I am a total sucker for cornmeal. Perhaps it's a texture thing: cornmeal is both grainy (in a good way) and soft. It's responsible for creamy, buttery, polenta, and for crumbly, steaming-hot cornbread. Substitute 1/2 a cup of flour for an equal amount of cornmeal in your go-to pancake recipe, and I […]

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Our apartment building overlooks a charming little street packed with bars and restos that's bustling both by day and by night. While it's wonderful to live where things happen, sometimes that means 3am powows and lots of "hoot….rah! hoot…rah!" from drunk frat-boy types. Last night's "visitors" were loud and rowdy, and I got […]

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All my culinary kudos are going to Alice Medrich these days. She does that thing none of us want to do: she makes the same darned thing over and over again, each time tweaking the recipe until it comes out just perfect. All that toil translates: Alice's chocolate pecan pie is to die for, her […]

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A while back, Deb of Smitten Kitchen fame blogged about the shortcomings of Martha Stewart's chocolate pretzel cookie recipe. "Dry, bland, and not chocolatey enough" and more colorful adjectives described a cocopretzel that just didn't cut it. She suggested trying to make pretzels out of Dorie Greenspan's very flavorful and buttery chocolate rollout cookies, which […]

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In honor of the holiday season, Daring Bakers’ took on what may be the holy grail of daring recipes: Buche de Noel, or Yule Log. Until Lis and Ivonne charged DBers with making this, I didn’t even know it was a food. See, traditionally, the Yule Log was a large, thick piece of wood burned […]

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