A blog about food, history, food charts, and more. (Formerly Mental Masala)
One of my summer dessert favorites is zucchini bread, something that could be called zucchini cake if it was baked in a shallow cylindrical pan instead of a loaf pan. It’s something I seem to only bake in the summer when zucchini is at the farmers markets, even though it would take an exceptionally skilled […]
One of my favorite posts featured a set of chocolate chip cookie charts, which built on an idea from Megnut’s Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie post. For her “mean” post, Meg collected a bunch of chocolate chip cookie recipes, calculated the mean (average) for each ingredient to create a new recipes, and then baked cookies. Her […]
At the 2016 International Food Blogger Conference, a sample from the California Fig Advisory Board reminded me of an X File. Not the famous X-Files TV show, but something far less mysterious and far more delicious. The X file that I remembered is about an X-shaped cookie for which I have a file on my computer. […]
Pie Making Machine, US patent 2,200,347 My post about pie crust making with coconut oil promised a recipe for the crust; this post delivers it. The foundation of the recipe is something from Cooks Illustrated that was posted at Serious Eats. The recipe has quantities suitable for a two-crust pie, but since you might not […]
The famous vodka-containing pie crust recipe from Cooks Illustrated has been my “go to” crust recipe for a few years (you can find it at Serious Eats). The free form galettes that use it have been crispy and flaky on many occasions, thanks in part to techniques and recipes I learned from books like Lindsey […]
When I have two cups of milk in the refrigerator that is getting close to going bad, I often fall back on a stove top pudding recipe I found on Epicurious a few years ago. It’s perfect as a “use up milk” recipe, as it comes together in a hurry and the dry ingredients are […]
The classic “flourless cake” is a dense and decadent confection — often oozing with molten chocolate — made from dark chocolate, butter, egg yolks, sugar and beaten egg whites. But you can take the flourless cake in another direction, one that is light and airy, by relying on the magic of egg whites to stabilize […]
Two years ago, I reported on a failed experiment: an unholy alliance between nutrition and cookies in which I added amaranth seeds (little nutritional powerhouses*) to chocolate chunk cookie batter before baking. The unpleasant results made me wary of such experimentation. Many months later, I received Robin Aswell’s “The New Whole Grains Cookbook” as a […]
(Updated 11/24/16: Fixed broken links) The 2008 Scharffen Berger – TuttiFoodie Chocolate Adventure had over 900 entries submitted, and my entry was a twist on the black and white brownie, that classic combination of a brownie base and a cheesecake topping. I went on an “adventure” with the recipe by I adding cardamom powder to the […]
[Updated with details on the ideal type of baking dish for this dessert and additional sugar sprinkling] A lot of cooking magazines go onto the shelf or into the recycling bin never to appear again. But the May/June 1998 Saveur has been a phenomenal exception. Two of the recipes have become mainstays in my kitchen. […]