Author: Nicole

I never get tired of maple syrup, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like to mix it up from time to time and vary the syrups I keep in my pantry. There are some good fruit syrups out there – Raspberry, Blackberry, Blueberry, etc. – and I’ve had some good nut-infused maple syrups, too. The Ginger Syrup from The Ginger People is a little different, since it is a straight ginger syrup, sweetened and flavored with real ginger, and does not have a maple syrup base as so many syrups do.

I’ve had this syrup sitting on my shelf for a while now, but found that as I start to do more gingerbread dishes, including Gingerbread Pancakes, in the kitchen. It’s just made with ginger and a thick sugar syrup, so it has a clean ginger flavor and none of the extra stickiness of a corn syrup-based syrup. You can add it to soda water and make your own version of ginger ale, and the bottle recommends trying the syrup in cocktails, but I like a little drizzled on pancakes and quickbreads for extra sweetness and spice.

Run, run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me – I’m the gingerbread man!

The gingerbread men that come out of my oven aren’t all that fast, so I can tell you exactly what happens when I catch one: he looses a leg, an arm or, when I start from the top, his head. I’ll bet that the same thing happens to your gingerbread men. I jump started the process with these cookies (they’re sugar cookies, not gingerbread) by taking a few nibbles before decorating. A little bit cute and a little tragic – but that’s just the life of a gingerbread man.

Now, you can buy some very cute cookie cutters that give you this very design – but why spend the money on multiple cookie cutters when you can use just one and add the bite marks yourself? All you need to do is “bite” off an arm here and a leg there, then frost the cookies as you normally would!

The first time I was served kugel, I was very young and eating dinner at a friend’s house. Her mom made brisket and kugel for dinner and, while I liked the brisket, I kept clear of the kugel. A noodle casserole? A sweet noodle casserole? Were they kidding? Fortunately, her mom wasn’t offended that I didn’t want to try it right off the bat and managed to convince me to taste a bite.

I’m glad I did!

Kugel is a traditional Jewish casserole that can be made in a huge variety of different ways. It can be sweet or savory, and can be made with noodles, potatoes, matzoh, bread or other starches as a base – not entirely unlike a bread pudding. That first kugel I had consisted of egg noodles cooked with milk and cream cheese, sweetened lightly with sugar and cinnamon. I’ve had many other kinds, but this is still pretty much my favorite.

This recipe is one I put together after seeing a recipe in Bon Appetit a few years ago where the noodles were not precooked before adding them to the casserole dish. This saves a lot of time and the noodles cook perfectly as the whole kugel bakes. I use cream cheese, some sour cream and add vanilla and a bit of sugar to my kugel. The flavor reminds me a little bit of cheesecake, but the whole thing is pretty unique to kugel. I also add a topping made with crushed cornflakes (or bran flakes, whatever I have on hand), brown sugar and cinnamon, which gives the kugel a nice little crunch and an extra bit of sweetness.

I tend to make a batch of this around Hannukah – especially if I need something to bring to a potluck holiday dinner – but it is good all year round. It can be served both warm and cold, and makes for great leftovers, too.

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Peppermint bark is a holiday staple – or, at least, it appears in quite a few stores and a package always seems to make its way under my tree around Christmas. It’s easy to make it yourself and it makes a great holiday gift, as well as being a good treat to put out when guests stop by for snacks and hot cocoa. It is basically a layer or two of chocolate that has crushed peppermints added to the top. The combination of crunchy mint and creamy chocolate is a good one.

But as much as I enjoy crushed candy canes, big chunks of mint can be a little bit too crunchy for my tastes. This year, I topped my peppermint bark off with crushed Peppermint JoJo’s, the Trader Joe’s brand Oreo look-a-like. I’ve used these cookies before in Peppermint Cookies n’ Cream Brownies with great results. They’re crisp, have a nice creamy center and have just enough flecks of real peppermint candy in the filling. They make a great topping for this chocolate bark with all of those different textures!

My chocolate base has three layers, with dark, milk and white chocolate. Each layer must be chilled before adding the next layer, so make sure to allow some chilling time when you set out to make this. Also, use good quality chocolates (I like Dove, Ghiradelli and Guittard) because the chocolate is the most important element of this dessert and it just won’t be the same if you use the cheap stuff.

