Ahhh, college, and for the days when one’s diet could consist of large quantities of beer and Cheez Doodles. While writing my thesis at Bates, I lived on three foods: Diet Dr. Pepper, Cracker Jack, and Pillsbury slice and bake chocolate chip cookie dough, straight from the tube, unbaked. Even now, opening those packages is akin to the cannon under a potential avalanche. Once they’re open, it’s all going down, baby. No wonder Weight Watchers calls them “trigger foods.”

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Think about it. They both fit any occasion, from day into evening. They both dress up or down with equal aplomb. And they’re both appropriate, no matter the circumstance.

But whole grain? Isn’t that like wearing a burlap sack to the prom?

Au contraire. Not when you have the right recipe. (more…)

Lately Vermont has been serving up long, cool spring seasons. This year and last have been slow to get to the lemonade and run-through-the-sprinkler weather, but we know those half-dozen days where the thermometer flirts with 90° are out there, waiting for us. Being a New Jersey native, I remember weeks and weeks of 80+° weather, with the humidity matching the temperature digit for digit.

Which is why, as soon as I was old enough to be employed, I got a job as a lifeguard. If I had to live in that climate at least I was in the right place to cool off when I couldn’t take it any more. I’m sure people in warmer places think we’re nuts, but hey, you’re a hot weather person or you’re not. (more…)

One of my faithful “Baking Sheet” correspondents, Amy MacDonald-Persons, is an accomplished baker, generous sharer of recipes, downright foodie, and busy mom of Elizabeth and Duncan. “The Baking Sheet” has a popular feature in every issue called the Recipe Makeover, where readers send me recipes, descriptions of food encounters (the Summer issue’s feature recreates a raspberry pie a reader had while visiting Sweden), or general requests for recipes they wish existed, and I go to town in the test kitchen and try to make those wishes come true.

Amy asked me to do a makeover of Grandma Sadie’s Best Rhubarb Dessert. (more…)

The Whoopie Pie is everyman’s snack cake: portable, cream-filled, requiring no special pans or equipment to make, and capable of appearing in a dizzying array of flavors. This is a truly versatile snack; the pie I’m going to make here is based on bananas and whole wheat, but once I got rolling in whoopie-world, it was hard to stop. I also came up with Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies, Maple Walnut Whoopies, and Gingerbread Whoopie Pies. The recipes section of the website also includes a Reverse Whoopie Pie (vanilla cookie, chocolate filling). Which, once you count PJ’s future (this coming Friday) and MJ’s recent posts, gives you a collection of more than half a dozen expressions of the genre in our recipe arsenal. You now have a full wardrobe of whoopie flavors at your fingertips. (more…)

We had the cake formula just where we wanted it. Easy to make, just the right size, moist and downright yummy. All we had to do was get the frosting right, and this member of the K.A.F. kids’ mix family was ready to go.

Except the frosting had other ideas. And it fell to Andrea to fix it.
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Once upon a time, Brinna Sands and PJ Hamel were working together at King Arthur, trying to inspire Americans to bake. They knew that bakers are a sociable, intelligent, creative bunch, and realized that nothing gets people more excited about baking than a good recipe, and a good story to go with it.
How to reach these fine people? They bought a mailing list (128 names) for a newsletter called “The Baking Sheet,” and that’s how this particular story begins. (more…)

A couple of years ago I had the bright idea to do an issue of The Baking Sheet that baked with beer in as many ways as I could think of. My coup de grace was this Chocolate Stout Cake, the perfect indulgence for a St. Patrick’s Day party. It’s tall and majestic, a veritable Brian Boru of cakes.

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It must happen at least 2 or 3 times a month. One of us here in the King Arthur test kitchen will hold up an orphan equipment sample from a vendor and say, “I hate this thing. Is anyone else actually USING it, before I get rid of it?” Never fails but someone else will say, “I LOVE that thing! Put it on MY station!” (more…)

Guilty pleasures. Every chef I know has them. When you spend years refining your knife skills and palette, countless hours training your staff to create at a specific level of quality, and limitless effort to ensure a memorable dining experience for your patrons, there are times when you just want… a hot turkey sandwich from the diner, with canned gravy on squishy white bread that sticks to the back of your teeth. (more…)