According to legend, Mrs. Wakefield was making her favorite classic cookie, the “Butter Drop Do” when fate intervened and the Toll House Crunch was invented. So the story goes, she normally put Baker’s chocolate in her Butter Drop Do’s, which, so the tale would have us believe, melted completely into the batter during baking. This […]
READ ONThis is one small corner of food history where everybody tells pretty much the same story (which is actually quite refreshing). It goes like this: the chocolate chip cookie was invented by Ruth Wakefield, who, along with her husband, owned an historic establishment called the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusettes. A studied cook and […]
READ ONThis simple little cake isn’t the best use of génoise, as génoise technically isn’t designed to be eaten in stacked layers, but among other layers of mousse or fruit filling (e.g. in a gâteau-style pastry). Still, we do what we have time for, eh? (And actually, now that I think about it, this “simple little […]
READ ONYou can call it a Swiss roll, if you like. Or a jam roll (which is more precise, since you don’t see to many recipes for these that call for fruit jelly anymore). This one has some real fruit added in, which makes it a little more distinctive. Jelly rolls are, and always have been, […]
READ ONWhy is it that every time I mention egg yolks I hear from VERY regular commentator Mexico Bob? He writes in to (re)remind me: Don’t forget that egg yokes contain lecithin which is a natural amphiphile which is one of the building blocks of life. In fact the word “lecithin” is Greek for “egg yolk”. […]
READ ONOr jam roll, really, since that’s what most people roll up in their génoise sheets. The big problem they have, of course, is cracking. But let’s face it, cake isn’t really designed to withstand the stresses that come into play when you wrap it up into a curlicue. Structures made of cooked starch and/or egg […]
READ ONThis butter cake is made via the “one bowl” or “reverse creaming” method which delivers a very moist and tender layer indeed. If you’re on the hunt not for a box-mix-style cake (that would be one of the “high ratio” cake layer recipes in the cake layer section) but rather a classic old-school yellow cake […]
READ ONThis recipe is based on Rose Levy Berenbaum’s excellent All Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake, adapted slightly to my own tastes and techniques. Yellow Butter Cake 6 large egg yolks 1 cup milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 13 1/2 ounces (3 cups) cake flour, sifted 10 1/2 ounces (1 1/2 cups) sugar 1 tablespoon plus 1 […]
READ ONLet’s get the word out there on the table right now: panis. Because that’s what I’ll be discussing this morning. I know, several of you sniggered yesterday at the word “coctum”, probably the same bunch that were chuckling at my pasties when I made them. I know you back-of-the-bus types, out to ruin everything that’s […]
READ ONTop-crimped, steak and leek, that is. I’ll stick to the shaping instructions, since the dough mixing technique is almost identical to that for side-crimped pasties. We’ll pick up at the point where you’ve assembled your ingredient mound — salted at every layer of course — running right down the middle of your dough circle. Paint […]
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