A reader points out that dacquoise isn’t always thin, sometimes it can be as thick as a cake layer. Very true, however there’s a limit to how much meringue I can stand in one bite. I’ve seen dacquoise and ganache pastries that look like hamburgers — with the dacquoise as the bun. Kind of a […]
READ ONIt’s hard to track the precise evolution of the molten chocolate, or “fallen” chocolate, or chocolate “lava” cake. I first tasted one probably seven or eight years ago at one of the wife’s favorite New York dining spots, Verbena in Grammercy Park. Then it was a molten chocolate savarin cake, which is to say, made […]
READ ONThis week’s pastry combines two of my favorite things: the creamy luxury of fine chocolate and the brittle snap of hard, intractable science. A near and dear friend, and one of the world’s greatest living chocolate fiends, is headed down here to Louisville for the weekend. And I know what she’ll be expecting: a delicate […]
READ ONWhat’s the best way to melt chocolate? It seems that just about every pastry maker has a different opinion about this. Some people wouldn’t think of using anything other than a double boiler, others are just as happy with a microwave. Me, I’m a microwave man, since it’s faster and it leaves fewer dishes to […]
READ ONI only made the ghosts so I can’t speak to both varieties, but they came out pretty well. The trick is to make your little rounds of cake small enough so you don’t have to put a giant heap of buttercream (or frosting) on top to make their little pointy heads. Here’s where you’ll thank […]
READ ONA friend and occasional reader had a great time making fun of me over the weekend for my references to Westphalia and the 30 Years’ War. He found them, how can I put this? Abstruse. Arcane. Nerdy. The only thing to say to that is Welcome to the world of Joe Pastry. Yet I can’t […]
READ ONAnybody out there know what “petit four” means? I ask because I’ve never found anyone who can tell me definitively. The words literally mean “little oven” in French, but that’s where just about every explanation I know of ends. It’s speculated that in French kitchens of old (and I mean manor manor and/or palace kitchens) […]
READ ONThough it’s never been proved, ergotism has long been suspected as a cause (or partial cause) of one of the strangest phenomena ever recorded in Europe: dancing mania. One of its first documented instances was recorded in the French town of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1374. There, for some reason, a crowd of people began dancing ecstatically […]
READ ONYou got a problem with that? I suppose I frequently do, though mostly with her recipes. In general I don’t like the corner-cutting she does (especially in the icings department), and I think most of her cake and candy recipes are poorly tested. However, if you don’t think she employs the greatest team of food […]
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