih terjangkau tentulah dengan membuat sendiri. Tapi untuk mahasiswa yang tidak punya skill dan peralatan memasak yang memadai tentulah hal ini jadi mustahil.

Setelah bekerja lalu menikah, perlahan-lahan saya mulai mengumpulkan peralatan memasak dan bumbu-bumbu tradisional. Saya pun mulai mengenal beberapa ibu-ibu yang lebih berpengalaman di sekitar saya. Saya betul-betul terkagum-kagum dengan keahlian masak mereka. Jangankan cuma oseng-oseng, mereka jago sekali membuat masakan yang nggak semua orang bisa seperti sate padang, pempek, pastel, bakso, bolen, molen dll. Kenapa saya bilang wah? Saya ingat waktu kecil itu untuk mendapatkan makanan semacam ini, ibu-ibu di keluarga saya biasanya pesan dari orang, bukan dengan membuat sendiri. Entah apa saya yang memang berada dalam lingkungan yang kurang eksplorasi masak atau bagaimana. Tapi yang jelas, saya ingat betul bahwa hanya dengan bisa memasak hal-hal ini saja sudah standing ovation banget lah. Makanya saya kagum sama ibu-ibu rantau yang skillnya nggak habis-habis. Kalau di indonesia pengen batagor, bakso, sate, pempek, serabi; kita tinggal naik motor dan beli di penjualnya. Tetapi di rantau ini manalah ada abang-abang yang dorong gerobak siomay keliling. Makanya hampir setiap ibu yang saya temui pasti (garis bawahi ya) bisa membuatnya.

Sedikit demi sedikit saya belajar dari mereka — ibu-ibu dharmawanita kantor suami saya di Singapura dulu sampai ibu-ibu Indonesia yang ada di Amerika sekarang. Saya ingat sekali perjalanan belajar pempek saya 5 tahun yang lalu sampai baru-baru ini saya belajar bahan dan teknik pembuatannya dari ibu-ibu di California. Dari yang dulunya sekeras sandal jepit dan hanya berbentuk bulat-bulat, sampai akhirnya saya tahu membuat adonan yang lebih lembut dan kekenyalannya pas, gurih, dan bentuknya beragam. Berkat kursus kilat teknik pempek dari seorang ibu di sinilah saya berhasil membuat pempek kapal selam. Rasanya alhamdulillah sesuatu banget, seperti yang tadinya cuma bisa 2+2=4 lalu sekarang sudah menguasai trigonometri. Alhamdulillah keringat ini pun terbayar dengan suami saya yang doyan makan dan nagih terus minta pempek.

PeeR selanjutnya adalah bikin bakso sendiri. Sudah sering saya makan bakso super enak buatan ibu-ibu California yang kualitasnya sama seperti bakso terkenal di Solo. Saya jadi nggak sabar untuk mencoba. Super excited!

Kisah Di Tengah Rintik Hujan

Musim gugur sudah mulai. Sebentar lagi akan datang musim dingin. Cuaca jadi dingin-dingin empuk. Nikmat sekali sore-sore sambil selimutan dan minum coklat sementara di luar rintik-rintik hujan mulai turun.

Alhamdulillah hari ini merasa beruntung banget dapat beberapa teman baik di sini. Kami tadi praktek membuat pempek di rumah seorang kawan. Subhanallah, cuaca yg dingin pun jadi terhangatkan oleh silaturahim dan canda tawa. Umar pun jadi dapat kesempatan untuk main dengan teman-teman sebayanya. Saking asyiknya masak dan makan malam bersama, sampai-sampai tidak terasa sudah pukul 9 malam. Di perjalanan menuju rumah saya baru teringat belum mengembalikan buku library yang sudah lewat deadline. Akhirnya saya putuskan untuk sekalian mampir ke library Sunnyvale. Untungnya ada bookdrop di luar library, sehingga masih bisa mengembalikan buku walaupun sudah jauh lewat opening hoursnya.

Perpustakaannya kebetulan terletak di tengah-tengah komplek perkantoran dan townhall. Jadi kalau malam sepinya minta ampun. Alhamdulillah naik mobil, jadi tidak takut-takut amat. Parkirannya yang luas pun lengang, makanya saya tidak segan parkir di tempat disabled, karena paling dekat tempat bookdrop.

