French vanilla sugar cookies are scrumptious. And easy to make! Since I made french buttercream yesterday and had no use for it, I decided to make some cookies with it. After all, the ingredients for french buttercream was egg yolks, sugar, butter, salt and vanilla. Since there is a lot of fat...
Silky French buttercream is like a Swiss meringue buttercream, except it uses egg yolks instead of the whites. Basically, you are creating Pâté à Bombe and adding butter. What could be more intense in flavor than that? Perhaps adding the seeds from a vanilla bean? What is a pâté à bombe? It's...
Learning how to make Swiss meringue buttercream will change your life. Are you looking for a beautiful cake icing that isn't cloy like American buttercream? And isn't as bland, chemical laden and oily as the whipped icings made by store bakeries? This may very well be your next best friend. It's a...
Now that you have learned the basics of meringue making, let's make what some people think is a difficult dessert: an angelic angel food cake. It really isn't difficult when you learn that most recipes steer you wrong. When learning to make this dessert, I have to warn you first and foremost:...
This post will walk you through how to make a Swiss Meringue. You may ask yourself why do I want to make Swiss version when it is more work than French meringue? There are two main reasons: stability and food safety. By heating the eggs to 160F (71C) you will kill off most bacteria that may be...
In order to make many desserts, you'll need to learn how to whip egg whites and make french meringue. This is one instance where I highly recommend an electric beater. It doesn't have to be fancy, but hand mixing becomes very tedious and can take more than an hour if you are whipping up a large...
Razzmatazz raspberry buttercream frosting is a mouthful both figuratively and literally. And it is so incredibly fun to say aloud. Try it. I'll wait patiently. Didn't I tell you? It's just as pleasurable to eat as it is to say so let's get started. Tart and sweet just go together. Raspberry is a...
If you want to use the microwave to temper chocolate, this post that goes into depth on how to temper for each of the various chocolates. However, if you do not own a microwave, or you are having overheating issues trying that method, this tutorial is for you! It will also so you how to fix bloom...
Get ready to learn how to make no-fuss pepperoni baked pasta. Why? Because I make a variation of this meal more than any other dish for my family several times a month and I don't have any qualms about it. It's filling, delicious, fast and amazingly easy to throw together. This is a simple meal...
Buttermilk Honey Wheat Bread is yet another recipe from the game "what's left in the pantry?" However it was created, it is this soft, tender crumb with a lovely flavor of honey and wholesomeness of wheat flour. In a word, it's delicious. How the recipe came about is the fact I had buttermilk...
We will be making lots of bread recipes on this site, so learning kneading dough by hand will be an essential skill if you don't own a stand mixer. Whether you think you can't do it, have physical limitations or are a beginner, don't despair. It's much easier than it looks. Especially when you...
Tempering white chocolate doesn't have to be difficult. But exactly what is it? White chocolate is cocoa butter with milk and sugars added. Some people argue it's not chocolate at all because there is only cocoa butter, not actual cocoa in the candy. That's up to you to decide. One thing that is...
Now that we've learned the basics on tempering chocolate, let's learn to temper milk chocolate. I like to practice with baking chips, pretzels and cereals to make a delicious candy bar that doesn't need much work. That way, all the chocolate is used up after practicing and you can break it up and...
Tempering semi-sweet chocolate doesn't have to be difficult. If you want to learn about the basics of what tempering is, you can read my post on it here. Otherwise, let's move on. You'll want to know the basic temperature for the type of chocolate you are working with as noted in the table below:...
Tempering dark chocolate is the process of making chocolate smooth, shiny, durable and snappy. You can read more here. In the meantime, think about how sometimes you buy a chocolate bar and it's streaked with white, is bendable and melts just touching it. That's because the chocolate became too...