The thing I love about that Sarah Moulton caramel sauce recipe is that it gives you just enough for one standard-sized squeeze bottle, plus at least an extra tablespoon or so for….oh who the heck knows? Spreading over an apple slice that your daughter didn’t finish, dunking a banana in, or just scraping up on […]
READ ONWhy is it that you have to take at least a little whack at Emeril every time you mention him? I dunno, but ya just gotta. Bam!
READ ONI’m heavily inspired by yesterday’s covered bridge festival experience to try to stretch the fair food season just a little further. So why not fritters? The fritter is a time-tested restaurant go-to, especially for urban pastry chefs looking to inject a little country authenticity into their dessert menus. The corn fritters weren’t half bad yesterday, […]
READ ONBut then non-wheat substances aren’t the only way to “shorten” a dough. You can also do it with fat, which coats the ends of gluten molecules, keeping them from bonding to one another. This is the science behind what are known as “short crusts” and “short breads”, and where we in America get the word […]
READ ONReading yesterday’s post That Mysterious Secret Ingredient, a good friend (and baker) observed that I wasn’t terribly clear about the role that non-flour substances (like corn starch and almond flour) play in doughs of various types. In particular, she felt that the term “tenderizer” sounded misleading. Since I hate to confuse simple matters, I’ll try […]
READ ONI’ve had cause for celebration lately, so I went out this afternoon and bought a new baking book, one I’ve been hearing quite a lot about. It’s Baking by Dorie Greenspan, and if you haven’t heard of Dorie Greenspan, you need to stay in more. Baking. There really aren’t enough superlatives to describe Dorie Greenspan […]
READ ONBack home in Chicago last week I had an especially good apple tart. The interesting thing is that it was mostly empty, being a very high-lipped little thing (probably made in an individually-sized springform pan) with just a few sliced apples at the bottom. The paucity of apples was compensated for, however, on the one […]
READ ONAgain, there’s not a lot to say here except that depending on the ripeness of your figs you’ll want to be judicious about your macerating time. As any fig lover can tell you, a good ripe fig is not only sweet and delectable, it falls apart quite easily. Part of the reason is that it’s […]
READ ONThe wife needed a little break from her hectic back-to-school schedule this weekend, so we arranged some overnight babysitting and hit the road for Corbin, Kentucky. It’s a little stretch of nowhere off interstate 75 that would be completely forgettable if it weren’t for two things. First, there’s the moonbow, an astronomical phenomenon that can […]
READ ONIt’s all well and good to assemble an assortment of premium s’more ingredients: home-made graham crackers and marshmallows, perhaps some exotic chocolates. But how to put them all together, that’s the final critical step. Certainly there are more than a few folks out there who’d be just as happy to whip together an unheated chocolate […]
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