Well, actually it just peels, cores and slices apples, pears, and potatoes. However, by using this nifty gadget making an apple pie becomes almost effortless. Apple pie was one of the first things I learned to bake almost twenty years ago. My best friend’s mom was famous for her apple pies and she spent one…
I celebrated a birthday recently and must have been a very good girl last year because I was gifted two Le Creuset cast iron pans. My generous husband gave me a deep covered sauté pan in a beautiful blue. Poor dear searched high and low for this pan. I admired it in a Williams Sonoma…
Like many home cooks, I collect an over abundance of recipes, either in the form of cookbooks, magazine articles, Web sites, and food blogs. One problem I have with cookbooks is that they’re hard to keep clean and keep open to the correct page. The first time I make a recipe, I use the cookbook.…
Our refrigerator is about 13 years old. It’s a not-so-lovely beige Maytag which still works fairly well. My two complaints are 1) that it’s kind of ugly and outdated and 2) that the freezer seems to have a temperature fluctuation causing freezer burn to happen rapidly. We end up throwing out a lot of food…
If you seriously get into baking, you’ll likely find yourself lusting after a stand mixer. It’s the kind of appliance that seems expensive at first and then you wonder how you ever lived without it. It is so much more efficient at mixing thick cookie doughs and you can knead bread easily with a dough…
On the Cooks Illustrated Forums, I came across a lively thread about the No-Knead Bread phenomenon that has been sweeping the country. In November of 2006, the New York Times ran an article and video about an ingenious method to make hearth bread at home easily. You don’t need any special equipment or bread making…
I’ve been on this bread making kick lately. Blame Cooks Illustrated who had a two page spread last issue on bread making tips. They recommended stand mixers over hand kneading or bread machines. I have a bread machine. It works well, but is hard to store so is put away right now. I also…
