Tender turnovers, stuffed with sweetened raspberries, the pastry shattering into a shower of buttery shards with each bite…

How DO you make that pastry?

It must be hard, right? A delicate touch, molding the butter, rolling, folding, rolling, folding, waiting, chilling, folding… Did I hear someone mention 729 layers?

Hey, you want to go that route, be my guest. We have a very approachable recipe for Pâté Feuilletée (e.g. Classic Puff Pastry) right here on this site. (more…)

Since when did one of my all-time favorite snack foods, crunchy granola, turn into a lifestyle designation?

From a Google search I recently did on “crunchy granola”:

“Slang of the Week: crunchy-granola (adjective)

“Example: Janet knew John was crunchy-granola when he came to pick her up in a rainbow-colored 1974 VW Microbus.

“…crunchy-granola students (named for the food they ate) could be easily identified because they were the only ones wearing Birkenstock sandals. Nowadays, lots of people wear Birkenstocks, but it’s still pretty easy to spot crunchy-granola types. Also called earthy-crunchy, they wear natural fabrics (especially hemp) and long hair, sometimes in dreadlocks. They tend to be vegetarians, shop at the Whole Foods market and give money to Greenpeace.” (more…)

I wasn’t looking for gluten-free bread. Really, I wasn’t. I simply had a hankering for moist, dense, crumbly cornbread, something to serve alongside grilled chicken or a salad on these hot summer days.

At first, I thought I’d simply bake our Guaranteed Cornbread, which is far and away the best-tasting Northern-style (read: slightly sweet) cornbread I’ve ever enjoyed. But when I searched “cornbread” at kingarthurflour.com, lo and behold, what did I see right underneath our guaranteed recipe?

The cornbread of my dreams. Exactly what I was looking for. (more…)

Rich, chewy, chocolate-y cookies, full of cocoa and sugar and espresso and vanilla and egg whites. With a touch of salt.

Period.

What, no flour? Translation: gluten-free? (more…)

Once upon a time, before Internet (a.k.a. The Information Superhighway—remember that?), recipes were shared hand-to-hand—literally. If your friend served you some awesome cookies, you asked for the recipe, and she wrote it out for you. Usually on a scrap of paper. Or if she was into it, on a recipe card imprinted with “From the kitchen of NANCY”. Or whatever name you wanted to fill in.

I still have (and use) scrapbooks filled with clipped, handwritten, and manually typed recipes. And while some of the recipes seem dated (Tuna Flying Saucers; Grapenut Pudding), there are others that are just as fresh and lively as the day they were born.

Witness this Easy Cheesecake.

(more…)

My son Nik, a 23-year-old newly minted college grad out on his own for the first time, emailed me last week with this question: “Mom, how do I make a baguette?”

Well, nothing like jumping right in with both feet, kiddo… A baguette? Though Nik has been part of the King Arthur family since 1990, when he modeled a kids’ apron in one of our first catalogues, he was never interested in baking.

Till now. Hunger and thrift have opened his eyes. (more…)

Ah, soft, tender, golden, soft (did I mention soft?) white rolls: a hidden vice for so many of us.

Back in the day, when Wonder Bread was helping build our strong bodies 12 ways, bread was judged by its softness. Your mother made your PB & J  on homemade bread? BLECHH.  Pepperidge Farm? So… adult. The bread of choice for kids was A) Wonder, or B) Sunbeam (batter-whipped; Little Miss Sunbeam. Remember?) (more…)

As test kitchen bakers here at King Arthur Flour, we occasionally labor over recipes WAY too long. Despite the three-strike rule (three failed attempts, move on), Sue and Susan and MaryJane and Andrea and I all plead guilty to expending extra effort on a problem child.

“Just one more try. I KNOW 2 tablespoons of honey is going to make the difference.” And then it doesn’t. And you surreptitiously hide the evidence, and wonder if you can sneak in a “REALLY, I promise this is the last time I’ll do it” attempt, maybe early in the morning… (more…)

OK, algebra lovers, here’s an equation for you:

3x + 3y + (1z /8) = 4p. When x = peppers, y = mushrooms, and z = bread, what does p =?

Give up?

(more…)

What do the states of Maine and Pennsylvania have in common?

1) They voted blue in the last election;

2) They include towns named Falmouth, Union, and Smyrna;

3) They have a rich and robust Whoopie Pie history;

4) All of the above.

If you guessed “all of the above,” congratulations! Not only are you a student of politics and an astute map reader, you’re obviously a food historian well versed in snack cake trivia. Because Maine, and Pennsylvania’s Amish country, both have legitimate claims to being the birthplace of an historically little-known (outside their own region) snack cake phenomenon: the Whoopie Pie. (more…)