The Food Network sent me a press release announcing that there will soon be casting calls for the The Next Food Network Star. Go to www.foodnetwork.com/star if you’re interested, just promise me that if you do go all the way and get your show, you won’t let me down by making wimpy caramel.
READ ONA good question came in today about caramel making. Specifically: why add water to the sugar at the outset of the caramel making process when you’re just going to evaporate it all out anyway? The reason is to protect the sugar from heating up too fast and burning. True, that’s what we want to get […]
READ ONWhen Mrs. Pastry got home from her late class last evening she went, in characteristic style, straight over to the caramel pan and stuck her nose in. “Wow, what’s in here?” she asked in reaction to the rich, floral odors the dark caramel gave off. “Nothing but sugar,” I said, “with cream added afterward to […]
READ ONNow THAT’s what I call a caramel sauce. Deep dark and lip-smackingly bitter-sweet. Perfect for a home-made caramel ice cream or a batch of caramel-pumpkin bars. Of course not everybody likes their caramel this dark and smoky. To me, though, those people are nuts. Of course nobody’s saying you have to cook yours this long. […]
READ ONKnock-out sticky buns, apple tarts and caramel ice creams cannot exist without knock-out caramel and/or caramel sauce. Or so sayeth…well, me. Too many pastry makers treat it as a detail, unworthy of serious scrutiny (especially some conspicuous folks on TV). That’s a cup of sugar and a quarter cup of water swirled over high heat […]
READ ONYours truly has been coming under quite a bit of fire lately for the way I use — or don’t use — recipes. Specifically, that I talk about spreading “some brown sugar” here, “some caramel” there and don’t give exact quantities (to say nothing of recipes or visual instructions). What can I say? My background […]
READ ONGot a comment over the weekend that while the cinnamon rolls and sticky buns I made look inviting, they are rather small — not at all what people are used to these days, either here in the states or in places like Sweden where the truly giant bun is said to have been invented. To […]
READ ONIf this doesn’t light’em up at the office, nothing will. Sticky buns are a simple variation on the cinnamon roll idea. The difference is they’re proofed and baked on a layer of caramel, then flipped over à la upside-down cake. I like to make them in a cast iron skillet since to me the sticky […]
READ ONYou have to hand it to those Arabian spice traders, they really knew how to protect a brand. When asked by ancient Greek tradesmen where their cinnamon came from, they spun an elaborate tale about the cinnamon bird, a flying beast so large it could easily carry off a man, and which built its nest […]
READ ONTurns out I missed Pauline’s deadline yesterday. However the critical detail there is that Pauline lives in New Zealand, so…talk about being behind the eight ball. She was on her way to work before I even got to writing up the post yesterday afternoon. But, like any intrepid baker, she carried on without the benefit […]
READ ON