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It’s that time of year again – time for holiday treats, Christmas cookies, big retail sales and jingle bell-centric music. It’s also time for Baking Bites 2nd Annual Holiday Cupcake Contest! I kicked off this contest last year and enjoyed seeing everyone’s creative holiday entries so much that I’ve decided to make it a tradition.

All you have to do to enter the contest is take a photo of your favorite holiday-themed cupcakes and submit it to the Baking Bites Holiday Cupcake Contest Flickr Pool (accounts are free, though you do have to sign up). You can submit multiple entries and any holiday-themed cupcake is eligible, whether they’re homemade, made by a friend, seen at a coffee shop or from a favorite cupcake bakery. Look for anything festive, from reds, greens and blues in the sprinkles and frostings, or santas and snowflakes as decorations. Good photos of tasty cupcakes are what we’re looking for here. If you bake your own, or know the recipe that was used, link back to the recipe in the comments of your submission so others can try it out.

There will be one Grand Prize and one runner-up prize, both great gift baskets of baking related stuff! All submissions must be in by December 23rd at midnight, so that gives you a couple of weeks to track down every holiday cupcake you can find. Winners will be chosen by an anonymous panel of judges.

From the name alone, chocolate bark doesn’t sound particularly appetizing. Chocolate bark is actually a sheet of chocolate that is usually covered with nuts, dried fruits, candies or even additional pieces of chocolate. Its is rustic looking in the sense that it is just thrown together, not laid out with a specific pattern to how the ingredients are placed, and it is broken into shards of various sizes to serve. The name “bark” starts to seem much less unusual when you see a box full of chocolate shards that actually do bear a slight resemblance to rough pieces of tree bark – albeit tasty tree bark.Chocolate bark can be made with any kind of chocolate. Usually, it consists of more than one type layered together. Peppermint bark, where layers of white and dark chocolate are topped with shards of peppermint candies, is very popular around Christmas and the holidays. Almond bark is another commonly found bark, topped with almonds or other nuts. In some stores, you may see blocks of “almond bark” sold. These are blocks of vanilla-flavored faux white chocolate, which usually do not use any cocoa butter, but instead rely on vegetable fats to give them their texture. It is sold as a chocolate-like dip for fruits and as something you can use to make a “real” chocolate bark. Stick with real chocolates and you can easily make a batch of delicious chocolate bark yourself as a lovely, homemade holiday gift.

A classic chocolate chip cookie is good, but sometimes it seems like they’re missing something. Something like a cream cheese filling that will lend the cookies a bit of cheesecake flavor and make them even moister and chewier than they would be without the filling!

The cookie dough for this twist on a classic chocolate chip cookie is a fairly standard cookie dough. It even bakes up into tasty cookies on its own if you don’t want to go for the filling. The dough needs to be chilled before you work with it so it is easy to handle, then individual chunks of cookie dough are flattened into discs and packed with a cream cheese and white chocolate filling. These cookies are huge, but with good reason. The cream cheese filling is soft when you compare it to the firm cookie dough and it’s easiest to wrap the dough around it when you’re working with a fairly large amount. Not that I heard any complaints about cream cheese-filled chocolate chip cookies being too big from anyone I shared these with!

These cookies are real crowd-pleasers and very satisfying to eat – thanks in large part to their size! The cream cheese filling has a nice tang to it and it contrasts well with the sweet, chocolaty cookie dough. The centers of the cookies may sink a little bit after baking, but as long as you take your time when wrapping the dough around the filling, every cookie should have a well-defined layer of cream cheese at the center.

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The cookbook Gingerbread, by by Jennifer McGlinn, is dedicated to all kinds of recipes that use the spicy, molasses-rich ingredients that come together to make gingerbread. It showcases these flavors in various forms, from waffles for breakfast to all kinds of cakes, cookies, candies and ice creams for dessert, and it turns out that gingerbread can be a very versatile thing! Of course, I’m still partial to spicy and warming treats when the weather is cold, so even though you can make these all year round, the holidays are a perfect time to start cooking your way through a book like this one.

