The Lady Baltimore might have been the Dubai Tower of its day, but it is of course nothing compared to the cakes one routinely sees being fashioned on Ace of Cakes. The average American wedding cake can be several feet in height nowadays, though even these giants are miniscule compared to some modern Japanese wedding […]
READ ONThat’s a good question — thanks very much to reader Steve T. (who’s really putting me on the spot here). It’s a good question because the names “torte” and “gâteau” are greatly abused in America. Too often one finds recipes in books or magazines for items that are really layer cakes, but because they have […]
READ ONThis blog is becoming increasingly international, which is good, but is making it increasingly hard for me to snow my audiences. Here’s what Thomas has to say from Vienna: Hi Joe, You hit the nail on the head with your post about baking powder vs. egg foam in the Old World…a good and fun read. […]
READ ONWhat was the biggest cake of the Classical Period of American cake baking? Doubtlessly, that distinction belonged to the giant Lady Baltimore, a three-layer, cherry-and-fig flavored, nut-covered behemoth that hailed from Charleston, South Carolina. Depending on how thick the buttercream was piled on, these cakes could be anything up to ten inches tall. Why didn’t […]
READ ONSo where was I? Oh yes, the middle of the nineteenth century. Ingredients are plentiful and leavening has been (mostly) perfected. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, which means home ovens are being churned out by the freight car load, to say nothing of implements and pans. By 1870 the New World was primed […]
READ ONIt’s been pointed out that I’m a typographical error machine this week. What can I say, my proof-reading department is woefully underpaid. You RSS readers get the worst of it, since I can change the posts themselves when I see (or am informed of) a typo, but can’t do anything about what’s already in your […]
READ ONWhen last we left cake (yesterday) it was the Middle Ages, and cakes were not terribly different from what we know today as fruitcakes, heavy with ingredients, but leavened with yeast. This began to change in the 1700’s, which, as some of you regular readers may remember, is the period we know at joepastry.com as […]
READ ONIf by that you mean not just a round, flat thing that’s edible, but a sweetened and/or enriched bread, then there is some traceable history there. The Egyptians were known to make good cake, handy as they were with yeast, and wont to add things like honey to their breads. According to ancient records the […]
READ ON