This post is all about housekeeping. I've received quite a few requests for a pâte brisée recipe lately. I've had one on the site for quite a while now, but it's been filed under "quiche." This dedicated post on the subject will make it easier to reference.

Pâte brisée is one of the simplest of all crusts, a "short" crust of the type that's used mostly for savory tarts. It differs from sweet tart crust (pâte sucrée) in that it has no sugar in it. The recipe goes like this:

10 ounces (2 cups) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
8 ounces chilled butter cut into pieces
2-4 tablespoons ice water

First, put half the flour and the salt in the bowl of a mixer with a paddle attachment and turn it on low. Add the butter a few pieces at a time until the mixture looks like so:

Next add the flour...

...and turn the mixer up to medium. When the flour has all been incorporated add two or three tablespoons of water and mix for 30 seconds or so until the dough looks like this:

Pat the dough into a flat patty, wrap it in plastic wrap and and put it in the fridge for an hour. You'll notice that this process differs from that of a standard pie crust in that the dough is worked a lot more. This is intentional since a flaky crust would tend to leak a when a runny filling like a custard is poured in. This crust is smooth, but because it's been worked it contains activated gluten and will tend to want to shrink in the oven. Thus you'll want to rest it at every opportunity and leave plenty of excess around the lip of the form when you bake. This recipe makes plenty of extra.

So, assuming at least an hour has passed, preheat your oven to 375. Take your dough out of the fridge and apply it to a well floured board. Sprinkle with more flour...

...and start to roll, dusting with flour and turning as needed to get it into a rough circle, about 16 inches across and a little less that 1/4 inch thick. You'll notice that this dough is much easier to work with than pie dough.

Once the dough has been rolled out pick it up and place it gently in your mold of choice. You'll notice there's a good deal of excess most of the way around. Leave it there.

Carefully but firmly press the dough down into the corners of the mold and press in the folds so the dough is of a fairly uniform thickness. About like so:

If the dough hangs over by much more than an inch, trim some off with scissors and put it in the fridge (just in case you need a patch). Put the mold on it in the fridge for 20 minutes to let the dough rest and firm up a bit.

Now then, seizing the nearest piece of baking parchment, gently push it down into the mold, into the corners...

...and fill it up with dried beans (yes, I keep a big airtight container full of 'em in the closet just for occasions like this).

Put the mold in the oven on a middle rack and bake until the crust around the edges starts to brown lightly (this can take 20-35 minutes depending on the depth of the mold). At that point you want to remove the mold, spoon the hot beans back into their storage container, get rid of the parchment, and put the crust back into the oven for 10-15 more minutes until the interior of the crust is golden. Like so:

You'll notice there isn't as much extra crust around the edges now. That's because the activated gluten in the dough caused the whole thing to shrink up a little in the oven. However since there was excess all the way around, the shrinkage won't cause the crust to pull down below the mold's rim. That's the genius of this method.

Your tart crust is now ready for filling and baking. Once your tart is baked and cooled, you can trim off the excess crust with a serrated knife, like so:

Obviously this method doesn't allow for a sculpted rim, so if that's important to you, you'll want to skip the machine and work this dough by hand, incorporating as little water as you can, just like you would a pie dough. For me a savory tart like a quiche is a more utilitarian item, so I tend not to worry about it.

Time and temperature are the secrets to a successful batch of mascarpone. Other than that all you have to work with are cream, some acid, a thermometer and a pan. Simple, right? Right...

The formula is one pint of heavy cream and one pint of half-and-half, which I have found gives a firmer texture than all cream (though that works too). As for the acid, you'll need 1/4 teaspoon of tartaric acid (cream of tartar) OR 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice OR two tablespoons of white vinegar. Different people have different preferences, I like the powdered acid since it's always reliable. The acidity of both lemons and vinegar, depending on the variety, can fluctuate.

Most mascarpone recipes begin with a double boiler because the heat is gentler. I prefer a small straight-sided saucepan. Yes, there is a risk of over-heating, however 1 quart of dairy isn't much, and it tends to get lost inside a typical double boiler. It comes maybe one inch up the side of the pan, which makes it hard to get a reliable thermometer reading. A small pan gives me more depth, and as long as the pan is thick, very little risk of overheating. So then, pour your cream (or mix of cream and half-and-half) into the pan. Place it over medium-low heat.

I should insert, for those who might be inclined toward flavor infusions of some sort, that this is an excellent time to get busy. I can imagine a small cheesecloth bag containing perhaps citrus rinds, maybe spices or herbs, even coffee beans being dropped in at this point. Cream, because it is so full of fat, is a sponge for flavor.

While the cream mixture is slowly coming up to temperature, mix your tartaric acid into about a tablespoon of water. Stir it up and keep it ready. If you're planning on using a liquid acid, you can skip this step.

Now start watching your temperature closely. You'll want to bring the mix up to temperature slowly, over the course of ten or fifteen minutes. Once it hits about 185...

...give your acid mixture one last stir and pour it in.

Begin to stir again. This will help the mixture curdle.

Now then, you want to maintain a temperature of right around 190 for about five minutes, until you see evidence that the acid is having an effect. What will that effect be, exactly? A slight thickening of your mixture. No, it won't break into curds like other types of cheese mixtures will. However the thickness will tell you that your uncoiled proteins are starting to coagulate and interlock with one another, slowing the mixture's flow. Instead of making lots of little curds (think ricotta or quark) it's rather like, in fact it's very like, in fact it's exactly like, making a single large curd.

Keep stirring gently until...ah yes: there. About the thickness of a finished crème anglaise. See those little bulging waves? When you stir the mixture slowly, that's what you'll get. And no, those bubbles are not evidence of boiling, what you're seeing is just some light foam the whisk created. For extra verification that you've reached the right point, remove the pan from the heat, insert a spoon, turn it over and run your finger down the back side. Does it make a clearly defined stripe? Then you're done.