Saya pun cepat-cepat jalan menuju bookdrop. Agak serem juga karena sudah lewat jam 9 dan super sepi serta gelap. Kepala clingak clinguk kesana kemari, memastikan kalau aman-aman saja. Saya kaget karena di bench di depan pintu masuk library ada orang homeless yg sedang duduk meringkuk di sana, di tengah dinginnya udara sisa-sisa hujan. Astaghfirullah, kasihan sekali dia. Semua barangnya dijejerkan di atas bangku sambil ditutupi kain semacam terpal, sementara dia duduk dengan kepalanya ditelungkupkan ke pangkuannya, sambil tangannya meringkuk kedinginan. Suhu di luar mungkin mencapai 12°. Ini baru awal musim gugur, bagaimana nanti kalau musim dingin?

Saya percepat jalan saya. Setengah kasian setengah takut, sambil mikir kira-kira suara saya kedengeran nggak ya sampe ke kantor polisi terdekat kalau ada apa-apa 😀

Dalam hati saya bersyukur. Alhamdulillah kami masih bisa menyewa tempat tinggal untuk berteduh dari panas dan dingin. Masih punya tempat tidur untuk beristirahat. Masih punya heater dan selimut ketika dingin. Masih mampu beli makanan agar kenyang dan hot chocolate untuk menghangatkan badan. Masih punya keluarga yang utuh untuk menghangatkan hati.
Fabi’ayyi alaa’i rabbikumaa tukadzibaan.

Sometimes you just can’t help it

I’ve got two kids and this is how my house looks like. Well I theoretically have only one, but I still need to pick up after my husband too. Good thing is he always loads the dishwasher every night now, which I’m awfully grateful for 😀

I’m not a neat freak, but whoever finds their house in this state must have had a little dose of headache. The thing is, it gets like this not once nor twice in a day, but more often than that. So I find myself just sit and stare at this chaos helplessly, otherwise my tush will not get its rest since I’m constantly bending over to pick up something on the floor.

Thankfully, much to my consolation, it’s kinda the same for my friends who have little kids. I’ve been to their houses and things are sometimes worse, since they have more kids, which means more toys. If not for their diligence and a tight discipline to stick to their cleaning routines, I believe their house might explode at some point.

Book Summary: The Power of Habit

Part One: The Habits of Individuals

Chapter 1 & 2 (The Habit Loop and The Craving Brain) have been covered in previous blogpost.
https://gitaarimanda.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/the-keystone-habit-and-how-it-can-transform-your-life/ 

Chapter 3: The Golden Rule of Habit Change

• How to change a habit:
  Keep the cue → Provide the same rewards → Insert a NEW routine
• Once people believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change.

 

Part Two: The Habit of Societies

Chapter 4: When Willpower Becomes Automatic

• Willpower is like our muscle. We must train them so that they become stronger.
• Willpower has its own inflection point. We must know it very well and plan in details on how to overcome it
• The way willpower becomes a habit:
  By choosing a certain behaviour ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives.
• Happens mostly in the workplace:
  When people don’t have control over a routine or when it is forced on them, their willpower muscles get tired much faster. By giving people a sense of agency, that they are in control, that they have a genuine decision-making authority, their willpower and self-discipline get stronger. 

Chapter 5: The Power of A Crisis

• Crisis should be seized as an opportunity of habit change.
• In an organisation, sometimes crisis (or the sense of crisis happening) is needed to give people jolt and persuade them to shift from an ineffective status quo. 

Chapter 6: How Target Knows What You Want Before You Do

• By dressing something new in old clothes, and making the unfamiliar seem familiar is one way to make something into a habit.
• For example:
  • People disguised animal gut into familiar meal item such as meatloaf to make people used to eat them.
  • Sandwiching a new song in between highly sticky songs to make it more familiar to listener, and hence sticky.
  • Camouflaging diaper coupons to pregnant women among things which seem unrelated (hence seem like the product of random selection) so that it won’t creep them out.

