Ever made candy at home before? If not candied oranges are a great way to start. They’re simple and, well, you were going to just throw those orange peels away anyway, right? This recipe works with any citrus fruit peel. Begin by cutting the ends of your oranges:
READ ONMake these once and you’ll probably never throw orange (or any citrus) rinds away ever again.
3 navel oranges
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup, glucose syrup or honey
Wash and dry the oranges, then cut off the very ends and score them in quarters from top to bottom. Peel the rinds off the fruit, trimming away any excess pith, then cut the rinds into 1/2″ slices.
READ ON
Many a little old lady has trodden caramel cake territory. Go there and you’ll find yourself getting in touch with your inner granny, the one with the heavy orthotic shoes, lace collar and tinge of blue in her hair. I did and I can tell you that it made me a better baker. However later I found myself complaining about street crime, the rudeness of pharmacy clerks and the scandal of mini skirts. It was a double-edged sword.
READ ON
I had a great time making this icing today. On the one hand there was the caramel, which I get all worked up about. Something about turning simple, one-dimensional ingredients like water, sugar and milk into a deep, dark, aromatic brew…it excites me. On the other there was the browning which the geek in me loved, created as it is by both caramelization and Maillard reactions. Put it all together and my little brain was lighting up like a Christmas tree.
READ ONThis recipe is from Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Memories. The reason I like it is that it combines actual caramel with the highly unusual boiled-milk-and-soda technique that you find in the really old versions of the cake. This makes enough for a 3-layer cake. Cut it down if you aspire to a less grandiose confection. You’ll need:
2 lbs. 10 ounces (6 cups) sugar
2.5 ounces (1/3cup) water
3 ounces (1/4 cup) light corn syrup
18 ounces (2 1/4 cups) milk
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 ounces (3 tablespoons) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons heavy cream for thinning (if needed)
Here we have a caramel cake made the truly old-fashioned way. This one is lighter than the one I initially discovered, but I think it’ll still be delectable. Let’s see how it turns out!
16 ounces (4 1/2 cups) cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
21 ounces (3 cups) sugar
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) soft butter
8 ounces (1 cup) milk, room temperature, divided
8 egg whites, room temperature, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
What happens when you garnish a rustic, thrown-together dessert with a hastily prepared sauce? Sudden, unexpected elegance is what. Lemon cider sauce is supremely simple. You can pull it together in about five minutes. Drizzle it around a fat slice of gingerbread cake, over ice cream…whatever strikes your fancy. It’s terrific with poached fruit. Combine the sugar, spices, cornstarch and salt in a small saucepan.
This easy and versatile sauce is great with all sorts of simple fall and winter cakes and fruit desserts. It’s much quicker and easier than a custard, since it’s thickened with cornstarch (corn flour) instead of egg yolks. It goes like this:
3.5 ounces (1/2 cup sugar)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup apple cider
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
grated zest of 1 lemon
Now me, I grew up calling these sorts of devices “egg rolls.” It wasn’t until I got to be in high school that I began to know them as spring rolls. That was when one of my father’s oldest friends married a Chinese woman who happened to own one of the best Mandarin restaurants in Chinatown. We started eating there once a week, so I had to at least appear to know the lingo. These below are what I always thought were “spring rolls”:
READ ONSpring rolls began showing up on American Chinese menus in the 50’s and 60’s. That’s easy to understand when you consider they’re not Cantonese but hail from the Eastern and Northern regions of China, where they’re typically eaten during spring festivals. Thus the name. Chinese spring rolls are made with wheat skins as opposed to rice paper (the latter being Vietnamese).
The ultra-thin wrappers are made via an unusual technique whereby a large mass of high-gluten dough is dabbed on a hot plate. The skin cooks up in about a minute, and is then peeled off. More on that in the tutorial. For now you’ll need:
READ ON