Set the pan aside and allow it to cool down to room temperature. This might be another prime opportunity, if you were so inclined, to introduce a flavoring in the form of an extract...if you wanted to...I'm just sayin'. Park it in the fridge for 24 hours. Yes, I drink Diet Coke. So what? I like the taste.

The next day, grab a medium-sized strainer or colander and set it in/over a pot or large bowl.

Line it with at least two layers of cheese cloth.

Take the pan out of the refrigerator and pour the mixture — which by now will be a good deal thicker — into the strainer.

Don't worry if the last of it seems rather runny, it still has a good deal of sitting yet to do. Return the cheese to the refrigerator, lightly covered with plastic wrap, for another 24 hours.

At the end of that period it will be thick, with a texture somewhere between sour cream and cream cheese.

Oh and...here's a quiz: what would you get if you employed this technique not with cream but with whole milk? Answer: paneer. And if you tried it with goat's milk? Answer: goat cheese. Pretty cool.

Oh silky, lovely bavarian cream...all set to be poured into a mold (after I've dipped my finger in it a time or two, of course). Making a crème anglaise-style Bavarian cream is only a little more complicated than making crème anglaise. All you're doing is combining your custard with whipped cream and gelatin. Easy. Below I'm attempting to make it outdoors in mid-afternoon on the hottest day of the year so far, which is less easy. Why bring that up? Because I wanted you to know how much I toil and suffer for you. Feel guilty? Good, then let's move on. Prepare an ice bath in the largest bowl you have.

Now add the gelatin to the small quantity ice water (swiped from your water bath, of course).

Now add your egg yolks to your sugar in a large bowl...

...and whisk until well-combined.

Combine the half-and-half with the vanilla seeds in a small saucepan, whisk and bring to the boil over medium-high heat.

Slowly pour the boiling half-and-half into the egg mixture, whisking all the while. No, I know I'm not whisking, I'm taking pictures! Gimme a break!

Pour the mixture back into the saucepan...

...and heat the mixture to thicken the yolks. Your target temperature is 196 degrees. Much more than that and the eggs will start to cook into lumps. A lot of very experienced pastry chefs don't use a thermometer during this stage of the procedure, preferring to wait until they see the first bubble, indicating that the custard is about to boil. Then they remove the custard from the heat. They get lumps, but then the mixture is strained anyway. It's really up to you what you'd like to do here.

When the crème anglaise is up to temperature, strain it into a clean bowl.

Now dump in your blob of gelatin — plunk!

...and whisk it in. It will melt very quickly.

Now's a good time to add any flavorings that might complement your preparation. Here I'm adding a little Amaretto, maybe two tablespoons.

After everything is whisked together, place the bowl into the ice water bath. This not only cools the mixture, it helps the gelatin to start setting up.

While the custard is cooling down, turn your attention to the whipped cream. Add the cold heavy cream to the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whip...

...and whip to soft peaks.

Now return to the custard. It should be only slightly warm by now. Stir it gently with your spatula, scraping any congealed custard away from the sides of the bowl. It will re-melt as you stir. Continue to do this as the mixture cools down. The texture you want is a bit hard to describe. You want it thickened slightly, but not so thick that the gelatin makes lumps in the finished product.

You can sort of see what I mean. Look at the edge of the pool of custard where it meets the pan. As I'm stirring and scraping, it's bulging a little.

And when I pick up the implement up out of the custard I'm seeing very faint tracks. This texture is almost like a yogurt drink, like kefir. Make sense?

Now that your custard has started to thicken, remove it from the ice water bath and start folding in the whipped cream...

...until it's all incorporated. (For more on folding, see the tutorial under the Techniques menu).

Done! Now promptly pour the finished Bavarian cream into whatever mold you intend, because the gelatin will set up in earnest before too much longer.

So there you have it. I confess it's a touch involved, but trust me, good Bavarian cream is one of life's great simple pleasures. You will enjoy it.

I hesitated at first to do Bavarian cream because I've had so many bad experiences with it. No, not making it. Eating it. For Bavarian cream is a much abused substance in the baking world. So often it has so much gelatin in it that it comes off like JELL-O pudding. Thankfully, pastry chef Laura N. — another solidly obsessive personality — was kind enough to help me find a formula to get excited about. It's by Chef Roland Mesnier from his book Dessert University and it goes kinda sorta like this:

1.5 ounces (3 tablespoons) cold water
2 1/4 teaspoons gelatin
4 large egg yolks
3 ounces (1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon) sugar
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
Seeds from one vanilla bean
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, cold

Put the cold water in a small bowl, sprinkle on the gelatin and let it stand. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar.

Get a large bowl of ice water ready.

Put the half-and-half in a small saucepan, add the vanilla seeds and whisk to combine. Bring the mixture to the boil, then slowly pour it into the egg mixture, whisking the whole time. Pour the entire mixture back into the saucepan and bring it just to the boil. When the custard starts to bubble, pour it through a fine mesh strainer into another bowl. Whisk in the gelatin and place the bowl in the ice water bath.

While the custard is cooling, whip the cream. Add the cold cream to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whip and whip to the soft peak stage. When the the custard has just started to thicken but is still liquid, fold in the whipped cream. Scrape the mixture into the appropriate mold and chill in the refrigerator for a minimum of 3 hours. It can be kept several days or frozen for up to three months.

I was going to write about how to modify ladyfingers before putting up the tutorial, but I think it'll be easier to show the recipe first, then talk about adjustments. Ladyfingers are a lot easier to make than this series of photos might make them appear. They require a few steps, but the batter is nowhere near as temperamental as, say, macaron or even génoise batter. So go forward fearlessly.

