It’s holiday time. Who is making Ma’s Lemon Sponge Pie? My husband’s grandmother, Frances Leahey, brought home this recipephany from a cooking class sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Electric Company and its live-wire mascot Reddy Kilowatt in the 1940s. She had just bought an electric oven, and the class was, according to Reddy, to help “our electric customers to make the very best possible use of the electricity they buy.” There is no better use of electricity than this pie. At first, Ma thought this recipe was the case of a lemon meringue pie gone awry, where the teacher mistakenly folded the egg whites in with the filling instead of spreading them on top.…
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Orange Cake-Pan Cake — more than just a flash in the pan
The “cake-pan cake” could be the Missing Link between pudding and cake. Moist almost to a fault, it has giant, intense flavor. You mix it right in the pan – in a flash. What could be easier? With no butter, eggs, milk, or sour cream, it gained popularity during the food-rationing Depression Era. It’s perfect now for vegans, folks with egg or milk allergies, or for pareve occasions. The chocolate cake-pan (or three-hole) cake has been kicking around for years. I discovered this citrus variation in the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. What a recipephany: freedom from the cholesterol-laden orange bundt poundcake I used to make. Here is a guest-worthy dessert you can…
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Vegan Banana Bread — can it be a guilty pleasure?
It goes beyond moist to practically gooey. Think banana intoxication with a nutmeg buzz and a chocolate rush. Does this come in IV form? Is it right to swoon like this at breakfast? Yet Vegan Banana Bread can’t be a guilty pleasure, can it? Raegan Sales, a talented vegetarian cook, may have created this cake-like bread for vegans, but it’s also for anyone with too many bananas and no eggs. It bakes beautifully with all non-creature ingredients. And I admit I was pleasantly surprised with Earth Balance, a delicious faux butter. Thank you, Raegan, for sharing this special recipephany. Be forewarned, though: waiting the eternal half-hour for this to cool is a primal test…
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Edith’s Flaky Pie Crust, and how it may become Chelsea Clinton’s favorite
Pie crust is the basic black dress of baking. It starts out simple, with flour and salt. But then come the choices. Good or bad fats? Water, milk, juice, buttermilk, vinegar, or vodka? And what about secret ingredients like sugar or baking powder? Some recipes obsess over technique. If you want to see how many annoying steps you can stuff into a pie crust recipe, see how fussy Alton Brown gets. So where can you find a recipe for delicious, wholesome, flaky pastry crust in 40 words or less? One that even comes with a story of conflict, mystery, and revelation? The answer is this recipephany shared by our guest blogger, Robin Henschel. I…
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White Chocolate Fruit Tart (no real chocolate was harmed in the making of this summer treat)
First, the White Chocolate Disclaimer I could never understand white chocolate. Red licorice, yes; white chocolate, no. At best, its claim to any chocolateyness is its cocoa butter, and anybody who thinks it tastes like real chocolate belongs in a neuroscience experiment. As it turns out, Nestlé white baking chips (Premier White Morsels) are total frauds and don’t contain any cocoa butter at all. Not that you’d taste the difference, anyway. But no matter. These smooth imposters shine in this glorious summertime dessert, blending into an ideal substrate for the fruit. And no one’s the wiser. Tasty Tart I would never have tried this if it weren’t for our guest blogger, Chris Fogarty, and…
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The Best Cheesecake in Chicago
If our guest blogger, Jennifer Pieszak, ever wanted to chuck her career as an award-winning architectural lighting designer, she could open a beautifully lit bakery and there would be lines around the block for her superb cakes, desserts, muffins, cookies, scones and breads. I am honored she has chosen to share her “signature dessert,” The Best Cheesecake in Chicago. This black and white cheesecake is truly the best—it’s luscious, gorgeous, easy to make, and punctuated with chocolate. Here’s what Jennifer wrote: “When I was growing up in suburbia, Chicago and my grandmother came to represent the exotic and new. She lived on Chicago’s near north side in what is now the very trendy Lincoln Park…
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Black Magic Cake Works Its Wizardry
Black Magic Cake: The Platonic ideal of a chocolate cake Whatever your passion—milk, dark, or super-antioxidant dark—chocolate has a special relationship with your pleasure center. From FudgSicles to Chunky bars to Sky Bars, chocolate melts into happy memories. There are probably better chocolate delivery systems than cake. Flour and overbaking can mute the flavor. This explains the popularity of molten lava cakes and dense brownie-like cakes. Layer cakes can get dry or wimped out. For decades we had a reigning chocolate layer cake recipe in our household. We were happy. No complaints. But that was before I experienced my recipephany. I opened The Hershey’s Chocolate Treasury, copyright 1984, which I bought a few years…
