Here it is: reveal day. If you didn't realize it's reveal day, you probably didn't know I made a chocolate sable tart shell a couple of days ago and then challenged folks to make their own and fill it with...whatever they wanted. This is how I chose to fill mine. Cream Cheese Panna Cotta Since I was working with such a dark chocolate shell, I wanted to be sure the filling contrasted nicely. The butterscotch color of peanut butter or, well...butterscotch...would have worked nicely here. But my ... continue reading...
Search Results for: pumpkin
Veggie Oat Taco Mince |OATrageous Oatmeals Review
Disclosure: I was given a copy of OATrageous Oatmeals: Delicious & Surprising Plant-Based Dishes From This Humble, Heart-Healthy Grain by the lovely folks at Page Street Publishing. Thanks, guys! All links to the book on Amazon are affiliate links. I also am friends with the author and we hang out frequently. Plus one of my very own recipes is in the book. Keen! Another great plant based recipe to try is my Mexican pasta salad with green goddess dressing. For ease of browsing, ... continue reading...
Chocolate Sable Tart Dough | Filled with…Potential
I tried this with only one small change – used a whole egg and omitted the cream to make doubly sure it stuck together. Baked it in one tart shell with frangipane filling (baked them at the same time). It was delicious! Thank you so much for sharing this AWESOME recipe! Reader M M A Pastry Staple Sable, meaning "sand" in French, is a short crumbly dough that's a touch richer than shortbread thanks to some egg in the dough. The egg makes it a bit less fragile than shortbread while still ... continue reading...
Gourmet Decorated Shortbread Cookies
For this post, OXO sent me a lovely box of supplies for making cut-out cookies. OXO is donating $100 to Cookies for Kids' Cancer* for every blog post dedicated to this campaign during the month of September, including mine. Thank you OXO! Fundraising for Cancer Research Cancer is the worst. If you are a human being, I'm sure you know this, either through first-hand experience or through a family member's or a friend or acquaintance's journey. I got to know cancer when my brother was ... continue reading...
Rich and Creamy Baked Mac and Cheese
What Makes a Good Baked Mac and Cheese? I grew up thinking I did not like macaroni and cheese, and specifically baked mac and cheese. Once I left home, I tried a lot of different macaroni and cheese recipes, and I realized that I really like it. I just didn't like my mom's version. Sorry, Mom. For me, perfect baked macaroni and cheese needs to be sharp and rich with a lot of cheesecreamy on the insidecrunchy on the outside. Pro Tip How to Keep Baked Mac and Cheese ... continue reading...
How to Make Kashmiri Naan for #BreadBakers
I have made a few forays into Indian cooking over the years. I make plenty of "Indian inspired" food, but sometimes, I pull out all the stops and try to be as authentic as I can. Remember that time I made Lamb Biryani and about killed myself what with all the steeping and toasting and frying and layering and entombing? Even while performing all those cooking verbs, it didn't occur to me to make naan, perhaps one of my very favorite breads of ever. But when Renee and Stacy decided to start ... continue reading...
Beirut Tahini Swirls from Home Baking for Cookbooks & Calphalon
Why You Need to Make These When you think about tahini, you may not think "sweet desserts," but considering that tahini is pretty similar in flavor to peanut butter, maybe it will make more sense. Peanut butter is equally at home in savory preparations like soups and satay--or as a savory foil to sweet jelly in a sandwich--as it is in peanut butter cookies and peanut butter fudge. Here's why you need these tahini swirls in your life. Easy to make. They have a pretty minimal ... continue reading...
Fried Green Tomato “Burgers” with Herbed Chèvre and Balsamic for Sunday Supper (Monday Edition)
When it comes to burgers, why should carnivores have all the fun? Vegetarians (and vegans with some modifications) will be able to enjoy this super juicy fried green tomato burger! Try it spread with some delicious tomato jam. For ease of browsing, you can also check all my burger recipes in one place. Thanks for visiting! A Visit To The Farmer's Market We went to the farmer's market yesterday. And not just any farmer's market. This is the North Carolina State Farmer's Market run by the ... continue reading...
What Is Scalded Milk? | How to Scald Milk
This is only Fundamental Friday post number three, and I am already so glad I started this series, because it seems like everyone has a request! Yay! Today's topic: What is Scalded Milk, How to to do it, and maybe even more importantly, why or even do I have to in the first place. I wonder if you're here because you want to make some soft dinner rolls? Many older recipes for dinner rolls call for scalding milk. Read on to find out why, but first, What Does It Mean to Scald ... continue reading...
How to Make Browned Butter for Fundamental Friday
Watch my making the best brown butter web story here. What's the Big Deal About Browned Butter? Some of you may be asking why you'd want to brown butter in the first place. The answer is to heighten the flavor of the butter, making it both nutty and a bit butterscotchy. The French call this nutty goodness beurre noisette, which means hazelnut butter. This of course has to do with the nutty aroma, but I would also say that the color of the browned milk solids are about the color ... continue reading...
Easy Italian Sausage Pasta Sauce | Hearty, Versatile, Delicious
Why Make a Sauce with Italian Sausage? Many slow-cooked Italian pasta sauces start with ground beef or pork, and then you add seasoning to them. Italian sausage already packs a ton of bold flavor. A quick look at the ingredient list of a recipe for hot Italian sausage includes: pork shoulderkosher salttoasted fennel seedblack peppercayenne pepperpaprikasmoked paprikacrushed red pepper flakesgarlicred wine As you can see, that's a ton of flavor. So by starting with sausage rather than ... continue reading...