It starts out with an introduction to gingerbread, starting with images of the moist and dark gingerbread cake that springs to mind for many of us when we hear the word. From there, the author points out that similar dishes – spicy, dark and rich – exist in many different food cultures. As a result, the recipes include baked goods with French, German and English influences in addition to many American classics and their many variations. The recipes range from easy baked goods that can be mixed up in one or two bowls, to desserts worthy of a five-star restaurant. They’re well-explained, however, and a novice baker shouldn’t have any trouble following along with the directions for anything in the book. The recipes are accompanied by little anecdotes about their origins, as well as some baking notes.

All of the photography in the book is excellent – as is to be expected, since Tartelette was the one who worked on the styling and took the shots! She also tested every recipe in the book as she photographed them with good results. That’s quite a recommendation, since it is very rare that you actually get that kind of feedback on a cookbook!

I like eggnog, but I’m not a big fan of most store-bought eggnogs, even “organic” ‘nogs from natural foods stores. I find that many of them have an overly strong nutmeg flavor, and others are so thick that they verge on being pudding. I like eggnog to be light and refreshing, with flavor from all the ingredients in it. Eggnog is made from milk and eggs. It is lightly sweetened and flavored with (usually) vanilla and nutmeg. You can drink it plain or make it boozy and warming by adding in some brandy.

My favorite eggnog is an uncooked eggnog, which can be made with pasteurized eggs – not eggs from a carton, but eggs pasteurized in-shell – or regular eggs. It’s quick, easy and has the flavor I’m looking for. But to avoid any salmonella risk, or to make a big batch in advance for a party, I also make a cooked eggnog. This ‘nog is the same recipe, but I put it on the stovetop and bring the temperature up to 160F, which is just high enough to kill off any bacteria that might be in there. I chill it for several hours before serving.

I like to use low fat milk for eggnog because I like the consistency that the eggnog has when it is finished, a good balance of light and creamy. You can use nonfat or whole milk in this recipe if you prefer. Freshly grated nutmeg will give you the best results in this recipe. If you need to use preground, you may find that you need to add more to get enough nutmeg flavor. Either way, feel free to add or subtract from the amount of nutmeg given to suit your individual tastes.

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Although it will always be my favorite use for it, maple syrup can be used for so much more than just topping pancakes and waffles. I’ve used it to sweeten cookies and homemade granola before, where it accents the other ingredients with its rich, sweet flavor. But there is no reason to keep maple as a background flavor and here I’ve made it the star flavor of a batch of Maple Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream, where there is real maple syrup in both the cake and the frosting.The cupcake recipe uses some brown sugar and some maple syrup for sweetness. The brown sugar helps give the cupcakes a tender consistency, and it also goes well with the maple syrup. There is no maple extract in here, so all that maple flavor comes from the syrup. I used Grade B maple syrup, which has a slightly stronger flavor than Grade A syrup. You can use either, but I’ll recommend B if you’re going out to buy some syrup. Do not use pancake syrup in these cupcakes.

The frosting also has some maple syrup in it. Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature when you mix them together so you get a very smooth frosting. Often, maple syrup is stored in the fridge, so consider this a quick reminder to take it out before you start to bake!

These have a great maple flavor to them, with a buttery undertone. I don’t think that they taste like pancakes, but if that is where you usually use maple syrup, the cupcakes might remind you of them! The cake has a slightly firm, tender crumb and holds up really well to frosting and to traveling, so consider these as an option for winter or holiday get-togethers.

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When you’re traveling, whether it’s international or to a distant family member’s home over the holidays, you never know what you’re going to find food-wise. Sometimes it will be great but other times… let’s just say that the food might be less than perfect, with problems like to little seasoning, too much seasoning or really strange seasoning. A few spices of your own can go a long way in making any eating experience a good one and the Foodie Survival Kit is designed to help. The kit comes with 17 organic herbs and spices, as well as small packets of hot sauce and soy sauce. The spices include dill, mustard, clove, garlic, nutmeg, paprika, wasabi, basil, onion, ginger, thyme, cinnamon, curry, oregano, cayenne, salt and pepper. All are packed in individual tins inside of the 4″ x 6″ carrying case – that’s small enough to fit into a purse or glove compartment!