Part Three: The Habits of Societies

Chapter 8: How Movements Happen

• Many of the people Granovetter studied had learned about new job opportunities through weak ties, rather than from close friends. Our weak-tie acquaintances are often as influential—if not more—than our close friends.
  As Granovetter wrote, “Individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends.
• The habits of peer pressure have something in common. They often spread through weak ties. And they gain their authority through communal expectations. If one ignores the social obligations of his community, he risks losing his social standing.
• On a playground, peer pressure is dangerous. In adult life, it’s how business gets done and communities self-organize.

The Keystone Habit and How It Can Transform Your Life

I decided to take up this book after learning that Bill Gates recommended it as a must-read. For a successful man with stellar time management skill (I conveniently assume), I thought this deserves a shot. And it does.

It didn’t take long for me to know that this book is cool—the kind of book that you can’t put down before you finish reading (or at least it makes your mind wonder what comes next in the chapter that you haven’t read). In fact, the prologue itself is enough to make me “ooh” and “aah” (in an enlightened manner). Charles Duhigg tells a story of a young woman in the opening chapter, the kind of story that quarter-life-crisis twenty-somethings can relate to (and addicts, too).

Lisa Allen was a heavy smoker and drinker since she was sixteen. She was almost always obese and heavily in debt during her twenties. She couldn’t keep a steady job for a long enough time. She also went through an unhealthy relationship that ended in a divorce which almost made her a psycho; and other miserable things you can imagine. Long story short, she’s buried herself alive in deep shit.

And yet at 34 years old, just like a Sophie Kinsella novel, her life has transformed drastically. She’s sober and fit, free of debt, and is working a steady job in a graphic design firm. It sounds like The Goddess Fortuna has changed her life in a blip (not that I believe Fortuna actually exists). You might be wondering what sparks all those changes. What did she do to actually change all those stinky habits? Did she struggle in her transformation? Is it hard to change four to five habits at the same time? Well, it wasn’t really. Because she didn’t try to change five habits, she just focused on one. And everything follows suit.

The secret to her metamorphosis is that she focused on creating a Keystone Habit. She only made one change, and an essential change it had been. She decided to stop smoking. Once she stopped smoking, she could overcome her drinking habit. Once she got sober, she could recover from her broken heart and start to rearrange her life. She started to exercise, got a decent job and worked hard at it. Once she kept a steady stream of income, she could pay off her debt and be a free (wo)man.

You see, Keystone Habit kinda works like a chain reaction. Once you focus on overriding one habit with a new pattern, your brain starts to change too. There is a new neurological pattern that is created, and it overrides the old pattern, which is the old habit. This Keystone Habit will reprogram other routines in our life, which was the key answer to Lisa’s renaissance.

Of course, just starting to change a habit is not enough. We have to follow up by making the Keystone Habit a routine, because the old pattern in our brain is still there and it lurks around, trying to find a way to break away and let loose. But at least, now we know that we can turn into a new person by starting good habits in the price of one. Especially since the energy needed to overcome an inertia of doing something bad is great.

My personal experience? I think it works, although it’s still in early pupae stage. There are many things that I want to change about my life and how I want to make it more productive and fulfilling. I just need to focus on one, and improve on it. At first, I struggled to identify and choose which Keystone Habit would best suit my change. Finally, I started not to sleep after subuh and I decide that should be my KH. I still have difficulties of not snoozing back into the dreamland after dawn, especially since Umar keeps dragging me into bed to be breastfed (Excuse, excuse!). But in those days when I don’t, I start to see some progress. I start to jog around the block while the air is still fresh. I start tidying up early; and tidy house means clear minds, believe me. I start to cook early for the whole day, which leaves me some free time from having to prepare lunch and dinner. And when I have more time in my hand, I can finish my half-ODOJ on time and read more books. In fact, I feel more fulfilled when I read more. I start to write again, hence this blog post (and many upcoming ones, I hope). I start to cut access to negativity in social media; and that, turns out, frees so much brain resources from worrying about things that don’t really matter.

Deep inside, I’m actually worried though. I’m afraid that this will not last, and it will be just like another new-year resolution speech. As it happens, I haven’t even finished reading this book. Wish me luck!

Why does Pepsodent (and other toothpaste) give a tingling sensation?

It all has to do with creating a habit. Not just a habit, but a habit that lasts, that people crave to do it again and again. Huh? What does Pepsodent have to do with habit? Perhaps it’s useful to look at our brain and see how a habit is started.

