Author: Nicole

There are many ways to get a spicy, gingery flavor into baked goods. One of the easiest is to add dried, ground ginger right into your batter or dough, just as you might add in ground cinnamon or any other dried spice. This adds a lot of flavor, but if you want even more of a gingery bite, opt for grating in fresh ginger, which has a stronger flavor. My favorite way to increase the ginger flavor in a baked good or other sweet recipe is to add in candied, or crystallized, ginger.

Candied ginger is thinly sliced ginger that has been cooked in a sugar syrup until it becomes sweet and tender. It retains its gingery bite, but it takes on a sweetness that ginger just doesn’t have by itself. Once prepared, the ginger can be used as it is, or it can be dipped in sugar to add a crisp, sweet coating. After it has been cooked, the ginger is easy to slice and can be diced up with a knife and added to recipes. Unlike fresh ginger, which can have a flavor that is a little too aggressive for some cookie (and other sweet) recipes in big chunks, adding chunks of candied ginger to a cake or cookie can add a lot of spice tempered by just the right amount of sweetness.

I always assumed that candied ginger was ginger that was simply cooked in syrup and crystallized ginger was the type that was dipped in sugar. Some producers label their products that way, but it seems as though the two terms can be used almost interchangeably. The products can definitely be used interchangeably in recipes.  I’ll still use “crystallized ginger” in my recipes because I like that extra sweetness and crunch that that sugary coating adds to the spicy bite of the ginger.

I really like the idea of a birthday cake that doesn’t need any frosting to say “happy birthday” and is still clearly a birthday cake, as opposed to your average, everyday cake. After all, it’s nice when birthday cakes are a little bit special for the occasion. So, this silicone Birthday Cake Pan really appealed to me when I first heard about the design. It is a silicone pan that bakes the words “happy birthday” right onto a cake. I couldn’t resist trying one when I had the chance, to give the pan a dry run before I baked a real birthday cake in it.

The cake pan is good looking and performs like most silicone pans do, meaning that it is a bit floppy and really needs to be braced on a baking sheet when you put it in the oven. But it does work as advertised and cakes come out with a big “happy birthday” around the outside of each layer, as you can see below. There are a few minor things to note about this pan if you decide you want one, however. First, the impressions in the cake pan are not very deep, so denser cakes, brownies and even fudge are going to give you the best results. Second, some cakes will stick in the corners of the letters a little bit, so make sure that your cake cools completely in the pan before turning it out. Finally, even though the pan is nonstick, greasing and flouring the pan will help the cake come out even more easily and will give the letters some definition.

It’s a fun pan to play with and I like the fact that it doesn’t require any frosting to dress it up for a party. All you need is a quick dusting of powdered sugar will help the design stand out. I’ll be using it for brownies in the future because a denser recipe will give the design a clearer result and, frankly, brownies with a birthday message might be an even bigger hit at a party than a cake!

Usually, I can get batter evenly divided into a muffin tin without any problems using a spoon or a small ladle. Once in a while, however, the stars align against me and I end up with muffin batter that wants to get stuck to the top of the pan, rather than sitting neatly in its muffin cups. It was after I had spend some time scrubbing caked-on batter off of the top of a pan that I started to wonder if there was an easier way to get batter into those muffin cups in the first place. It turns out that there is. The Wilton Easy Pour Funnel is a funnel with a trigger that opens and closes the spout of the funnel as you pull it, letting melted chocolate, cake batter, or even pancake batter flow out neatly and easily.

The funnel is not huge and is primarily designed for getting melted chocolate into candy molds, but it is large enough to handle most batters and will do well with thinner ones (like pancakes and some cupcake batters). Its size means that it is easy to clean and handle, even if you might need to refill it from the main mixing bowl as you work. Not only will it work well for you, but it will also work well for kids who might not have as steady of a hand when pouring batter and will enjoy the novelty and stability that the funnel gives them – especially if you let them do some chocolate work with it!

Pineapple doesn’t make it into my baked goods very often. This is partially because it is a little bit inconvenient to chop up a whole pineapple for just a cup or so of chopped fruit and partially because I just don’t have that many recipes for it. But this is a shame because pineapple is a fruit that cooks very well. Roasted pineapple, a great summertime dessert, is sweet and tender, and pineapple baked into a muffin, bread or cake turns out the same way.