Preheat your oven to 375. Put the room-termperature egg yolks and 2.5 ounces of the sugar in the bowl of your mixer.

Whip until very pale, voluminous and thick. You want the first ribbons that fall off the whip to be meaty, like so:

Add your vanilla and whip another 10-15 seconds.

Scrape the mixture into a large, shallow bowl and sift the flour over it. Sprinkle on a pinch of salt and set the bowl aside.

Now for the meringue. Wash and dry your bowl and whip. Put the room-temperature whites in the bowl...

...and whip until frothy. Add the cream of tartar (this strengthens the foam).

Whip to soft peaks and start adding in the last ounce of sugar.

Whip to the "bird's beak" stage.

Now all we do is combine our foams. Start by simply stirring the first third of the meringue into the bowl containing the yolk mixture and flour. It'll look a little messy at first, be not afraid. What you're trying to do is simply combine everything and lighten the mixture a little. Stir until there are only a couple of spots of unincorporated foam.

Now start your folding in earnest. Fold in the next third of the meringue gently, then the next (for more detailed instructions on folding, see the tutorial under the Techniques menu).

Here's about where you want to be when you're done. Notice that there are a couple of blobs/streaks of meringue still left. That's a good thing.

Scoop the batter into a large fabric pastry bag fitted with just the coupler — no tip — and prepare to pipe! (For more on assembling pastry bags, see the tutorial under the Techniques menu). You want to do this fairly promptly, because the batter will start to lose its fluff. First, drop a spot of batter at each corner of the sheet pan, this will glue down your parchment paper.

See?

Hey! What's that funky parchment paper? Oh just a little something from the folks over at Bulls Eye Baking Company: pre-measured paper that helps you pipe, place and cut a whole bunch of different stuff. Pretty cool, and especially handy for jobs like ladyfingers, where consistency is crucial. (No, they didn't pay me to write that, but they did send me two dozen free sheets, which is serious swag when you consider the economics of blogging). Pipe your ladyfingers about like so:

What you want to do here is pipe them about 1 1/2 inches wide by about 3 1/2 inches long. Go as straight as you can, leaving about 1/4 inch gap between the fingers. But Joe, won't they bake into each other as they rise in the oven? Indeed they will, and that's what I want, for ladyfingers tend to spread out as they bake. If I leave a large gap between them, the result will be flatter, crispier cookies. I want mine taller and more cake-like, so I pipe them close together. The batter will still expand, but what can't spread out must go up, it's one of Pastry's Elementary Laws of Batter.

When piping, be sure to resist the temptation to touch the nozzle-end of the bag to the sheet. Keep it a good half inch or so up in the air so the batter can pour out and puddle a little. Just go slowly, you'll see what I mean.

These aren't perfectly straight, but hey, it's tough to pipe and take pictures at the same time, so cut me some slack! In truth piping isn't my strong suit. The good news is that in the world of ladyfingers, baking redeems many a piping sin. Now just dust on some powdered sugar. You can also use superfine sugar if you like a slightly crustier finish. Up to you.

See? You can hardly tell how lousy I am at piping. Quite nice...and they taste good, too.

This is a fairly standard ladyfinger recipe that produces a nice general-purpose cookie. It's quite similar to other sponge cakes like génoise, except that it contains no butter. You can of course mess with this basic formula to create different effects, and in the next couple of posts I'll tell you how.

4 eggs, room temperature, separated
3.5 ounces (1/2 cup) sugar, separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3.75 ounces (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
small pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
powdered or superfine sugar for finishing

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lubricate with cooking spray. Combine 2.5 ounces of the sugar and the yolks in the bowl of mixer fitted with a whip attachment. Whip on medium-high until the mixture is pale and has almost tripled in volume. Add the vanilla and whip about 10 seconds more. Scrape the mixture into a large shallow bowl. Sift the flour over the mixture, sprinkle on the salt and set the bowl aside while you prepare the meringue.

Wash and dry the mixer bowl and whip (not getting obsessive about making sure every last tiny speck of yolk mixture is washed away). Add the whites to the bowl and whip on medium-high until the whites are frothy. Add the cream of tartar, then whip to soft peaks. Slowly add the last ounce of sugar to the egg whites and whip to stiff peaks (the "bird's beak" stage).

Now then, with a rubber scraper, stir the flour into the egg-sugar mixture until it's almost completely combined. Add a third of the meringue and stir until almost incorporated, leaving a few streaks. Fold in the next third, and the next third, until you completely run out of thirds.

Gently spoon the mixture into a large pastry bag. Pipe onto the parchment in 3"-4" lengths, doing your best to be uniform. You want the individual fingers to be only 1/4" apart from one another so that they spread into each other as they bake. This is important for reasons I'll go into later on. Dust the ladyfingers with sugar and bake about 15 minutes until lightly golden. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully slide the parchment onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Use right away or freeze for up to three months.

Onions are sweet little bulbs. In fact they're unusually so, only their sweetness is hidden in the form of long chains of fructose molecules. Unadulterated, those fructose chains don't register as sweet sensations on our tongues because our taste buds don't have receptors capable of recognizing them. Add to that the fact that they're disguised by stinging compounds that are released when the onion is cut (broken cells allow enzymes and sulfurous defense compounds to mix like chemicals in a glow stick).

But that's an onion in its natural state. Cook it and two remarkable things happen. First, the onion's sulfurous defenses are destroyed, broken up into a variety of savory, almost meaty-tasting molecules. Second, the onion's fructose-based energy stores begin breaking down into shorter-chain sugars that our tongues can recognize. The longer and gentler the heating process, the sweeter and more savory onions become.

