What are “Peeps”?

Wow, this blog really doesn’t accommodate that color palette very well. But I hope, reader Karl, that this answers your question. I’m willing to bet that 99% of Americans know what a marshmallow Peeps are: little chicks made of marshmallow dusted with colored sugar, classically yellow, pink or purple. They usually appear in Easter baskets, though the Peeps line has long since transcended that particular holiday. These days there are Christmas Peeps (trees, reindeer, stars and snowmen), Halloween Peeps (jack-o-lanterns and ghosts), Valentine’s Peeps (hearts) and who-knows-what else.

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Next Up: Peeps

I’ve been wanting to try these for years, but have kept forgetting (typical me). Maybe it’s because we have a jump on spring this year, the idea had plenty of time to sink in. On another note, sorry I didn’t get any posting in this week. All the business travel was murder! Back Monday tanned […]

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What’s taken cooks so long to “go modern”?

Reader Tina writes:

You say that it’s taken cooks decades to ‘go modern’ and start using gadgetry and techniques that pastry chefs have been using for years. Do you have a theory as to why that might be?

Tina, I have a cockamamie theory about pretty much everything. However I think it’s possible to make an argument that cooking is going modern because it has no other choice.

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Neat!

For all you mad scientist bakers out there, now there’s a log book specifically created to help you capture ongoing experiments in pastry. It’s simply called the Baker’s Composition Book. I got one in the mail a few minutes ago and I can tell you I’ll be using it tonight! Thanks, reader Joe, you’ve created a real cool thing!

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Thoughts on Modernist Cuisine

It’s taken me a year, but I finally got a chance to spend a little quality time with Modernist Cuisine, the magnum opus/cookbook/manifesto by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. To all those who’ve been asking and asking me to write something about it, all I can say is I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone who had the $500 to drop on a copy.

Considering the book is about 2,500 pages long, I really have very little to say about it. It’s gorgeous and intriguing, but I can’t say I found much in it that was especially inspiring. Oh sure there was a section or two on foams and emulsions, but nothing that’s going to be especially eye-opening for a

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So it’s come to this…

Things are tough all over these days. Cash-strapped governments everywhere are looking for new revenue sources wherever they can find them. That’s understandable to a point. But a pasty tax? That’s simply going too far. Let it be know that the Joe Pastry community stands firmly behind Mid Cornwall MP Stephen Gilbert in his effort to prevent this outrage. We also award him extra style points for his classy reference to one of Churchill’s greatest speeches. Go Gilbert! And thanks to reader Stephanie for the tip!

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A Geo-Historical Survey of Chocolate Sandwiches

The speculative history of the whoopie pie got me thinking about things that resemble whoopee pies here in the States. I realized that there are quite a lot of them, and all are quite old by popular food standards. Indeed I discovered that the whoopee pie, possibly invented in Pennsylvania and later popularized in Boston and Maine in the 1930’s, was a contemporary of the Moon Pie, created in 1929 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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Un-Gelling

Reader Patti writes:

I made your roux-and-butter frosting last night and it didn’t work at all. The flour and milk didn’t thicken even after refrigeration even though I simmered it for ten minutes. Once I added the butter I just got soup. Can you tell me where things might have gone wrong?

I certainly can, Patti! It’s the detail you included about simmering the flour and milk for ten minutes. The flour mixture did “gel”, the problem is that afterward it thinned back out again. To explain why I have to amend my analogy from down below where I compared gelling starch molecules to a “net.” The analogy wasn’t terribly far off. Starch molecules do indeed act like a net, just one with fish in it.

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What’s the science behind “Heritage” frosting?

So asks reader Pepper. That’s a good question. I presume what you’re really asking, Pepper, is how a mixture of flour, milk, butter and powdered sugar manages to stand in so well for a standard buttercream. The truth of the matter is that there’s not all that much difference between a heritage “cooked flour” buttercream and a standard buttercream, save for the fact that heritage frosting replaces half the butter — a fat and water emulsion — with a starch “gel”.

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