This is just standard cake syrup but with a little zing. Remember that cake syrup is made by combining water and sugar 2-1 by volume and then heating it until the sugar dissolves. To make coffee cake syrup combine 1 cup of water with half a cup of sugar and add about three tablespoons of […]
READ ONIt’s been pointed out that for a guy who calls himself Joe Pastry, I really don’t do that much pastry. Like real French pastry shop pastry. That’s fair criticism, since it happens to be true. So this week I thought I’d bust out my frilliest recipe book and make a little Opera cake. What’s that […]
READ ONPastry chef Camille weighs in on pastry cones from Paris: I make a cornet (pastry cone) pretty much the same way (sans tape, bien sur) but i never fuss around with getting a perfect triangle to begin with. I take a regular, rectangular piece of parchment, full-sheet sized, and fold and cut until I have […]
READ ONGot some very useful email in over the weekend about those Mexican sweets. First this from reader Chuck: Those things in the glass case are geletinas or gelitines. Mixed flavors with nuts, ect. Then Mike (an American living in Mexico) chimed in with this: I’ll take an educated guess and say that the photo of […]
READ ONThe little woman (the very little woman…she’s 4′ 11″ and maybe 95 pounds in hiking boots), just returned from a trip down south of the border. She was ostensibly there to conduct scholarly research, but her real purpose — being a Pastry — was to eat. She succeeded. Below are pictures of just a few […]
READ ONSomeday someone will write a book on the history of food coloring litigation. Well, no, I guess they won’t…but a very, very interesting read it might have been. For the battle over food coloring is a microcosm of a much broader fight that’s still going on: between small local food producers and big food manufacturers. […]
READ ONEver since I put up the post about assembling a plastic pastry bag, I’ve been besieged by requests for instructions on how to make a traditional paper pastry bag or “cone.” I confess I don’t use these much, though they’ve been the #1 tool of every professional or semi-professional cake and/or cookie decorator I’ve ever […]
READ ONI tell you, some days I am simply in awe of the power of the internet as a communications tool. Yesterday I put up a question from an American food researcher on an obscure baking topic — the origin of poolish bread preferments — and today I have a response from a preferment scholar living […]
READ ONGiven the technical breakdown of the last week, it’s taken me a while to get around to my penultimate photograph. However you can see that even using simple powdered sugar-and-water icings, the home baker can produce some pretty darn nice cookies. This is not to say the simple approach doesn’t have a few drawbacks. Note […]
READ ONJim C. (from the post below) had a special request when he emailed me over the weekend. He asked if I’d put a question out to the joepastry.com readership at large about poolish starters. That question is: is the “poolish” starter really a Polish invention? It’s thought to be, given how similar the words are, […]
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