Caramelizing onions isn't a complicated thing. The key ingredient is time, something few of us have to spare in modernity. However the rewards are well worth the effort. These take only about an hour, but to my mind they're every bit as good as those you get from much longer cooking times (plus the shorter cooking won't totally suffuse your house with onion odors). One taste and you'll be a convert.

Use caramelized onions on Alsatian onion tarts, on sandwiches, in salads, pastas and relishes. Heck I like'em just on toast. Chopped and mixed into scrambled eggs with a little smoked fish and they're a meal fit for the gods! But I digress.

Start by slicing your onions, six of them. I like the following method for caramelized onions. Peel your onion and slice off the ends.

Then cut the onion in half along its length. Cut the halves into quarters, again along the onion's length.

Now then, for the slicing. The idea is to sliver the onion by cutting it from the outside inward. So, using a nice sharp knife, angle the blade nearly parallel with your cutting board and slice toward the onion's center.

Keep angling the knife upward as you slice until you get to the top.

Do that for all your onion quarters and this is what you get, some very consistent not-too-big, not-too-small slivers. Can you cut the onions cross-wide into rings if you want? Sure. I won't come straight to your house and ridicule you like some other bloggers will. That's what makes me different.

Now then. Apply about half a cup of olive oil to your widest sauté pan or a Dutch oven.

Heat it over medium-high heat until it runs easily across the pan and gives you that shimmery look:

Now add the onions and toss until they're all coated with oil.

Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring every so often to make sure the onions aren't burning. If the edges do start to brown, turn the heat down a little and stir more often. After half an hour they'll look about like this.

Now add a cup of chicken stock and a teaspoon of white wine vinegar (the acid hastens the breakdown of the onion's sugars)

Keep cooking another half an hour until the onions are a rich golden brown and the liquid has evaporated.

Inspired additions at this point include thyme leaves and/or a little anchovy paste, but do what you will. Cool and store in the refrigerator for up to ten days, assuming you can keep from eating them that long.

Nary a year passes in which I don't slow-roast at least a few tomatoes to stash away in the freezer. In the bleak month of February, their bright, concentrated flavors serve as a reminder of happier days past, and yet to come. Before I had a backyard garden, my standard operating procedure was to prowl the produce stands in peak tomato season, hunting for boxes of split or bruised tomatoes that farmers were willing to unload on the cheap. I could usually find someone who'd sell me a half bushel of "seconds" for under a dollar a pound. For you need not have perfect tomatoes to employ this technique. Whatever meat that's left after you cut away the unusable parts will roast up perfectly. As Tom Colicchio points out in his masterful Think Like a Chef, this is also a handy method for intensifying and improving the flavor of out-of-season tomatoes. Start by preheating your oven to 350. Wash and remove the cores from 10 tomatoes:

Slice them in half along their length.

Place the halves in a large bowl. Drizzle them with about 1/4 cup olive oil...

...and about two teaspoons of kosher salt (the salt will draw out a good deal of their moisture).

Give them a stir to coat...

...and lay them out on parchment-lined sheet pans. Don't skip the parchment — that part's important. Why? Because most sheet pans are made from al-yoo-minee-um, and as you likely know, prolonged exposure to aluminum ruins the flavor of tomatoes.

Scatter some thyme sprigs and a full head of un-peeled garlic cloves among the tomatoes.

Roast them in the 350 oven for about 45 minutes, until the skins loosen and crack.

Then simply remove them with a fork.

You'll note quite a bit of liquid in the pan. What to do about it? Apply another sheet pan — gently — to the top...

...and holding the pans with towels or oven mits, pour the liquid into a bowl. This stuff is gold all by itself. Strained, it's perfect for use in light sauces or mixed into risotto broth.

Reduce the oven to 275 and continue to roast for another 3-4 hours, until the tomatoes look like so:

By that time the garlic will be perfectly roasted as well. Use it or store it in the freezer (triple-bagged in freezer bags so as not to let the odor ruin your ice cream) for later use. Pour off any remaining liquid and let the tomatoes cool completely on the pan. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze them. If you can fit the whole sheet pan in your freezer, that's ideal. If not, gently transfer them to a plate or small cutting board and put the whole works in the freezer for a couple of hours. Once frozen, simply put the tomato halves in bags in the freezer, where they'll keep for 6-8 months.

I should note that if you wish to dry the tomatoes further, you can, but stop when the edges start to caramelize. Beyond that point, they'll reduce to not much more than tomato paste.

I've always felt that "buttermilk" is a misleading term. It implies a richer form of ordinary milk, when in fact most buttermilk is about as rich as low-fat milk. That makes a lot of sense when you consider where buttermilk comes from, for it's the liquid that's leftover when fat (butter) is removed from cream. But if that's the case, why is buttermilk so thick? And more than that, why is it tangy? The answer to both questions is: lactic acid bacteria. It's bacteria that make the acid that curdles the proteins that live in the house that Jack built....er, that make buttermilk thick. (Sorry, too much time singing nursery rhymes).

But then where do the bacteria come from, and how do they get into the milk to begin with? The answer is that lactic acid bacteria are pretty much everywhere: in the air, on container surfaces, even in the udders of cows. Except when milk is irradiated, live lactic acid bacteria and milk are essentially inseparable. So the question isn't really where the bacteria come from, but how and why the bacteria are allowed to become so numerous that they affected the taste and texture of milk.

The answer to that is that lactic acid bacteria, like most microbes, will grow and reproduce given food, water, time, temperature and the right pH. Milk provides the food, water and pH to these types of bugs, and, at least in the old days, conditions around the farm provided the time and temperature. For farmers of old had no refrigeration equipment. When a cow was milked, the milk went into a container where it sat, warm and waiting, for bacteria to multiply. Souring can happen in as little as a couple of hours. No time at all in other words, especially when the world was moving at the speed of horse and buggy.