Habit Loop: How Habit Works

Human brain can be seen like an onion. It consists of layers of tissues that function differently. The outer layers are generally where complex thinking occurs. When we peel those layers off towards the core, we can find basal ganglia, which is sort of like a golf ball. It is the part of the brain that recalls patterns and acts on them. It controls the things we do automatically like breathing, walking, eating, etc which have become a habit. In fact, it stores our habits even though we are sleeping.

As it happens, people don’t really think when doing things that they do. Forty percent of actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits. Why? Because it is efficient. Our brain uses much less resources when performing habits. The first time a baby learns to walk, she may use a lot of resources in her brain to make it happen. She needs to calculate how much force to use in moving each leg, how to keep the balance, which leg to swing first, how fast to walk, etc. But after walking over and over again, the process has become so ingrained in our brain that we don’t need to calculate every little details and just go with the most efficient way that our brain thinks suits us well. As a result, it frees our brain resources to think about more important things, like building a rocket or making a start-up company, for instance. Can you imagine if your brain, like a computer, has to calculate every nitty gritty details that it does? It will crash!!

Okay. So that’s how a brain functions. But how do we create a habit? The way a habit works is when we see things around us as cues to do something, and in the end, we get a reward. For example,  when you pass by McDonald’s, you will smell the distinct aroma of french fries that is so enticing. This will tempt you to go there and buy it so you can satisfy your tongue. If you keep indulging in the temptation, your feet will unthinkingly lead you there every time you smell it. The smell here (or in many cases, the huge yellow M logo) is the cue, you going there is the routine, and French fries is the reward. So the habit loop works like this: Cue -> Routine -> Reward. Easy peasy.

Now, that process only is not strong enough to make a habit last. You need to CRAVE the reward so that when you see the cue, you automatically think of the reward and you want it so bad. That’s why when you give in to the temptation many times, your brain starts to develop a crave. You will feel fidgety if you don’t buy the French fries when you pass by McDonald’s.

Pepsodent’s Clever Blueprint

A few decades ago, P&G wanted to sell its toothpaste. Unfortunately, in the early 1900s, people did not have a habit of tooth brushing. In fact, people’s teeth had been rotting in years and no one seemed to care enough. There were some teeth cleaning products in the market that promoted itself as making teeth clean and beautiful. But it’s not enough to develop tooth brushing habit in people. And when it’s not a habit, sales won’t increase. They needed to clearly define the cue, and Pepsodent needed a strong, CLEAR cue to tell people to start brushing their teeth.
Claude C. Hopkins, a marketing wunderkind at P&G, boasted the story of how he succeeded in marketing Pepsodent. After reading a pile of dental books, he got an idea for his ad when he stumbled upon something called ‘the film’. It is a thin plaque layer that covers our teeth. “That’s the cue!” so he thought. It’s a clear, idiot-proof trigger that told people, “Hey, your teeth are dirty, you need to use Pepsodent and brush them.” Afterwards, sales began to soar and Pepsodent became a household name. In fact, ten years after the Pepsodent campaign, 65% Americans were already using toothpaste, compared to a measly 7% one decade before.

Well, Hopkins might boast that he was the first person to think of the film as a smart, clear-cue-giving marketing idea. But no. In fact, many other teeth cleaning products advertised before Pepsodent stated the same thing.

“Sanitol Tooth Paste quickly restores the original whiteness by removing film.”

“Clean that dirty layer!”

But none of those same-language advertisements worked.
You know what made Pepsodent work? Pepsodent contains citric acid, as well as doses of mint oil and other chemicals which give a tingling sensation every time we brush. Getting teeth clean is not a strong enough reward. People need to CRAVE it. People need to obsess about the cleanliness. And when they feel their gums tingling after using Pepsodent, they equate it to cleanliness and have satisfied their craving. In fact, they won’t feel that their teeth are clean before they feel the tingling sensation (even though their mouth is not quite dirty). That is why now every toothpaste is made with the same effect. They need people to crave them and include them in their daily habit so they can survive in the fierce market competition of dental cleaning sludge.

Source: The Power of Habit (Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business) by Charles Duhigg