Posts Tagged “baking”
Alice Waters and Martha Stewart featured and popularized Meyer lemons and now they are commonly found in many American produce departments. A citrus fruit, they are soft and juicy and may be either yellow or orange. They are tart – with the edge taken off tart.
Tyler (who just turned 5) wants to be a baker, Fellow FoodBeest. He also loves science and what better science is there than what you get when you mix flour with sugar and butter and baking powder and then add heat? We got to use two machines: the food processor and the stand mixer. A little noisy, but fun. And the outcome was strawberry cupcakes.
But bread scares me, Fellow FoodBeest. Seriously. I don’t do bread. Bread is hard to make. It’s easy to mess up. It requires a lot of work or fancy equipment. I can’t make it. … And other stories I have told myself about making bread.
Turns out my story was full of beans, Fellow FoodBeest. It’s simple (and easy). It requires no kneading. It’s incredibly delicious. Even I can make it. That means you can too.
It’s November as I write this and really the only fresh fruits in season are apples, pears, grapes from – somewhere – and those little Clementine oranges. Most citrus hasn’t even yet gotten great. So I am especially grateful for this light, not-too-sweet pear clafutis treat.
This Rustic Fig Tart is my favorite new recipe for fall. It’s a fast, simple and makes use of my beloved figs, plus a lovely fresh almond paste-like thing called frangipane. And it doesn’t have to be perfectly round or an exact size or beautiful because it’s “rustic.”
I know how easy it is to just open a box of Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker or Ghirardelli brownie mix, add an egg or two and some water. But this recipe, that I’ve adapted from my former MIL’s Women’s Club Cookbook, Keys to Our Kitchens is every bit as easy and fast. But it’s way, way better.
You may or may not believe this, Fellow FoodBeest, but this crust-making business that has driven me crazy and that I have avoided like the plague is EASY. I have bought my last red cardboard package of Pillsbury pie crusts.
This dessert is so simple as to almost not count as cooking. If that bothers you, you can certainly make these with a real pie crust. But if you’re in a hurry or busy or tired (who isn’t one of those?) and don’t want to bother all that much, you will enjoy this.
I wanted to grill the fruit to bring out its sugars and its flavor and to lend just a touch of smoke. I used a gas grill, not charcoal this time. Grilling the fruit was a great choice. The nectarines came off the grill tempting, wet and oozing with summer, the sugar of the fruit dark and caramelized.
Bread pudding, also known as “poor man’s pudding,” was created by housewives and cooks who couldn’t afford to waste anything. Today’s bread pudding it is a trendy comfort food that creative restaurant pastry chefs enhance to try to outdo each other with exotic ingredients, rich sauces and extravagant platings.