The upshot was that milk and cream were, more often than not, sour. Sour cream makes sour ("cultured") butter, and, by extension, sour buttermilk. It wasn't very long ago at all that people — especially farm hands — loved to drink sour buttermilk. Since it's low in fat it chills well, and because it's nice and tangy, it wakes up the taste buds. Farm wives in the New World and Britain quickly figured out that the acid in buttermilk could be combined with baking soda to leaven quick breads. Thus the buttermilk biscuits and pancakes we associate with country living.

So it's versatile stuff, yet stuff that is poorly understood when so few of us have any real exposure to the day-to-day workings of dairies. Mostly we just buy a jug when a recipe calls for it. However it can be made at home. The easiest way to make buttermilk is to simply make cultured butter. You get it as a by-product. See?

You just knead the butter and pour it off. Knead and pour it off. In time you have quite a bit of buttermilk.

Just store it in an airtight container and use it as you would any other buttermilk. You can even drink it if you like. Home made buttermilk is a good deal milder than commercial buttermilk. Less biting I suppose you'd say. Those who find it too strong can add a little milk to it. Or ice. (Very nice).

But then what if you were making sweet cream butter? That's not made from sour cream, but from fresh cream, which leaves "sweet" buttermilk behind. It tastes just like low-fat milk (because that's essentially what it is). Drink it, or, if you want to make buttermilk from it, add a little soured buttermilk (or sour cream or yogurt) to it...

...stir...

... and let it ferment overnight. All done! I should add here that if you want to make buttermilk exclusively for drinking, you can control the tanginess by only letting it ferment for a few hours. Fermented milk drinks are enjoyed the world over, and for good reason. I think they're a tradition we should bring back here in the States.

Oh, and if you need to make "quick" buttermilk for baking, just add a tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of low fat milk. It's horrible stuff for drinking, but it will work just fine in recipes.

Since I'm planning to gather all my home-dairying posts together and put them in their own section over there on the right, I thought I'd be thorough and put up a separate post on sour cream. Yes, I know I did this yesterday when I posted on cultured butter, it's just how my mind works. Sure it's redundant, but it's for the greater good of education.

I should emphasize here that what I'm making is an animal you won't find in stores: full-fat sour cream. It's decadent stuff, with twice the butterfat that store-bought sour cream contains. Which makes it good. Can I make it with less fat? Yes, though the consistency will be thinner. Crème fraîche has perhaps 25% less fat than full-fat sour cream, but the difference in firmness is noticeable.

Commercial manufacturers of sour cream employ all sorts of interesting tricks to thicken lighter creams to a full-fat consistency. Gelatin, starches, gums and protein-coagulating enzymes among them. Not a big deal, just not the real deal. To get that stuff, you want to do like I do. Pour some heavy cream into a bowl, it doesn't matter how much.

Then add your culture at the rate of about a tablespoon per cup of cream. Any fermented milk product will do: sour cream, buttermilk or yogurt.

Stir it together...

...covered it with plastic and let it sit out overnight. In the morning it will be nice and thick:

However it will get thicker still in the refrigerator. Use it as you would any other sour cream, though remember the higher fat. If you're planning on incorporating it into some sort of batter, you can probably compensate for the extra fat by decreasing any other fat (say, butter or oil) that the recipe calls for. If not, well, you only live once, right?

Cultured butter is now synonymous with European-style butter, however it was once common in the States, at least until the rise of "sweet cream" butter, which is the American standard now. The spread of sweet cream butter was based on a technological innovation: refrigeration. For it was refrigeration that made it possible to get milk from the farmer's barn to the dairy before it soured due to the action of lactic acid bacteria. Americans preferred their butter sweeter, without the slightly tangy, some say "cheesy", aftertaste. However there are times when tang and complexity are very desirable things indeed.

Cultured butter is getting more popular in the US, which is not to say it's available everywhere. So why not make it? All you need is some heavy cream, some other sort of fermented milk product (sour cream, buttermilk or yogurt), a food processor and some time. Since cultured butter is based on soured cream, that's where we need to start.

Here I have a quart of cream. I initially planned to run off to the specialty shop and buy some local bottled cream for this, since I wanted to impress you with how profoundly authentic my life is. Then I remembered what my life is really like and went to Kroger. The results would have been excellent either way.

Next I added my "culture", in this case some buttermilk, though any bacteria-rich milk product hanging around in the fridge (like sour cream or yogurt) would have done nicely. I added about a tablespoon per cup.

I didn't add any more than that because I didn't want to risk diluting the fat content of the mixture. In order to whip cream you need a minimum of 30% milk fat in the mix. This is why I soured my own heavy cream for this project instead of just buying sour cream, because commercial sour creams aren't made from full-fat cream. They're made from light cream (about 15 percent milk fat) thickened with additives like gelatin or guar gum. Wouldn't you just know it? I stirred it up...

...covered it with plastic and let it sit overnight. Presto change-o:

All done, but speaking for myself, I prefer to churn it when it's chilled (makes the finished butter firmer). So off it goes into the fridge for a few hours. I should have taken a picture of what the sour cream looked like coming out of the fridge because it was even thicker than normal commercial sour cream. However when you stir it up the matrix breaks (as with yogurt) and it becomes soupier. Here I poured the stirred sour cream into the bowl of my food processor...

...and switched it on. After about a minute it whipped up to, essentially, sour whipped cream.

Another full minute and it showed signs of breaking.

Another full minute after that and butter grains began to form...

...and finally fifteen seconds later the whole mixture separated into butter and buttermilk.

I strained the whole mess...

...then, in a separate bowl, used a big fork to knead the butter and squeeze out any remaining pockets of buttermilk.

After about a minute of kneading and pouring off buttermilk, I had thirteen ounces of cultured butter.