Baking by Hand: Oyster Mushroom, Thyme and Chevre Tart
This post is part of a blog tour promoting the new book, Baking by Hand, by Andy and Jackie King. The publisher provided me with a copy of the book. Baking by Hand makes my list of the 5 best baking cookbooks. If you're interested, do check out the rest as well. My history of cookbook purchases describes a Bell curve. I started out small, progressed to buying a car payment's worth every month and then tapered off when I decided that I didn't really need any more. These days, I rarely ... continue reading...
Sunday Suppers (Tuesday Edition): Holy Mole Chili made with Homemade Chile Paste and some Creative Ways to Use Up the Leftovers
Chili. If I say that to you, an Idea of what chili is to you will pop into your head. Do you see tomatoes or not? How about beans? Ground beef or diced sirloin? Mushrooms? Pork or chicken green chili? Some folks come to blows over these sorts of issues. "Real chili doesn't have tomatoes in it." "Beans?! Are you kidding me?!" "What do you mean, you serve it over spaghetti...?! I am here to tell you that it's all okay. No need for fighting. Let's all be like chili and simmer down. I hereby give ... continue reading...
Mocha Caramel Pound Cake for The Beloved
NOTE: This post contains a story about how I met my husband. I will never remove this section of this post. If you'd prefer not to read it, please scroll on past it or use the "Jump to Recipe" button at the very top of the post. Or just click here. Thanks! When Jenni Met The Beloved When I saw the boy with the Odd Hair sitting by himself in the dining hall the first day of freshman year, I had no idea that one day he would become The Beloved. Maybe he already was The Beloved and I ... continue reading...
Chocolate Cake with Whipped Ganache Frosting
Chocolate Cake with Whipped Ganache Filling, y'all. Rich and wonderful. And Whipped Ganache is just one of the cake fillings in my cake fillings post if you need some more ideas. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosure page. How This Cake Happened I have never wanted to be The Cake Lady. Wait. I take that back. I used to want to be The Cake Lady until I made a couple of wedding cakes and realized that it turns me into a snarling, cursing mess for the ... continue reading...
What Does a Pastry Chef Do?
I no longer work in a pastry kitchen full time, but this is an accurate representation of my day when I worked production at a fine dining restaurant. I didn't feel like changing all of this to the past tense, so just go with it! If you're considering becoming a pastry chef, chef or cook and you have never cooked professionally, you should probably give this a read. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosure policy. Many people have asked me: what does a pastry ... continue reading...
Spent Grain Bread for Sandwiches
How To Use Spent Grains in Bread Bread and beer are closely related and share almost the same ingredients. And this Particular bread has even more in common with beer than most since I used the spent grains from The Beloved's latest Brewing Escapade in the dough. To brew beer, you can either use a malt extract, which is an evaporated form of what you'd get if you boiled cracked whole grains. Or, you can start with the cracked grains and boil them to extract a lot of the flavor. The ... continue reading...
Homemade Cinnamon Rolls
I am excited to bring you my recipe for homemade cinnamon rolls. Made with an easy-to-work-with sweet dough enriched with a lot of egg yolk, these bake up beautifully golden brown and delicious. This recipe is my traditional cinnamon bun recipe. You may also like to take a look at my gooey potato dough cinnamon rolls as well. Know that you can use the sweet dough recipe to make any sort of filled bun that you like, but do try these as cinnamon rolls, because there's nothing better than a ... continue reading...
Let Me Help You Be Fearless in the Kitchen!
I get it. You're busy. You may think you're too busy to cook and bake from scratch several times a week, but I promise if you learn how ingredients function and some basic techniques and cooking and baking mixing methods, you'll be able to get dinners (and desserts) on the table and still have time to hang out with your husband for awhile. Or catch up on some Netflix! I'm here to help you be fearless in the kitchen to get you back out of the kitchen and with your family. Photo by Stacey ... continue reading...
And Since We've Been Talking About Custards….
...today is National Cherry Cheesecake Day. I don't know who comes up with these holidays, but I am All for it. But, wait a minute, Jen. You said custards; I heard you. What does cherry cheesecake have to do with custards? Friends, cherry cheesecake is a custard. Not the cherry part. The cheesecake part. A custard is thickened by the Power of Eggs. And there are eggs in cheesecake. And dairy. Yup, custards hide in all sorts of places. Scrambled eggs is just another term for "very curdled ... continue reading...
Streusel Recipe | How to Make Streusel
Why Make This Recipe? It seems a little ridiculous to say that my streusel recipe is better than anyone else's. At the end of the day, streusel is pretty much streusel, no matter how you slice it. I do hope that you will come away with some more ideas for ways of using streusel, for more ways of flavoring it, and with permission to play with proportions so you get the streusel of your dreams! Basic Streusel At its most basic, make streusel with equal parts butter and sugar and ... continue reading...
Shortbread
The Difference Between Shortbread and Sable Both shortbread and sable dough are considered "short crust pastry." Both are sandy and relatively delicate and can be baked as cookies or used as tart shells. Shortbread consists only of butter (most often salted), sugar, and flour with possibly a little vanilla. Sable dough, on the other hand, contains egg, which gives the dough a bit more structure. On an ounce-per-ounce basis, shortbread contains much more butter, more than twice as ... continue reading...