Most decorated cookies — essentially just butter cookies — suffer from one of two basic problems. Either they’re so tender that they crumble as they’re being decorated, or they’re so tough they’re barely edible. A happy medium must therefore be found, for holiday and/or special occasion cookies need to look good AND taste good. This […]
READ ONI’ve received so many requests for decorative, iced holiday cookies over the last two years or so, I can scarcely count them. I’ve put them off because I’m simply not much of a decorator. But the request list is the request list. Here goes!
READ ONReader Cathy wrote in over the weekend, apparently concerned that my reference to being “wiped out” last week meant I was tiring of blogging in general. By no means. Someday, of course, joepastry.com will come to an end, and I’ll vanish in a cloud of cocoa powder and typographical errors. But not today…and no time […]
READ ONHonestly, it’s never occurred to me to combine the two. However judging from some of the emails I’ve received over the last week, I may be in the minority. Reader Bronwyn (from New Zealand) writes: I must say, “heated with big slabs of cream cheese on top” seems a very odd way to eat Christmas […]
READ ONThis weekend the world, very quietly, lost its greatest humanitarian. And I mean that literally. Superlatives like “greatest humanitarian” come cheap nowadays. Heck someone probably used the term on the podium at the MTV Awards last night. However I’m pretty sure no one in attendance there had really saved more lives than any human being […]
READ ONJennifer over at Pastry Methods and Techniques (link to the right) writes: My husband just began his fruitcake baking extravaganza on Sunday–the first two loaves are aging in the closet, getting sprayed with brandy every few days. He’ll bake anywhere between 2-6 for the next several weekends and give them out as Christmas gifts. He […]
READ ONActually, I didn’t intend to take one, but I’m being called out of town on business the next two days. Combine that with a short week and the result is pretty much a wipeout. And now that I think about it, I’m pretty much wiped out myself. Back on Monday with more cockamamie ideas!
READ ONNow is the time to make and bake your loaves. This way, they’ll have plenty of time to mellow by the end of the year. Three or four months does wonders for a nice, sweet, whiskey-soaked fruitcake. What, don’t believe me? Try it. You’ll never eat a fresh-baked fruitcake again!
READ ONSince jelly doughnuts have been the topic the last many days, it only seems fitting that I re-post this recipe, for leftover jelly doughnut bread pudding. I know, I know, “over the top” doesn’t begin to describe a preparation like this…heavy cream plus sugar plus egg yolks plus jelly doughnuts…my blood pressure goes up just […]
READ ONA post by a particularly influential StumbleUpon member pushed my daily page views through the roof over the weekend. Saturday, a touch over 20,000 people stopped by the site, nearly 54,000 in total for the three-day weekend (which, if memory serves, is more than the total circulation of the The New York Times these days). […]
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