It has surprisingly little when you consider that citrus curds have been popular for about 125 years and shortbread for many (many) more than that. You’d have thought that somebody, especially somebody living somewhere in Britain, would have put those two things together in pie form. It seems, however, that this particular somebody never did. […]
READ ONWhen you’ve got a hold of a quality lemon bar, you know it. Last night the missus took a bite of one of these and said: “it’s like I’m sitting under a lemon tree in the springtime, and the sun is shining on me.” That’s about the size of it. Start by laying out all […]
READ ONScanwiches. Ya gotta love the simplicity and single-mindedness of this little online effort: lessons in the fine art of sandwich making. I’m really hungry now.
READ ONLemon bars have been much abused the last couple of decades. Once quite rare, they’re now a staple of coffee shops and fast-casual chains like Panera Bread and Corner Bakery. Though I wonder: are those thick yellow slabs next to the pile of fist-sized brownies really lemon bars? An argument could be made that they […]
READ ONA great lemon bar should have a no-nonsense tart-sweet curd filling above and a flaky-yet-firm short bread crust below. The two together create an experience that approaches religious. The secret to lemon bars isn’t in the ingredients per se (a top-notch lemon curd filling is defined more by what you leave out of it than […]
READ ONReader Lee comments on the A Word of Warning post below: I wonder if you aren’t conflating two separate trends — one, the prairie ethic of making do with what is at hand, the other, the post-War industrialized-processed food glut that, in many ways, was the opposite of the first. I admire the prairie baker […]
READ ONGREAT questions, reader Steve! Butterscotch is a candy that’s made by cooking sugar to the “hard crack” stage of 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The key point of difference between butterscotch and regular candy is that at least half of the sugar employed is brown sugar. Butterscotch has no actual “scotch” in it of course, instead its […]
READ ONThat from reader Chana. In fact there is, it’s simply called “evaporated milk” and it can usually be found in the same section of the grocery store. Evaporated milk was a later development than (sweetened) condensed milk for the simple reason that the manufacturing is more difficult. Without the bacteria-killing sugar in the mix, there […]
READ ONThat from reader Robert L., and what a good question it is. I myself once wondered who ever thought to “condense” milk, sugar it heavily, and deliver it in syrup form in cans. The whole idea just seemed screwy to me. In fact several inventors in the early 19th Century spent years trying to develop […]
READ ON7-Layer bars (aside from “dirt” pudding) are my favorite guilty pleasure. You can throw these together in as little as a few minutes provided you have all the ingredients on-hand. I find a parchment-lined baking sheet is the easiest when it comes to de-panning 7-layer bars. You’ll want to trim two sheets so they’ll lay […]
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