Here’s another simple delight that will knock your stay-dry socks off. All you need are some cubes of bread, a can of sweetened condensed milk and some unsweetened coconut flakes. Stick the bread cube on a fork and wet the sides and top with the sweetened condensed milk.
READ ONToasted coconut is one of pastrydom’s most beautiful sights, I think. These shaggy cookies resemble French macarons only in name, however they are a true pedestrian delight, at least if you like coconut. I think they deserve the royal treatment. Start by tossing your sweetened and unsweetened coconut together with the salt. Next — and […]
READ ONThat’s a bit of a toughie. The macaroon springs from the macaron, which means the origination point of the macaroon is somewhere in Italy. The French macaron was developed sometime in the 18th Century, so it’s safe to assume that the idea of the macaron/macaroon had pretty well spread around all of Europe by the […]
READ ONA combination of sweetened and unsweetened coconut creates the ideal texture for these macaroons, neither too dense nor too dry. The cream of coconut (drastically reduced coconut milk) provides the deep coconut flavor. Find cream of coconut either in the baking section of your supermarket, the international food section or the cocktail mixes section (it’s […]
READ ONThough I respect macarons, macaroons are much closer to my heart. My grandfather, a man of great dignity and taste, was crazy about them. Here I should insert that a really good macaroon is a rare thing. Too often macaroons are dry, papery and almost completely devoid of real coconut flavor. Thus, most people — […]
READ ONHere are two projects that I couldn’t resist lumping together since they’re ostensibly the same thing, at least to an etymologist. In practice of course they are very, very different. One — at least if it’s made by master pastry chef Pierre Hermé — is widely considered to be bakingdom’s ultimate one-bite delight. It’s also […]
READ ONThat’s a tricky one. There are a couple of origin stories, one a myth and the other a probable myth. The first one goes like this: once upon a time in the early 1700’s, in the northern Italian town of Saronno, there lived a pair of newlyweds. These two loved to bake and make sweets, so when they heard that the Catholic Cardinal from the nearby city of Milan was preparing to visit, the wanted to make something special. They gathered the meager ingredients they had: almonds, sugar, egg whites and apricot kernels, and using a mysterious technique that remains a secret to this day, prepared a batch of small cookies in the Cardinal’s honor. Tasting them, the Cardinal was so delighted that he blessed their marriage — and their cookies — wishing them a long and prosperous marriage. Today of course that secret is owned by the D. Lazzaroni Company who makes the classic Amaretti di Saronno. No surprise that they are the people largely responsible for propagating this myth.
READ ONSome people call them cookies, these days it’s hip to refer to them as “macarons”, but really they’re little almond meringues that are flavored with almond. Macaroons is probably more like it. I first tasted them as a kid when the neighbors who lived behind our house would take me into Chicago’s inner suburbs to visit their Italian grandma. In classic Old World Grandma style she’d feed us no matter what the hour, and amply. We dined crowded around the table in her cramped little apartment kitchen, since the dining room table was covered with doilies and only used for special occasions.
She was fond of serving us amaretti as soon as we walked in the door as a sort of tide-me-over until the real food hit the table: an antipasto starter, then pasta which I’d usually gorge myself on, forgetting that a meat course was coming next. By the end of the meal I’d be so engorged I practically had to be craned out the window.
READ ONIt’s time for a little time off, ladies and gents. The pastry clan is taking vacation early this year, and none too soon. Between you and me, I’ve been working too hard at my day job. My tiny brain is as singed and crispy ’round the edges as that macaroon two posts down. So we’re […]
READ ONReader Ruth wrote in to ask about the baking class I did over the holiday season at my daughter’s grade school. I meant to follow up on that but didn’t — so thanks, Ruth!
I may have mentioned that the organizer of these after school classes felt that baking was a subject better suited to older kids than to children my daughter’s age, and I had to agree. Fifth and sixth graders were much more responsible around heat sources and hot objects. I expected at least a couple of burns and/or cuts over the course of the six classes, but no one received a single injury. Which is not to say that they kids listened as well as I’d hoped they would. The science mostly passed right by them, and I frequently had to get, shall we say…insistent when it came to impressing the proper procedures on the group. I had only five, but lord, they were handful at times.
READ ON