Now, I don’t really recommend offending Aunt Ida by breaking this out at the dinner table, but if you happen to have a pinch of salt and garlic within easy (and subtle) reach, I say go for it. Another time this will come in handy is if you’re cooking at a friend’s home where they don’t stock the same spices that you do, and you’re trying to season a favorite dish. When you run out of the spices that come with the kit, replace them with your own favorites, or more of the original spices.

I can honestly say that salt, pepper, soy sauce and hot sauce would be my must-haves in the kit. I would add some ketchup, too, if it would fit in the box. What would you put in yours?

With the clock counting down the last few weeks before the holidays, there is no time like the present to start picking up some holiday presents! The best thing about baking gifts, or food gifts, is that they’re usually a little bit more useful than another sweater with a reindeer on it, so there is no harm in picking out something for yourself while shopping for others.

• The Baking Bites Cookbook is at the top of my gift-giving list this year. It’s great for bakers of all ages, foodies and fans of this site. It also makes a great hostess gift for parties.
• When you already have your copy of my cookbook,  other good reads include The Ungarnished Truth and The Sweet Life in Paris, both very entertaining foodie nonfiction. As for cookbooks, try to take a peek at your recipient’s book case, then browse through some of the books I’ve mentioned throughout the year to find one that seems like a good fit. There are so many to choose from!
• A kitchen scale is a great gift if you don’t already have one. The EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Scale is lightweight, easy to use and measures from a single gram to 11-lbs, making it extremely versatile.
• When it comes to baking pans, I always recommend the Baker’s Edge pan as a great gift. A really nice bundt pan will always be well-received, too, but novelty pans like mini donut pans and cakesicle pans are fun to work with, as well.
• A copy of Julie and Julia on DVD should make any foodie happy. Add a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in case they’re inspired to try some of the recipes themselves!

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Homemade cookies make a great holiday gift, whether you’re visiting friends or family, attending a big party or an intimate dinner. Pair the cookies with a nice holiday card and you have a very complete and thoughtful gift. When I noticed Williams-Sonoma’s Message-in-a-Cookie Holiday Cookie Cutters, I realized that these cutters will actually allow you to combine the holiday greeting that comes inside of a card with the cookie itself!

You can insert alphabet pieces and premade words into slots on these cookie cutters to have custom messages stamped directly into your cookie dough as you cut them out. The premade words include Happy, Holidays, Seasons, Greetings, Merry, Christmas, From – all very common holiday phrases – and there are three sets of alphabet letters included, as well as a few extra letters. The only thing you have to remember is to spell your words backwards when you place the letters in the cookie cutter so that they print out the correct way on the cookie dough. Three different holiday designs are included: a gingerbread man, an ornament and a snowflake.Most cut-out cookie doughs will work well with these cutters. You just don’t want to choose a dough with a huge amount of leavening (because it is likely to puff up and obscure the lettering during baking), so butter cookies and shortbread cookies tend to be some of the best choices. Feel free to play around with the cookies and add your personal touches with the icing after you add your personal message.

Gingersnaps, whether you’re talking about the crisp cookies or the chewy variety, are a classic holiday cookie. Sweet, spicy and oh-so-flavorful, they’re a great addition to a holiday plate and go well with a cup of tea when the weather gets cold. The only thing they’re missing is some chocolate, so there are some chocoholics that pass up the gingersnaps and opt for ordinary chocolate chip cookies even around the holidays. This is an easy fix, though, so I made up some Chocolate Gingersnap Cookies to add to my holiday cookie rotation this year.

The cookies have cocoa powder in the dough and some chopped up chocolate chunks mixed in with the candied ginger that studs these cookies. This means that they really have a well balanced chocolate flavor to them. Fortunately, they are also just spicy enough that the gingersnap spices have no problem shining through in the finished cookie. The candied ginger actually goes a long way here, since every bite is gets a little extra kick of ginger flavor to it.

These have a chewy, moist center and a nice crisp exterior to them. They’re good warm from the oven, when the chocolate is still soft, and they will keep well for about two days. I like to use coarse sugar for rolling because it makes the “crust” just a little bit crunchier, but if you don’t have any regular sugar will work just as well.

