This 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 […]
READ ONThis week I have a yen for some serious chocolate. And what delivers a chocolate body blow better than a flourless chocolate cake? Great flourless cakes are made of just three things: chocolate, eggs, butter. Nothing else is needed if the chocolate is truly spectacular — and why make a cake with anything less? The […]
READ ONI’ve been getting a steady stream of inquires on the brick oven, like…when are you going to get off your butt and do more baking in that thing? The trouble is I have a fuel issue…i.e., I don’t have enough. Being so focused on building the thing it didn’t occur to me how much darn […]
READ ONFile this under the “you know it’s spring when…” category. This is a particularly perfect specimen, made by the immensely talented Grazina (a.k.a. “Gina”) Biciunas-Santoski, owner of Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant on south Halsted street in Chicago. I just happened to be there for breakfast yesterday morning, wolfing down my usual order of kugelis (a […]
READ ONIt’s your lucky day. Today is Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of the battle of Puebla in 1862, when Mexican forces defeated the occupying French under Napoleon III. So the legend goes, the bulk of the fighting was done by simple Mexican farmers armed with nothing more than rakes and shovels. History has since revealed […]
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