Custards run the gamut from sauces and flans to cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes. What all these preparations have in common is that they are semi-solid gels that use egg proteins to set what would otherwise be rather runny liquids (this is of course less true of something like a flourless, whose ingredients are solids […]
READ ONFlourless chocolate cake has a unique feeling on the tongue. At first it does feel almost floury and cake-like, but rapidly melts into a luscious, molten pool. The density of the cake (and all the fat) prolongs the sensation, meaning a little goes a long way (though not if you’re either one of my daughters…then […]
READ ONThat scene from Marathon Man, I’m sure, wrecked the livelihood of many a respectable dentist. Talk about a classic. Though it’s a pity such a realistic torture sequence could not have come later in Dustin Hoffman’s career, say after he’d done films like Ishtar, Outbreak, Finding Neverland, and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. The scene could […]
READ ONThis cake is a prime example of Joe Pastry’s Inverse Law of Ingredient Dynamics, which states that as the number of ingredients in a given recipe goes down, the importance of the quality of those ingredients and the techniques by which they are handled goes up. There’s a great misconception out there that because a […]
READ ONThis ultimate no-fail non-stick technique can be applied to any sort of pan or project — standard layer cakes, flourless cakes, fruitcakes, brownies, you name it. It’s incredibly easy to do provided you have some parchment paper on hand. Flat sheets are the easiest to work with. I order pre-cut half-sheet pieces from King Arthur […]
READ ONA flourless chocolate cake is a great time to let your inner chocolate snob shine through. Assuming you decide not to use any added sugar or flavorings, the only thing you’ll really taste in this cake is chocolate, so it makes sense to get finicky. This is one of those times the home baker has […]
READ ONNo. Yes. It depends. On what? On how how much you beat your eggs. If you want a denser and ultra-smooth custard consistency, you’ll scarcely want to beat them at all. However if you want a little more “cake-iness”, which I do since it’s called a “cake” after all, you’ll want to beat them quite […]
READ ONIt’s a custard. A very dense custard to be sure, one that can seem almost brownie-like depending on its execution (and there are many, many different ways to make a flourless chocolate cake). But then it can’t be a brownie because it contains no flour, in fact no dry ingredients of any kind. In that […]
READ ONIt’s past Derby time here in Kentucky and we haven’t had a late-spring freeze. Which means that unlike last year, when a deep, hard frost hit us just as all the trees were flowering, the outlook for fruit is excellent. Add to that all the rain we’ve had and it looks like it’ll be a […]
READ ONA positively devastating indictment of corn ethanol in today’s Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/page/opinion.html). I’ll get lots of grief for putting this up like I always do when I cross my friends here in the corn belt, but I simply can’t help myself. Raw ingredient prices (especially flour, butter and milk) are simply too high. There […]
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