Author: joepastry

Whip It

Hand-whipped cream is one of those things that truly does come out better than machine-whipped. The reason: more air is incorporated, which makes the end product lighter and fluffier. Feel like building biceps?

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The Milk Fat Miracle

It’s hard to let a mention of whipped cream go by without remarking on what an amazing thing it is: a liquid that can be beaten into a kind-of solid using nothing but a little elbow grease. Pretty cool. There are food writers out there who credit its “invention” to a pastry chef by the […]

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The Tuile and the Horn

Cream horns. Boy do people ever overdo it with cream horns. You see them stuffed with all kinds of crazy things: custards, curds, puddings, cream cheese, marscapone, jams and mousses. What ever happened to the cream? But then what ever happened to the horn? Why are nearly all cream horn shells made from puff pastry […]

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Tuile History

There isn’t much from what I can dig up, except to say that the name means tile, the clear reference being to old world clay roofing tiles. Similar tile-shaped cookies in Spain and Italy are called tejas and tegolinos respectively. Age-wise, there’s nothing in the standard literature to indicate when they became popular. My guess […]

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Ze Tuile

I remember my first encounter with a tuile. I was roughly ten. My family had received a box of the delicate little things as a Christmas gift from one of the neighbors. We placed it on the pile of food loot that accumulated in one corner of the kitchen counter each year…a heap of goodies […]

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Face the Master

The upside of the Derby party I attended on Saturday was a chance meeting with a master of Southern food and baking. She was of course a small, bespectacled and dignified woman in her 80’s, the mother of a fellow I’ve gotten to know this past year. Her tiny bent frame belied an encyclopedic knowledge […]

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Barbaro by 6 Lengths

I’ve had a number of kind inquiries about my Derby horse this morning, thanks to all who expressed interest. Sadly, my pick, Sweetnorthernsaint, was last seen in the back of the pack, somewhere around turn 2. I’m not sure what happened to him after that, though I did hear they kept the track open late […]

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The Great Irony

…is that it turns out Derby pie really isn’t a corn syrup-based pie. I didn’t need to be blogging on the subject of corn syrup and/or sweetners at all. Never mind.

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Sweet Home Chicago VIII

Last night I made a same-day version of the Chicago-style pizza crust recipe I’ve been working on. Which is to say, I mixed the dough up only two hours beforehand, let it rise, and pressed it into a pan. And ya know, it was still too bready. I can try it again next week only […]

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