This is the recipe that I wanted to put up for the Project of the Week, but didn’t. It’s Rose Levy Berenbaum’s version of chocolate pecan pie. It’s deeply flavorful, light and delectable. It is however complicated, especially if you make the flaky cream cheese pie crust that goes with it. Should you be up […]
READ ONIt’s Derby week down here in Louisville, so it only seems fitting that we do something Derby-ish. Now maybe it’s because I’m a newbie in Kentucky, but I have yet to discover what a “true” Derby pie is. For some it’s a kind of toll house pie without the brown sugar. For others it’s simply […]
READ ONThis isn’t exactly pastry news, but as a former resident of that great city, I have to say I’m more than a little disappointed. Even in California, where this little legislative fad started, the ban won’t go into effect until 2012. The Chicago ban starts this June. This is the hog butcher for the world? […]
READ ONGot a question the other day about gelatin that I’ve been meaning to get to. That is: why are gelatin desserts on the no-no list for vegetarians? The reason is that gelatin powder is an animal-based product. It’s made by boiling cattle and/or pork skin and bones for extended periods of time, then reducing and […]
READ ONNew research shows that intestinal microbes and the cells in our intestines communicate with one another. Who knew?
READ ONNo discussion of digestable and indigestable sugars would be complete without a foray into the ones that cause flatulence. It’s a topic that every food writer has in their repertoire, in the same way that every bar band knows the song Mustang Sally. Playing it is in one sense a show of poor taste. But […]
READ ONIs there a connection between plummeting readership and my lengthy excursions into the fine technical points of pastry? The statistics say unequivocally: yes. I guess I’d better return to planet Earth before the only people reading this are my mother and the two street people I pay to sit at the library and click (hi […]
READ ONSo, we’ve talked a fair amount about sugar. Or rather, I have. Yes, a lot. I know. I do that, which is why I have a blog (it keeps my family and friends from killing me). So we’ve talked a lot about sugar. At least in its natural state. But then what happens to sugar […]
READ ON…and what is it that makes sugar sweet, exactly? Or maybe more specifically, what is it that makes some sugars sweeter than others? Sugars are part of a broad family of molecules known as carbohydrates. They are in fact the simplest carbohydrates, and just like other conspicuous members of their family, they are critical sources […]
READ ONEven though I didn’t manage to quite get all the melted gelatin into my panna cotta mixtre, it turned out just fine. No need to go to the trouble of re-melting and cooling. The only thing I did get in a little trouble with was the literal “turning out” of the gelatins. I let the […]
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