Since I had some leftover pineapple in my fridge (from a time I was feeling motivated to cut up a whole, spiny fruit), I decided to take my own advice and bake it into something for a snack. The result was pineapple muffins. These muffins are moist and tender, and the small chunks of fresh pineapple seem to triple in sweetness as the muffins bake, giving the finished treats a great tropical taste.

I added a little bit of shredded coconut and a little bit of orange zest to these muffins to highlight the pineapple flavor. The coconut adds a little bit of texture to the muffins and definitely brings out the tropical-ness of the pineapple. The orange zest brings out the citrusy notes of the pineapple, making the whole muffin taste brighter. Lemon or lime zest would make a great substitution, too.

Serve these muffins while they’re still slightly warm with a little bit of butter. They make a great snack in the afternoon, but are easy enough to make (as long as you have some pineapple on hand) that they are well worth the effort of getting up a few minutes early so you can bake a batch for breakfast.

Pineapple Muffins
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup buttermilk
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
2 tsp orange zest
1 cup chopped pineapple
coarse sugar, for topping

Preheat the oven to 375F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and shredded coconut.
In a medium bowl, whisk together buttermilk, melted butter egg and orange zest. Add to flour mixture and stir to combine, mixing only until no streaks of dry ingredients remain. Stir in chopped pineapple.
Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups (cups will be very full) and sprinkle generously with coarse sugar.
Bake for 16-19 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Cook muffins on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Makes 12 muffins.

Maybe it’s because I ate too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid, but this Peanut Butter & Jelly Pouch is just too cute to resist. The soft fabric is stamped with a photo-print of a freshly made peanut butter and jelly sandwich that looks just as tempting as the real thing – […]

Although you can frequently find strawberries in the off season at supermarkets, it isn’t until berry season hits full swing in late spring that you start to see fresh strawberries just about everywhere. They’re hard to resist when they look like bright red jewels in their little baskets, waiting to be purchased – and there […]

Some ingredients appear more often in savory dishes than sweet ones. Saffron and olive oil are clearly two instances of this. Saffron is a spice – the most expensive, by weight, in the world – that is renowned for the bright yellow color it gives to dishes. It has a slightly grassy, sweet flavor to […]

Fans of cookbooks like Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and other great vegan baking books will find that Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar is a good addition to the bookshelf – and bakers who aren’t experienced with vegan baking will find a lot of great recipes in here, as well. Cookies are great […]

The key to a good peanut butter cookie is to make sure that it has a lot of peanut butter flavor. You can achieve this in a number of ways. One is by simply using a good, flavorful brand of peanut butter (always a good idea, actually). Another is to stuff the cookie with a peanut butter filling, or sandwich two cookies together with a smear of peanut butter. Adding peanuts will add crunch and highlight the nuttiness in the peanut butter, too. Yet another way is to use a peanut butter glaze, which is how I gave these tasty Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies a peanut buttery boost.

The cookies themselves are sweet and chewy, with a good peanut butter flavor to them. The oatmeal mixes very well with the flavor of the peanut butter. You might not know there was oatmeal in the cookies if no one mentioned it, but it does add a subtle oaty flavor that makes the cookies a little more addictive than a plainer cookie. The quick cooking oats keep the cookies tender and chewy.

But as I said before, the icing on the cookie is what takes these from good to great – for fans of peanut butter cookies, anyway! It’s a simple glaze of peanut butter mixed with a little bit of milk to make it drizzle-able. It couldn’t be any easier to make. Once it’s on, it is like doubling the peanut butter flavor in every bite. I used a plastic bag with the corner snipped off to pipe on my peanut butter glaze, but you could also just drizzle it on with the tines of a fork after dipping them in a small bowl of the glaze.

Don’t forget to serve these cookies with a big glass of milk.

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An oatmeal raisin cookie sounds like a simple thing – and it can be, judging by the number of totally mediocre oatmeal raisin cookies that are out there – but when you get a good one, it can be heavenly. It will have just the right amount of cinnamon to set off the buttery notes in the nutty, oatmeal-packed dough, and highlight plump, sweet raisins. They are all great flavors, and there is no reason why they should only come together in cookie form. This is what inspired this Oatmeal Raisin Coffee Cake.