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• Shortbread is a simple cookie that is a staple on many holiday cookie plates. Savour Fare uses a shortbread base for Skibo Castle Ginger Crunch. The gingery base is topped with a layer of ginger fudge and a sprinkle of crystallized ginger. The finished treat is cut into bite-sized pieces, perfect for snacking when you’re in the mood for a spicy, buttery and melt-in-your-mouth treat.
• I can’t get enough of caramelized onions, their sweet and savory flavor is one of the most delicious things out there. This is whyOnce Upon a Plate’s Focaccia with Caramelized Onions, Applewood Smoked Bacon, Cracked Black Pepper and Thyme caught my eye – although I must admit I might have shortened the name to just the onions and bacon. The recipe is easy to make, with a simple yeast dough for the base. All you need to do is prep the topping ingredients and you’ll have an absolutely delicious pan of focaccia to enjoy.
• Pumpkin pie is good on its own, but a little extra oomph can make an ordinary pie into something special. The Whole Kitchen’s Pumpkin Pie with Gingersnap Crust and Meringue has a crisp and spicy crust made with molasses-rich gingersnaps and ground almonds, that really adds a nice contrast to the creamy pie filling. Even better, this pie looks very special 0ccasion-worthy because it is topped with a tower of toasted meringue.
• Looking for something to do with that unused jar of dulce de leche in the pantry? The Dulce de Leche Apple Pie at Closet Cooking might be just the thing. The dulce de leche adds a rich caramel flavor to the pie, and creates something of a thicker sauce than you might otherwise find in an apple pie. Tarter pie apples would make an especially nice contrast to the sweet dulce de leche.
• Overripe bananas usually lead to a banana bread, or perhaps a banana cake. Another good use – and a little more interesting than the usual fare – for them is in a batch of the Banana Bread Yeasted Waffles that Honey and Jam recently tried. These waffles have all the flavors that you would expect from a more traditional banana bread, but the addition of yeast (and an overnight rise) gives them a light and fluffy texture that you won’t find in the quickbread. Plus, bananas go well with maple syrup and waffles are a good excuse to break out a bottle!

A few years ago, there was a dessert plate-garnishing craze in restaurants. Whipped cream, chocolate swirls, caramel shards, confectioners sugar and coulis in a dozen different flavors were heaped onto plates to the point where they almost obscured the actual dessert! Fortunately, there has been a big scaling back and now plate garnishes tend to be limited to things that actually complement the flavor of the dessert and its presentation. This is great because it’s fun to garnish a dessert plate as long you don’t need a hundred flavors of coulis to do it. All you really need are a few simple flavors tp fall back on that work well with many desserts.

I recently tried Smuckers PlateScapers as a way to add a little flair – with very little effort – to dessert. The PlateScapers come in five flavors: Caramel, Chocolate, Raspberry, Vanilla and Chocolate Fudge. They’re described as “dessert toppings” but are packaged in a squeeze bottle that makes it very easy to create swirls, spirals and stripes. I picked up Vanilla because it seemed like the flavor that would be the most difficult to whip up on very short notice. It tastes a lot like vanilla pudding with a hint of cake batter – sweet and with a good vanilla flavor. It’s very easy to use and has a great consistency; it comes out cleanly and has a very minimal amount of spread, so your designs stay put.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in the Pie Top Cutter Giveaway I held before Thanksgiving! It was great to hear everyone’s favorite pie flavors. It put me in the mood to bake some, both traditional and more unusual! I waited with bated breath while a random number generator spit out a winner for the contest: Chelsey, from the food blog CookTeen! Congrats, Chelsey! The cutter (along with a copy of The Baking Bites Cookbook!) is already on it’s way and, since it makes perfect apple-shaped cutouts, I can only imagine that it will be involved in a fresh apple pie project in the future.

While you can make your own pumpkin puree, the easiest and most common thing to do when you need to bake a pumpkin pie (or make another dish that requires canned pumpkin) is to buy a can of pumpkin puree at the market and go from there. By and large, canned pumpkin is pretty good and is certainly both consistent and reliable – which homemade puree isn’t always. I prefer to use it when I’m developing a recipe because it gives me peace of mind to know that others will at least be starting with the same product as I am. Of course, not all canned pumpkin is created equal and Cook’s Illustrated held a taste test to see which canned squash was the best for pies. They tested Farmer’s Market Organic Canned Pumpkin, Libby’s Canned Pumpkin and One-Pie Canned Pumpkin.

