A great lemon bar should have a no-nonsense tart-sweet curd filling above and a flaky-yet-firm short bread crust below. The two together create an experience that approaches religious. The secret to lemon bars isn’t in the ingredients per se (a top-notch lemon curd filling is defined more by what you leave out of it than […]
READ ONReader Lee comments on the A Word of Warning post below: I wonder if you aren’t conflating two separate trends — one, the prairie ethic of making do with what is at hand, the other, the post-War industrialized-processed food glut that, in many ways, was the opposite of the first. I admire the prairie baker […]
READ ONGREAT questions, reader Steve! Butterscotch is a candy that’s made by cooking sugar to the “hard crack” stage of 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The key point of difference between butterscotch and regular candy is that at least half of the sugar employed is brown sugar. Butterscotch has no actual “scotch” in it of course, instead its […]
READ ONThat from reader Chana. In fact there is, it’s simply called “evaporated milk” and it can usually be found in the same section of the grocery store. Evaporated milk was a later development than (sweetened) condensed milk for the simple reason that the manufacturing is more difficult. Without the bacteria-killing sugar in the mix, there […]
READ ONThat from reader Robert L., and what a good question it is. I myself once wondered who ever thought to “condense” milk, sugar it heavily, and deliver it in syrup form in cans. The whole idea just seemed screwy to me. In fact several inventors in the early 19th Century spent years trying to develop […]
READ ON7-Layer bars (aside from “dirt” pudding) are my favorite guilty pleasure. You can throw these together in as little as a few minutes provided you have all the ingredients on-hand. I find a parchment-lined baking sheet is the easiest when it comes to de-panning 7-layer bars. You’ll want to trim two sheets so they’ll lay […]
READ ONIt isn’t too hard to figure out how these bars get their name. They’re made by applying a series of seven ingredients to a baking dish and binding them together with a can of sweetened condensed milk (thank-you 1950’s America!). The recipe goes like so: 4 ounces (1 stick) butter, melted 5 ounces graham crackers, […]
READ ONI’ll wager that more than a few serious pastry bakers out there, including many of you on the Continent, are going to be seriously put off — dare I say even repulsed — by some of what goes on here this week. For many, bar cookies typify all that’s wrong with American sweet baking. Too […]
READ ONSince it’s getting to be picnic weather, it seems like a great time to pull out this Great American (really North American) classic. As a rule I don’t get terribly excited about cookies. With a few notable exceptions, the standard round “drop” cookie leaves me rather cold. Bar cookies are an entirely different matter. They’re […]
READ ONNow me, I don’t think you have to be a re-enactor to be fascinated by the American Civil War. I may not relish the thought of spooning with a bunch of unwashed men in a cold tent, but there are other ways to indulge an interest in history. Like, say, digging up answers to questions […]
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