This cake is delicious, and perhaps doubly so for fans of oatmeal raisin cookies! It is sweet and buttery, with great flavor from brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon and raisins. Unlike a cookie, this cake isn’t chewy. It is moist and tender, with just enough richness to make it just as suitable for dessert as it is for breakfast or tea.

The cake is a simple buttermilk cake with oatmeal added to the batter. I prefer quick cooking oats (not instant) because of their not-too-big size and finer texture, and you can make them by pulsing regular rolled oats in the food processor a few times if you don’t have them. The filling and topping for this coffee cake are made with the same mixture, but raisins and chopped pecans are added to the filling of the cake. The topping will melt a bit into the cake itself as it bakes, but this just distributes all its brown sugar, cinnamon  and butter goodness over the entire cake. (more…)

It has become common knowledge – to foodies, at least – that a super-hot, wood burning oven is one of the best places there is to bake a pizza. The smoke from the wood infuses a lot of flavor into both the pizza crust and its toppings, and the high heat gives it the perfect crispy texture. What type of wood delivers the best flavor varies depending on who you ask, but there is talk of a particularly unsavory type of wood being used in Naples, Italy: coffin wood.

Il Giornale, a daily Italian paper, has recently reported that local police in Napes “think many restaurant owners across the notoriously lawless port are purchasing cut-price wood from a gang of coffin thieves operating in the city” and using that wood to fire up pizza and bread ovens. The article went further to say that “Andrea Santoro, president of the city’s cemetery commission, said: ‘It’s no wonder these things are happening given the state of the cemeteries. There are graves uncovered, thefts and vandalism.’”

It’s a pretty shocking story, given how pizza is such an iconic food for Naples. No doubt that continued investigations will reveal more about what is going on, but for now, that wood-cooked flavor is definitely going to leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths!

When I am making a layer cake, I usually put the bottom layer on the cake plate that I intend to serve it on, then start layering frosting and more cake right from there. It is a hassle to move layer cakes as they tend to be delicate and heavy. Usually this works out very well, especially when I am going to be serving a cake at home. Other times, however, I am taking a cake out to a party or event and I need to put it in a cake carrier – meaning that I usually assemble it in the cake carrier and leave it there to serve it. No one has every complained about this, but I recently picked up a Norpro Cake Lifter to help me improve my presentation.

The cake lifter is a giant, very sturdy, metal spatula that is big enough to lift up a 9-inch layer cake with ease and move it anywhere you need to put it. One of the best features of the tool is that it has a finely beveled edge that lets it slip easily underneath the cake without disturbing the top layers. Of course, I still wouldn’t recommend traveling long distances (like down a flight of stairs) with a cake balanced on this, but for short trips it works great and looks quit a bit nicer than just leaving the cake in its carrier. You can also use it to pull pizzas and breads out of the oven, if they’re too hot to handle easily on their own.

When I took a quick trip out to Kauai recently, thanks to a great deal on airfare, I got to try a lot of great foods. Most of them, I didn’t bring home. Somehow tropical hot dogs and cinnamon kunckles seem best when they’re eaten right away. I did bring home a few things from Aunty Lilikoi, however. She isn’t a relative. “She” is a company based on Kauai that specializes in passion fruit products. I love passion fruit, so it was only natural that I tried to stop by to pick some goodies up to take home.

One of my favorites was the Passion Fruit Coconut Syrup that I bought. This delicious syrup is the very definition of tropical, with a sweet passion fruit base that is infused with coconut – and has shreds of coconut in it! I could put it in all kinds of dishes, but pancakes are a natural foil for syrup so I started with the obvious and made Passion Fruit Coconut Pancakes.

These pancakes are definitely tropical! There is passion fruit jucie in the pancake batter, as well as shredded coconut. Using coconut milk instead of regular milk will give them even more of a coconut flavor. but as they are they are light, fluffy and have a nice tropical flavor to them. Drizzling the passion fruit coconut syrup on top is what really makes them taste tropical, so if you’re a fan of these flavors, you might want to think about adding a bottle of this syrup to your wish list for your next birthday/holiday/etc.

