Now what?

We’re well into the week and I’m done with s’mores, so we need a quickie. I’ve been craving — and I mean seriously craving — caramel pumpkin bars. They are, no exaggeration, my favorite “pastry” ever. They work like pumpkin pie, only they’re flat. Plus, they’re easy. I’m gonna go for it.

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The Curried Couch

For about a year now, I’ve been trying to locate some inexpensive furniture for my garage/office out here in the back 40 of the Pastry family estate. What’s a garage/office? you may well ask. Well it’s more comfortable than it sounds. The previous owners of our house ran a hot sauce business out of this […]

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Assembling ze S’more

It’s all well and good to prepare an assortment of premium homemade s’more components, but putting them together, that’s the critical last step. It can be a bit tricky. Certainly, given the freshness of the ingredients, there are more than a few folks out there who’d be just as happy to whip together a plain, […]

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Marshmallow Tip

This from reader Ellen on making your confectionary life easier: One trick I found that works for cutting marshmallows is to use a pizza cutter. It slides through sticky fluff like a dream. Thanks Ellen!

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Why are marshmallows cylindrical?

I had a short email conversation with a reader over the weekend. She’d commented on how odd my cubical marshmallows appeared, which prompted my reply: well, what shape should they be? For marshmallow is like fudge, or peanut butter or jelly: it doesn’t have a “shape”, per se. Marshmallows are cylindrical in the grocery store […]

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Gobble Gobble

Quite a lot of spirited discussion after yesterday’s post on turkey! I received about twenty emails on the subject, which I won’t post for fear of turning my blog into a Thanksgiving discussion board. Overall the emails broke down into two camps: those who essentially said “Rock on Joe!” and others who took offense, mostly […]

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Talking Turkey

I know, it’s not baking and pastry-related, however there were two separate articles on preparing the perfect turkey in this week’s New York Times. Add those to the ones in all the cooking magazines, plus the ones that are being published even as we speak in daily papers all over the country, and you’ve got […]

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