Libby’s and One-Pie came in at a dead heat for first, with both having good consistencies and pumpkin flavor to them in a finished pumpkin pie. The Farmer’s Market brand didn’t come close, with testers noting an unpleasant “chalky” flavor and vegetal notes that they weren’t looking for in a pumpkin pie. It’s worth trying another brand when one you have isn’t quite delivering the result you want.

CI didn’t test too many brands, so if you have another favorite, leave a comment about it below this post so other can have a reference for what is – and what isn’t – a good canned pumpkin. I’ve been buying Trader Joe’s, which has a nice smooth consistency and a good pumpkin flavor, as well as a nice orange color (not too pale) that looks great in a finished pie slice.

The dough used in danishes is similar to the dough used in croissants. It is a very flaky, buttery yeast dough that takes more than a little bit of time and patience to put together. Sometimes it’s nice to dawdle over a batch of pastry on a lazy weekend morning, but other times it’s nice to get something delicious onto your plate a little more quickly. One solution is to run to the local bakery and pick up some danishes, but another is to make a quick batch of danish using puff pastry instead of a more traditional danish dough. Puff pastry is easy to work with and produces a crisp, flaky delicious danish – especially considering that it takes so little time to make a batch.

The secret to making these danishes so good is the cream cheese filling inside. It is made with cream cheese and white chocolate. The white chocolate gives it a rich, creamy feel and just the right amount of sweetness. A good quality white chocolate (not white baking chips) will have notes of milk and vanilla in it, which will help round out the flavor of the cream cheese. The cream is delicious on its own and bakes very well, staying tender and moist within its crisp puff pastry shell.

Now, if you’re a purist, you could keep the cream cheese danish filling plain and serve the pastries that way. I used mixture of raspberry and peach preserves to sweeten them up a little more. Any flavor of jam will work here, but thicker jams and preserves will tend to spread less during baking and produce a slightly prettier danish in the end. This is another good example of a recipe that you can use as a jumping off point for creating your own variations. The 1,2,3 Puff! Contest that Pepperidge Farm is holding is still accepting entries and a mouthwatering Danish – or similarly enticing pastry – sounds like it would have a great chance of being a prize winner. The grand prize is an all-expenses paid trip to New York (along with some foodie bonuses, like a tour of NYC pastry shops and bakeries!), but that’s just the bonus of experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.

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When it comes to baking – and cooking in general – there is always a place for new ideas, but there is often no substitute for experience. Ann Amernick, author of The Art of the Dessert, has been in the pastry business a long time and shares a lot of her knowledge – as well as a lot of her recipes – in this volume. The recipes range from the simple to the complex and are more “pastry chef” than “home cook.” That said, the recipe instructions are very clear and detailed, so not only is it not difficult to follow along, the fact that the book is offering something different from the average cookbook means that it might get more use when it’s in your kitchen.

While the recipes include cakes, pies, cookies and both warm and cold desserts, dessert sandwiches (they have their own chapter) appear to be a signature type of dish. This doesn’t mean that everything goes into a panini maker, but instead that different individual desserts are layered together for interesting presentations, as well as flavor and texture combinations. The cover photo is a good example, with coconut slices, a cream cheese brownie and coconut sorbet. The recipes can stand alone, though after reading through the instructions you’ll often find that putting them together for the pastry chef presentation isn’t difficult at all.

There is a detailed introduction at the start of the book where Amernick explains tips she has picked up over the years and describes the methods and ingredients used in the recipes. There are also lots of tips throughout the book, mixed in with the recipes at points when they might come in handy. The book is illustrated, but is a little bit short on photos of the finished dishes, with more snapshots of kitchen prep and various in-between shots filling up what would otherwise be empty space. This isn’t much of a problem because the shots that are included are very nice, but it is a touch disappointing to find out that your need to try everything else to see what the dishes look like after you get past the beautiful shot on the cover.