Baking off pieces of a gingerbread house is no different than making cookies, the only difference is size. The main difficulty, when it comes to shapes that are 8″ x 10″ or larger, is transferring them from point A to point B. Just use plenty of flour and check as you roll to see if […]
READ ONMaking a paper template for your gingerbread house may sound like an obsessive, fussy sort of thing to do. But trust me, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to assemble a house out of planks of gingerbread that aren’t made to fit together. No amount of icing can make up for bad design, friends. Plus […]
READ ONSince the evolution of gingerbread is linked inextricably to the history of ginger in Europe, let’s start there. Ginger was probably the most important spice in Medieval Europe after pepper. It was known to the Greeks, who discovered it over the course of their escapades in Persia. The Romans knew about it as well, and […]
READ ONAlright. All you men out there, take a knee. Gentlemen, let’s face it, it can be hard to hold your head up high when you tell people you make cakes for fun. Pastry has certain pantywaist associations that can be hard to live down. But right here is a cake that any man would be […]
READ ONI say this a lot, but it bears repeating: the biggest secret to making great pastry is leaving yourself plenty of time to perform all the tasks involved. Trying to cram everything into one afternoon on the day of your dinner party is a recipe for disaster. Which is why a conscientious baker takes care […]
READ ONThere are lots of recipes out there for rehrücken if you start hunting around a bit. Most are simple bundt-style, extra-moist chocolate cakes that just happen to be made in a rehrücken mold. I prefer this formula by Austrian pastry chef Stephan Franz since it’s a spongecake, which makes it closer in spirit to the […]
READ ONIt’s a good question, because on an intuitive level one would think that if a corn tortilla is a simple pancake made of ground corn, there really shouldn’t be that much difference between finely ground corn meal and masa harina (literally “dough flour”). In reality there’s a huge difference, which can be summed up in […]
READ ONSince childhood I’ve been amazed at the way carrots transform themselves when baked into a cake. You don’t even know they’re there. I remember thinking when I was a boy: someone’s gotta be pulling my leg. This carrot cake is a far cry from the overly dense, overly moist cakes that I ate as a […]
READ ONThe nuts and bolts of this cake recipe are pure Rose Levy Beranbaum, as found in her latest book, Rose’s Heavely Cakes. It differs mainly in the spicing, since in my universe a carrot cake is really a classic spice cake dressed up in hippie garb. This cake is moist but not overly so, and […]
READ ONIt’s been a long and demanding week, friends, but the missus arrived back home over the weekend. I was relieved, but not nearly to the degree that my young daughters were. They were well tired of being sent to school looking like 1930’s-era Dust Bowl survivors. What can I say, I’m not skilled at laundry […]
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