Now then, I should mention that it's not possible to make butter at home that's "dry" enough to use for laminated pastry like croissants and puff pastry. However this is an excellent general-purpose butter, for spreading on toast and cooking with. I've used my own butter for pie crusts and buttercream, though since it's a bit wetter than commercial butter, the results aren't quite as good compared to the store bought stuff. That said, I had the caché of being able to say I made the butter myself!

UPDATE: Reader Evan adds:

I would dispute your assertion that it is not possible to make “dry” enough butter for puff pastry at home. I myself have inadvertently overdried butter to the point that it was nearly 100% fat. The simplest method is to place your butter wad into a flour sack towel and twist down to squeeze the hell (and buttermilk) out of it. With enough effort (and periodic kneading to homogenize the wad and allow more water to the surface), a great deal of buttermilk can be expelled. I don’t know if this is “dry” enough for puff pastry (perhaps it is too dry!), but it certainly at least as high in fat percentage as store bought butter.

Also, these extra tips:

First, don’t use products with only acidophilus cultures. They won’t grow at low temps, and you’ll wind up with cream that has yogurt in it, rather than a cultured cream. It’s still usable, but will resemble sweet cream butter instead of cultured butter.

Second, I double checked my weights to approximate the fat percentage in my final butter. I started with 16 oz of cream and added 1 oz of yogurt. Assuming Snowville’s heavy whipping cream is 36% butter fat (I can’t find the exact number), there’s 5.76 oz of fat in this cream. My final butter weight, after pressing, was 6.61 oz. There’s some loss involved, obviously, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that all the fat (or most of it) got into my butter. That puts the fat percentage by weight at 87%. Obviously this number is a little high, since I ignored loss and the weight of the yogurt, but I think it’s a pretty good indication that the butter is at least commercial grade in terms of fat percentage. I also obtained about 10 oz of buttermilk – enough for pancakes!

Chantilly cream is a tremendously useful variation on standard whipped cream. Not only is it sweeter and more aromatic thanks to the added sugar and vanilla, it holds up much better than ordinary whipped cream. If you imagine an individual bubble in a whipped cream foam, that bubble's skin is made of water reinforced by a network of proteins and fat molecules (lipids). When heavy cream is first whipped up, those bubbles are reasonably stable. As time passes, however, the water starts to drain away and/or evaporate and the bubbles start to pop. Sugar stabilizes the whip by combining with the water in the cream to form a syrup. Being thicker than water, the syrup is less inclined to drain away. And because sugar is so good at attracting and holding on to moisture, it prevents it from evaporating. The trick is adding the sugar after the foam has begun to form, so the milk proteins have time to uncoil and form their bubble-making network.

Make Chantilly cream by putting a cup of chilled heavy cream in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whip. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and begin to whip.

When the mixture begins to form a foam, but is still fairly soupy — a bit shy of the "soft peak" stage — start sprinkling in an ounce of sugar. Powdered (confectioner's) sugar is best because it dissolves more readily, but regular crystallized sugar will work also.

Whip another 30 seconds or so to soft peaks, or keep going to firm peaks, to a consistency that resembles buttercream. At this stage it can be piped, used to fill meringues or profiteroles, or used as a cake icing.

Chantilly cream can be flavored with all sorts of extracts (citrus are especially nice) as well as liqueurs like Grand Marnier or Cointreau.

What an anticlimax this is going to be after all this talk — just a lot of shots of white things. But that's the reality of fermentation: all the really sexy stuff is happening on scale that's far too small to see. Hmm...maybe I should buy a microscope and become a lactic acid bacteria voyeur. Or are there laws against that? While I ponder, combine your liquid and powdered milks...

...give them a whisk...

...then start heating the mixture. I suggest taking it up to 195 and letting it cool back down to 120, but simply warming the mixture to 120 will also do.

Add your store-bought yogurt or packaged starter (and any flavoring you might want at this point, a little honey or vanilla extract let's say)...

...whisk again...

...and pour the yogurt mix into a container. I use this very tall one for reasons that should be obvious when you get to the next photo...

...because my yogurt-making rig consists of heating pads. Now, I've received quite a lot of feedback on this front. Some people use thermos bottles, some use pots placed on top of heating pads, some use pots wrapped in blankets placed under beds. Whatever method you choose, be it one of those or something else (like an empty oven with a pilot light), do your best to keep the mixture around 110 degrees, but not more that 125.

Between two and eight hours later, you should have something that looks like this:

Pretty darn easy, yes? Yes.

This is essentially the yogurt making process I saw Alton Brown do on one of his shows. The thing I love about it is that it dispenses with those silly and expensive yogurt making devices you see in kitchen gadget shops. Everything you need for this you probably have between your kitchen cabinets and your bathroom closet. So, to make home-made yogurt you’ll need:

1 quart low fat milk
1/2 cup powdered milk
1/4 cup room-temperature yogurt (plain)
Optional: 2 - 4 tablespoons honey, maple syrup or refiner's syrup
Optional: A teaspoon or so of flavoring like vanilla, lemon or coffee extract

To start simply pour the milk into a saucepan with the powdered milk and sweetener (if using). Whisk the mixture gently over medium heat until it registers 195 degrees, maintain the temperature there, taking the pan on and off the heat as needed, for ten minutes (you can skip this heating step if you wish and simply bring the mixture to 120, though you'll get a better texture if you apply the higher heat). Then, pour it into a taller-than-it-is-long container, either a wide-mouthed jar or piece of miscellaneous tupperware. Allow it to cool to 120, then add the yogurt and stir until blended.

After that you simply need to keep the culture as close to 110 degrees as you can for the next 4-10 hours...which is easier said than done since most of our modern-day kitchen devices are designed to prevent microbial growth, not encourage it. You’ll need an instant-read or probe thermometer to take regular readings.