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Ever notice how many plain blueberry muffins there are out there? I love a good blueberry muffin, but there are so many other options out there that I don’t want just one type of muffin all the time. It is easy to get stuck in a rut with muffins. Even bakeries do it (hence all those blueberry muffins). So, a book like 1 Mix, 100 Muffins comes in handy because it offers inspiration from a very easy place.

The book is basically set up to give you one basic recipe, then each subsequent entry in the book offers variations on the theme. This sounds like it would get boring, but the variations are more than just substituting raspberries for blueberries. They do offer different flavor variations, including options for mixing up the spices, mix-ins, and adding different zests and extracts. There are also recipes that give you healthier variations, giving you options for using whole wheat flour. There are lots of ideas here to play around with.

This type of book can work for just about anyone, but I think that bakers who find themselves in one of those ruts frequently will really benefit from a setup like this one – especially since there are some great photos of the finished muffins to inspire you. It is also good for bakers who are intimidated by the prospect of coming up with their own variations and want to see some good examples of the types of changes you can make to a recipe and still have it turn out well.

This recipe is an adaptation of the Fresh Plum Cake recipe in The Baking Bites Cookbook (a great gift for Mother’s Day, to all you last-minute shoppers!). It is a very simple cake, with a vanilla-scented cake batter supporting lots of fresh, juicy plums. It is beautiful to look at (you’ll have to check out the photo in the book), too. But as I’ve always said, it never hurts to mix things up a little bit, so I decided to make a chocolate variation on that cake.This cake is meant to showcase fresh plums, so even though the cake is chocolate, it only has a light chocolate flavor to it and doesn’t overpower the fruit at all. In fact, the cake tastes richer and more complex where it meets with the plums and has fruit juice running into it. I like the way that this cake rises up well around the plums during baking for a lovely presentation to the finished cake. I always sprinkle the top of this cake with a bit of coarse sugar before putting it into the oven. It adds a little bit of extra sweetness to the fruit, and a hint of crunch to the top of the cake.

The plums look fantastic when you slice into them because I leave the skins on in this recipe. Plums have very thin skins that are not tough after baking. Leaving the skins on allows a brilliant purple-red color to stain the otherwise pale peach-colored flesh of the plums. For an even more vibrant color, look for plums that have a naturally red flesh and use them in this cake instead!

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 Heavy cream, also known as whipping cream, is an ingredient that is frequently called for in recipes. Cream is the thick, fat-rich part of milk, which rises to the top when milk is fresh and is skimmed off. The type of cream is determined by its fat content. Heavy cream has a fat content between 36 and 40%. A high milkfat will add tenderness and moisture to a baked good, just like adding most other types of fat. For instance, many scones are called cream scones because they are made with cream. It is certainly possible to substitute some other type of milk for the cream in these recipes and have them come out, but they won’t be nearly as tender or moist as a scone that is actually made with heavy cream. Heavy cream is also used to make whipping cream. The fat in the cream is what helps stabilize it after it is whipped, and why you can’t whip just any old dairy product into whipped cream with a whisk. The fat also prevents the cream from freezing too hard when it is used in ice cream, leading to a creamier finished product.

There is one type of heavy cream, called manufacturing cream, that is used commercially by bakers, cooks and bakeries. It has an even higher fat content of 40-50%. This can be substituted to regular heavy cream (it is often found at bulk stores, but would not be found at a grocery store with regular cream), but otherwise there are no real substitutes for heavy cream when you need it. The fact that heavy can whip and hold its structure so well makes it unique. And because its high fat content gives lightness to all kinds of dessert, from featherweight mousses to silky ice cream to tender scones, it is an ingredient that is generally worth using when called for to get the best results you can.

It’s easy to be a foodie in your own home, where you have control over all of the ingredients you use, but when you’re traveling it’s not always possible. And I don’t mean traveling half way around the world, either. Ever had a sandwich at lunchtime that really needed something to give it some zip? There is a Foodie Survival Kit that lets you bring a complete set of spices wherever you go. Now, there is also a Chef’s Case that makes it even easier. This secret agent-style briefcase is packed with all kinds of gourmet ingredients – a.k.a. a foodie’s secret weapons – that are ready to go at a moment’s notice. The kid includes: Pomegranate Teriyaki Sauce, Lemon and Mint Chili Sauce, Garlic Chili Sauce, BBQ Figs Sauce, Red Wine Onion Sauce, Salt and Pepper Blend, Grilling Spice Blend and a Provence Seasoning Blend. All of these are made with all natural ingredients, no fillers, high fructose corn syrup or anything else like that.

