Reader (and botanist) Ford writes: Folks get all off about fruits, thinking that we botanists are trying to mess with their minds. We’re really not. Almost everything that folks normally call a fruit is, in fact, a fruit (as are a lot of vegetables, not just tomatoes — think eggplants, cucumbers, squash, green beans). There […]
READ ONStrawberry shortcake was a plated dessert in America before Americans even knew what plated desserts were. Here I’m continuing in that tradition, though I respect the single “big biscuit” approach that grannies all over North America have been employing for generations. You can adapt this recipe to make a single, large shortcake if you wish, […]
READ ONThe strawberry is one of those (faux) fruits that humans in the northern hemisphere have been eating for a long, long time. It makes sense since it’s indigenous to just about everywhere north of the equator and south of the arctic circle, from eastern China all the way around to the California coast. Some linguists […]
READ ONIt seems I’m not the only one smarting from fruit’s seemingly endless duplicity.
READ ONChantilly cream is a tremendously useful variation on standard whipped cream. Not only is it sweeter and more aromatic thanks to the added sugar and vanilla, it holds up much better than ordinary whipped cream. If you imagine an individual bubble in a whipped cream foam, that bubble’s skin is made of water reinforced by […]
READ ONReader Staci asks: is it anything like marinating? In fact it is almost exactly like marinating, though instead of imparting flavor to the thing that’s being soaked or steeped, the idea is to soften it. That’s what the Latin word maceratus means: “to soften.” Though meats and vegetables can be macerated, the technique is most […]
READ ONBiscuits, strawberries, whipped cream. Those are the base components of a classic strawberry shortcake. I vary it a little by using Chantilly cream which is a more indulgent version of whipped cream: heavy cream whipped with sugar and vanilla extract. The biscuits are a variation of my go-to recipe, but sweeter and incorporating Rose Levey […]
READ ONThat’s not an easy question to answer in a historical sense. So many things have gone by the name “shortcake” over the centuries that it’s become impossible to trace the word to a single point of origin. The term famously appears in Shakespeare, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, however since the Bard failed to […]
READ ONSome of you may have noticed that I don’t pay much attention to seasonality here on joepastry.com. I’m just as likely to make pumpkin bars in April as in October. Blueberry muffins in January are fine by me. However this past weekend it was impossible to miss the explosion of strawberries at our local farmer’s […]
READ ONOn the down side, I didn’t get much blogging done last week. On the up side, I finally managed to clear out a corner of my back yard that was so weed-choked and neglected that it was in danger of being declared a federally-protected wetland. This morning when I walked out the back door I […]
READ ON