Some people like an electric oven for this job, assuming it can be set to 110 degrees or so, though most ovens do a very poor job of maintaining steady low temperatures and sudden spikes in temperature (when the oven turns on) can be disastrous. Other people like an unlit gas oven (assuming it has a pilot light) and a warm water bath, though the water needs to be changed periodically to keep the temperature up.

Me, I like the hi-tech approach that Mr. Brown suggested on one of his show, whereby you wrap your culture jar in one or two electric heating pads using rubber bands (or a larger container that you can tightly stuff the whole works in). Careful regulation of heat is critical, since the bacterial cultures that make yogurt are extremely fussy. They’ll die if they’re heated much over 120, and slow down considerably if they cool much below 105. More on this in the tutorial.

This preparation occupies a sort of middle ground between a coating and a frosting. Whatever you call it, it's good. Begin by putting your chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. This is mostly milk chocolate chips, though since I had a handful (about an ounce) of bittersweet chips in a mostly-empty bag, I threw those in too.

Apply ten seconds of full power, then stir. Apply another ten seconds. Stir. Continue like this until your chocolate looks about like so, then stop. Stir it the rest of the way until it's completely smooth. It'll take a few minutes.

When the chocolate is completely melted, let it cool until it's barely warm to the touch. Which is to say, about as cool as you can get it while still having it flow. Put it in a bowl with the soft butter...

...and beat about a minute until smooth, scraping once or twice. Now here I should mention that since I had no heat in my house this weekend, my implements and bowl were very cold. The upshot was that some of the chocolate solidified the instant it hit the metal, creating chunks of solid chocolate in the frosting. What did I do? I soaked a small kitchen towel in hot tap water and applied it to the sides of the bowl as the machine ran. The small amount of heat warmed the mixture enough that the lumps melted out. Since that action also warmed (and thinned) the frosting, I beat it an extra minute to cool it down.

Then I promptly applied to the cake. It firmed immediately in my 50-degree house.

Normally I like to work with frozen cake layers. However for reasons that should be fairly obvious right now, you can't do that with this kind of frosting. Have the layers at or close to room temperature as you build the cake, and apply the frosting quickly since it will set up fast...especially in a house with a broken furnace.

This is based on a simple chocolate frosting that appears in the Cake Bible. The ingredients are essentially just chocolate and butter. What's nice about this approach, aside from its amazing simplicity, is it's texture which is quite rigid, much like having a chocolate bar draped over a chocolate cake. It's the perfect thing for little 6-year-old Josephine, who loves chocolate in solid form but is suspicious of creamy frostings. Don't ask me why, kids are like that.

For all those tempted to turn this frosting into a chocolate epicure's delight, I'll warn you now that while you can substitute a proportion of darker, higher quality chocolates for the cheaper milk chocolate chips, the effect will be an even harder, more rigid exterior once it firms. Too much dark chocolate and you won't be able cut the cake without having half the coating shatter, especially if you lay it on thick. The pedestrian approach, trust me, is the way to go. The formula is:

8 ounces (two sticks) softened butter
24 ounces (two bags) milk chocolate chips

To prepare the frosting, pour the chips into a microwave-safe bowl and melt by zapping the frosting for 10 seconds, stirring, and applying another 10-second zap until the chocolate is mostly melted. Stir it for several minutes, using the residual heat to completely melt the chips. Allow the chocolate to cool until it is barely warm to the touch. Combine both the butter and the melted chocolate in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat together for about a minute or more until the frosting is smooth. Apply to a cake before it starts to firm. The recipe may well make more than you need. Cupcakes anyone?

Rose Levy Beranbaum has done a great deal to popularize the so-called "one bowl" mixing method. She employs it in virtually all her cake recipes, and these chocolate layers are no different. Start by combining the boiling water and cocoa powder:

Whisk until smooth and set aside to cool completely.

Once that's done, prepare your pans and set the oven to 350. Next, sift your flour into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle.

Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir on low to combine.

The last step before mixing is to prepare your egg mixture. Combine 1/4 of the cooled cocoa mixture with your room-temperature eggs...

...and wreck'em.

Now it's time to mix. Add the butter and the rest of the cocoa mixture to the dry ingredients.

Stir on low for perhaps 30 seconds to moisten everything. Then turn the mixer up to medium and beat for 1 1/2 minutes until the batter is creamy and light in color. Scrape the bowl, then start adding the egg mixer in three additions.

Beating the batter on medium for 20 seconds after each addition of egg, scraping the bowl well afterward. When all the egg mixture is incorporated, scrap the batter into your layer pans. You'll be putting about 1 lb. 5 ounces of batter in each. Spread it even with a spatula.

Bake for 25-35 minutes until the layers are springy to the touch. Cool the pans on a rack for 10 minutes...

...then turn them out onto a greased rack for ten minutes. I'll give you a word of warning: these layers can be a bit sticky on their surfaces. As you can see, I lost some of the skin of the layers when I peeled off the parchment. This is not a big deal, just don't leave the turned-out layers on the rack much more than 10 minutes, or you may have a more serious sticking problem on your hands.

Once cool, wrap the layers in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator.

UPDATE: Reader Chana says:

One bowl? I count three for that chocolate cake (cocoa, flour, eggs), and then there's the measuring cup for the hot water, and the sifter. It's par for the course (of course), but a one-bowl cake it ain't. Just saying.

Very true, Chana, the terminology isn't especially apt in this particular case, but that's just what it's called. Broadly, the "one bowl" method applies to a mixing method that incorporates the butter directly into the dry ingredients before the wet ingredients are added. So OK, this recipe adds more than just the butter to the dry ingredients. You've got me there too. But you know, this mixing strategy is also known as "quick method", though I'll grant you it isn't especially quick in this case, either. But then it's also called the "blending method." Happy now? Sheesh!

