Author: joepastry

I’ve heard that somewhere before…

Does the name tuile have a familiar ring to it? Have you been to Paris before? Then maybe the connection your brain is trying to make is to the Tuileries Palace and Gardens. That area is so-named because tile (tuile) manufacturers, attracted by rich underground clay deposits, originally occupied the site.

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Whip It

Hand-whipped cream is one of those things that truly does come out better than machine-whipped. The reason: more air is incorporated, which makes the end product lighter and fluffier. Feel like building biceps?

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The Milk Fat Miracle

It’s hard to let a mention of whipped cream go by without remarking on what an amazing thing it is: a liquid that can be beaten into a kind-of solid using nothing but a little elbow grease. Pretty cool. There are food writers out there who credit its “invention” to a pastry chef by the […]

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The Tuile and the Horn

Cream horns. Boy do people ever overdo it with cream horns. You see them stuffed with all kinds of crazy things: custards, curds, puddings, cream cheese, marscapone, jams and mousses. What ever happened to the cream? But then what ever happened to the horn? Why are nearly all cream horn shells made from puff pastry […]

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Tuile History

There isn’t much from what I can dig up, except to say that the name means tile, the clear reference being to old world clay roofing tiles. Similar tile-shaped cookies in Spain and Italy are called tejas and tegolinos respectively. Age-wise, there’s nothing in the standard literature to indicate when they became popular. My guess […]

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Ze Tuile

I remember my first encounter with a tuile. I was roughly ten. My family had received a box of the delicate little things as a Christmas gift from one of the neighbors. We placed it on the pile of food loot that accumulated in one corner of the kitchen counter each year…a heap of goodies […]

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Face the Master

The upside of the Derby party I attended on Saturday was a chance meeting with a master of Southern food and baking. She was of course a small, bespectacled and dignified woman in her 80’s, the mother of a fellow I’ve gotten to know this past year. Her tiny bent frame belied an encyclopedic knowledge […]

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