For several years Williams-Sonoma produced excellent booklets with complete Thanksgiving menus and recipes. One featured a delicious Steamed Pumpkin-Ginger Pudding recipe that has been part of my holiday dinner table ever since. The diced crystallized ginger and baking spices marry well with the pumpkin to produce a flavorful and unique…
Madeleines are wonderful, small tea cakes baked in scalloped molds, which were immortalized by Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past, Vol, 1. In the famous passage Proust writes how “those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop…
During the catering busy season at Glorious Foods, seventy-hour work weeks were common. On the rare day off, several of my kitchen colleagues and I would meet for a late breakfast at Sarabeth’s, a popular Upper West Side restaurant known for its American cuisine. They also featured very good basic…
I first tasted apple strudel on a post college graduation trip to Vienna, where it was among the memorable foods I tasted in the wonderful cafés and restaurants. It is with the memory of that delightfully flaky, just sweet enough strudel, served on delicate china, in mind that I began…
Mozart Torte is one of my favorite and proudest creations, developed during the second season at Seven Layers. It consists of a nut and chocolate flaked butter sponge cake which is split and sandwiched with apricot jam, then enrobed in a bittersweet chocolate glaze. The flavor profile is rooted in…
This classic Chocolate Roulade was first published by Dione Lucas in her 1947 book The Dione Lucas Book of French Cooking. Dione was a pioneering figure in culinary arts, the first woman to graduate from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the first female host of a television cooking show in…
My first exposure to Pear Tarte Tatin, was at Sign of the Dove in the 1990’s. I loved the dessert, but not the procedure, as I remember the pear slices would often be less than well-caramelized and occasionally stuck to the pan when unmolding. Years later while looking through Bistro…
Traditional Friday evening Challah is a long loaf, formed from a three, four, or six-strand braid. An example of a basic three strand Challah is found in the initial Friday Baking Project blog on 8/7/2021. For the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, the shape…
The Friday Baking Project
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