I wasn't expecting to be back in Rose Levy Beranbaum territory so soon, but when you're talking about the great American layer cake, it's clear who the go-to lady is. Here's her classic chocolate butter cake, adapted from the Cake Bible:

2.25 ounces unsweetened cocoa (Dutch process)
8.25 ounces boiling water
3 large eggs (at room temperature)
2.25 teaspoons vanilla extract
8.25 ounces sifted cake flour
10.5 ounces granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
8 ounces unsalted butter, softened

First, in a small bowl, combine the boiling water and cocoa and whisk to combine. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350 and prepare two 9" layer pans according to the How to Prepare a Cake Pan for Baking post under the Techniques menu. Combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a beater attachment and stir on low 30 seconds to combine. Crack the eggs into a small bowl.

When the cocoa mixture is cool, mix your batter. Add 1/4 of the cocoa mixture and the vanilla to the eggs and whisk lightly to combine. Set aside. Add the butter and remaining cocoa mixture to the dry ingredients and mix on low 30 seconds or so until all the ingredients are moistened. Scrape the bowl. Turn up the mixer to medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes until lighter in color and smooth. Add the egg mixture 1/3 at a time, beating 20 seconds between each addition and scraping the bowl down. Divide the batter into prepared pans and bake 25 to 35 minutes until the centers of the layers spring back lightly when touched. Let cool ten minutes then turn the layers out onto greased racks for 10 more minutes. Flip the layers right-side up to cool the rest of the way. Wrap airtight or freeze if you wish.

Not being a rocket scientist, but rather one who pretends to be one, I'm always impressed when the real thing walks into the room. Here reader Aaron, an apprentice chocolatier who really has a handle on how to make a suerior ganache, weighs in. All those who aspire to use ganache to make candies like truffles, you'll want to pay close attention.

If I may submit a few tips on making a ganache. In my opinion, it is actually easier to think of a ganache as an emulsion, rather than as a crystal. While crystallization does play a part in creating the perfect ganache, a proper emulsion plays a far larger part.

The bloom you see on the top of a ganache is like the drops of oil you see floating on an improperly made vinaigrette. Add some mustard, whip it up, and voila, no drops. Ganache contains mainly water and fat so at best, the mix is unstable. Add cocoa solids, lecithin and milk solids and the strangers at the party start talking.

The best weapon employed in creating the perfect ganache? A stick blender. Use the mixer to emulsify at 91.5 degrees Fahrenheit (33C), not below to avoid fat coalescence, and make sure that when mixing, no air is incorporated (blade cavitation is bad news, so keep it immersed). Mix until the ganache is super shiny with no fat smears and it just starts to appreciably thicken.

I have never used clarified butter and I don't know why recipes call for it. Butter in it's natural state is the perfect emulsifier (Mcgee wrote about this in some long article about Hollandaise). With clarified butter, one benefits by lowering moisture activity, extending shelf life and and gaining the ability to add the butter with the hot cream. One loses powerful emulsifying agents, fresh taste and a bit of je ne sais quois (I think it's called melty-ness). The trick is to let the ganache cool to 93 degrees (34C) before adding ROOM TEMP butter and them emulsify. It's not good if the butter goes in, melts and separates, and then ruins the emulsion.

The ganache should never rise about 93 degrees (34C) so as to not lose the temper in the chocolate. Between 89 degrees and (32C) and 73 (23C), it should not be touched. And then below 73 (23C) it can be molded. Always enrobe above 91.5 (33C). To summarize:

1. Boil cream and sweeteners
2. Infuse flavorings
3. Pour over tempered, room temp chocolate
4. Let sit for 5-10
5. Stir, starting in the center to get an emulsion and then moving outward
6. Add butter when cooled to 93 degrees (34C)
7. Zap with immersion blender until shiny
8. Pipe at this point if desired
9. Don't touch while cooling (no fridge)
cut at this point

Fabulous stuff. Thanks Aaron! I'll file this under the permanent ganache tutorial for future reference.

Any time you set out to make cake — especially a foam-based sponge cake like joconde — it's very important that you have all your ingredients pre-measured and at-the-ready. You also want to have all your ingredients at room temperature.

Begin by brushing melted butter on your parchment-lined sheet pans. If necessary, trim your parchment a bit so lies completely flat on the pan.

Now for the egg foam. Whip your six egg whites to soft peaks, then add the sugar.

Keep whipping until they're at stiff peaks like so:

Remove the finished meringue from the mixer bowl to another bowl.

Rinse and dry the mixer bowl, and sift your powdered sugar into it.

Add your eggs and ground almonds...

...and with the paddle attachment, beat the mixture on medium-high until it's light and foamy, about three minutes.

Now add your flour and stir on low for just a few moments until it's gone.

Now it's time to incorporate the meringue. Fold it in, adding the foam in three additions. Use the largest rubber scraper you've got.

Fold until there are just a couple of small lumps left, then fold in the melted, clarified butter. The mixture will look about like so:

Pour the batter into your prepared pans, dividing it evenly. If you're the type that likes to use a scale for this sort of thing — and I am — you'll pour about 18 ounces of batter into each pan. Spread the batter as evenly as you can, paying special attention to the corners.

Bake 6-9 minutes, until the joconde layers look about like this:

Let cool for maybe a minute, then using a sharp knife, gently loosen the cake from the sides of the pan. If you can, lift the corners of the parchment up a bit to make sure the joconde sheet is loose all the way around.

Apply a fresh sheet of parchment to the top of the layer.

Flip the pan over...

Remove the pan and very gently and carefully peel the parchment off the top of the cake.

Flip the parchment sheet over and put it back on the cake, then move the layers to a wire rack and cool about 15 minutes. Done!