Naturally, the case makes a great gift for foodies, especially those who have to be on the road a lot (you don’t always have the chance to hit up foodie hot spots on business trips, for instance). And it’s a great gift for yourself. When you’ve run through the contents of the case, you can refill with your favorite sauces and seasonings and pack it up for your next road trip.

Graham cracker crusts are easy to use, whether you bake them yourself or buy them at the store, because they take a lot less prep time and quite a bit less baking time than more traditional pastry crusts do. The drawback to them is that they got soggy very easily, a problem that is usually only made worse by the fact that the fillings placed in graham cracker shells tend to be custards, puddings and creams.

Fortunately, there are a couple of quick fixes that can prevent a graham cracker crust from getting soggy. When you have a no-bake filling, such as the one on this Caramel Banana Cream Pie or this Fresh Strawberry Pie, you can line the inside of the graham cracker crust with melted chocolate. This creates a waterproof barrier between the crust and filling, and will keep the crust in perfect condition even after the pie is sliced. You can use any kind of chocolate, simply brush it on with a pastry brush (or spread it very thinly) the chill it for a few minutes to set before filling.

If you have a pie that doesn’t go well with chocolate, or one that needs to be baked with its filling already in place, there is another trick to use. This time, brush the inside of the graham cracker crust with a lightly beaten egg white and pop it into the oven at about 350F 3-5 minutes to let it dry. The egg white has the same effect as the melted chocolate (although chocolate is sturdier overall), keeping moisture out of the crust.

Lasagna is one of those dishes that seems like it is going to be tricky and time consuming to make, but is actually quite easy to prepare. It makes a big batch, so it is a great dish to make to feed a crowd, but it is also a good option for a smaller group, since you can slice it up and freeze portions, ready to reheat a few days or weeks down the line for a quick (yet still homemade) dinner!

I’m not a big fan of lasagnas that go overboard with cheese. Instead, I prefer lasagnas that have a good balance of meat, veggies and spices in them to keep them interesting. This lasagna is a good example, as it incorporates ground beef, spinach, mushrooms, onions and garlic into it. It isn’t heavy on cheese, although it does use ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, which I think keeps it a little lighter and a little healthier than some other recipes. I cheated a little bit and used good quality jarred marinara sauce as a base, as well as no-boil lasagna noodles, which saved on prep time.

About 1 hour after you start cooking, you’ll be ready to sit down to eat. The sauce for this lasagna is meaty and flavorful, with lots of nice garlic flavor and a hint of spice from the red pepper flakes. Add in more pepper when you’re preparing the sauce if you like things spicier. You can actually taste the spinach in the spinach filling because the ricotta and parmesan cheese that it is mixed in with don’t overwhelm it. Mozzarella on top, of course, adds a classic lasagna look to everything.

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I love pie, so when I had the opportunity to become a judge at the Crisco 2010 National Pie Championships at the American Pie Council’s Great American Pie Festival, I jumped at it. This is the biggest pie contest in the country, with categories for commercial pies – such as those you find at grocery store bakeries and in restaurant bakeries, like Kroger and Baker’s Square – amateur pies made by home bakers, junior pies made by kids and professional pies made by bakers. So, I flew out to Kissimee, Florida this past weekend to try some pie.

I ended up being one of about 100 judges judging the amateur pie division on Saturday. This is a popular division, with about 400 entries of just about any flavor you can imagine. It was broken up into 15 categories, ranging from Peanut Butter to Apple to Cherry to Chocolate Cream. There were 6 or 7 judges for each category, all seated around a circular table. The judging was fun, but there were a lot of points that we had to hit as we looked at each pie. We judged overall appearance, sliced appearance, overall flavor, filling, crust and creativity. The scores were tallied up by officials in another room, so while we did discuss the pies we liked best at our tables, we didn’t have to come to a consensus about a winner ourselves.

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