Author: joepastry

Reader Ascanius made this excellent suggestion recently and I was quick to agree. This “stained glass” orange cake is a Gaston Lenôtre classic and a perfect holiday season treat. Let’s do this thing!

On a side note, I should say that I love the thought that there are ancient lit-loving parents out there bold enough to name their child “Ascanius” (possibly a father named Aeneas?). That’s probably too much too hope for. Ascanius’ email handle is “vergilius” which indicates that he’s probably just a classics lover. Either way the dude is OK by me!

Reader Michael writes:

We were sitting around talking about why pastries from bakeries are nowhere near as good as they used to be. It came to me that it may have something to do with lard vs shortening vs oil. My brother commented that Panera used to have cherry danish that was awesome, then they changed the recipe and the result was not worth the effort so he quit eating it.

Perhaps we got our bakery recipes ruined by the corporate mentality that has given us cardboard flavored tomatoes. Then again it could be that the healthy dining freaks have succeeded in making our former “treats” so tasteless that they are not worth eating.

The world’s greatest readership! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I’ll be back Monday with more nonsense on offer.

Once, the sweet potato was the only potato any that self-respecting Brit or European would eat. When a basket of potatoes — both sweet and starchy — was dropped at the feet of Queen Isabella by Christopher Columbus her reaction, in a word, was “yuck”. And so potatoes weren’t terribly popular in Spain nor anywhere else in Europe for quite some time. Up until the 1700’s or so they were mostly used as animal feed and as a food of last resort for farmers, fishermen and sailors.

Reader Lucy wants to know if there’s beta-carotene in sweet potatoes, and if there is, is it really true that too much beta-carotene can turn your skin orange? The answer is that it can indeed, Lucy! Turning orange as a result of too many carotenoids is a clinical condition known as carotenodermia. It’s harmless, usually seen in babies (and aggressive vegetarians), but it can give the skin a noticeable orange-y or yellowy tint. Supposedly, pediatricians are seeing a lot more carotenodermia these days, presumably…

America is the short answer. There’s little doubt that pies containing sweet potatoes were being made in the British Isles (and almost certainly other parts of Europe) ever since the explorers first brought the things back from the New World to the Old in the 1500s. Still a true sweet potato pie — which, like pumpkin pie, is actually a cooked custard in crust — didn’t appear until much later, and then in the States.