The Musical Fruit

No discussion of digestable and indigestable sugars would be complete without a foray into the ones that cause flatulence. It’s a topic that every food writer has in their repertoire, in the same way that every bar band knows the song Mustang Sally. Playing it is in one sense a show of poor taste. But […]

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Yawn

Is there a connection between plummeting readership and my lengthy excursions into the fine technical points of pastry? The statistics say unequivocally: yes. I guess I’d better return to planet Earth before the only people reading this are my mother and the two street people I pay to sit at the library and click (hi […]

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Sugar and Flame

So, we’ve talked a fair amount about sugar. Or rather, I have. Yes, a lot. I know. I do that, which is why I have a blog (it keeps my family and friends from killing me). So we’ve talked a lot about sugar. At least in its natural state. But then what happens to sugar […]

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Roses are Red, Violets are Blue…

…and what is it that makes sugar sweet, exactly? Or maybe more specifically, what is it that makes some sugars sweeter than others? Sugars are part of a broad family of molecules known as carbohydrates. They are in fact the simplest carbohydrates, and just like other conspicuous members of their family, they are critical sources […]

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Panna Cotta Debrief

Even though I didn’t manage to quite get all the melted gelatin into my panna cotta mixtre, it turned out just fine. No need to go to the trouble of re-melting and cooling. The only thing I did get in a little trouble with was the literal “turning out” of the gelatins. I let the […]

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Of course…

If you really do want to decrease your total sugar intake you could go for a sweetener that really does have less sugar in it. Honey is one option, since it’s about 15% water. It’s also up to 50% fructose, which means you’re getting a lot more sweetness bang-for-the-buck than you get with something like […]

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Sugar Rant

Monday’s question about malt syrup touched a nerve in me. Not the question, the syrup. Or rather, some of the people who buy the syrup. They’re not all care-free, life-loving baker types like you and me. Some of them are hard-core health-junkie sweet haters. So depending on who you happen run into there in the […]

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Do over…and over

Gelatin’s weak bonding properties have other implications, especially for error-prone dessert makers. Since heat is all it takes to separate gelatin molecules from one another, even after they’ve already bonded, you can repeat the melting and setting process over and over again. Which means that if your panna cotta is too thin (as mine probably […]

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