We all try to be as careful as possible when working in the kitchen. Hot pans, ovens, utensils and often boiling water are everywhere and can easily cause the occasional (or more than occasional) burn. Even if you have hands of stone, a burn is never fun and should be avoided at all costs. Potholders and dishtowels can help to protect your hands from most hot surfaces, but often the accidental burns are the ones that are most difficult to avoid. I’ve burned myself on the inside of my oven door before and a potholder wouldn’t have helped, nor would it have helped on the occasions my wrist has come in contact with a hot oven rack when I’m trying to fiddle with an oven thermometer. These Oven Rack Guards, on the other hand, definitely would have.
The guards are fabric and fit over the exposed edges of just about any oven rack, putting a barrier between the rack and your skin at a place where they are otherwise likely to meet. The fabric is DuPont Nomex, a flame-resistant fabric originally developed for (and is still used by) firefighters back in the 1960s. They’re washable and can be left in the oven for all normal use, although they should be removed when the broiler is being used or when you are running he “clean” cycle on the oven.
I like carrot cake enough to wonder why there aren’t more carrot cake-like concoctions around. The cake is known for being moist and spicy – attributes that are prized in many baked goods, after all. In playing around with the idea, I decided to try carrot cake in combination with an oatmeal cookie and was really happy with the result.
The cookies are your standard drop cookies, with butter and sugar creamed together before the rest of the ingredients are added. I stirred in the shredded carrots at the end, along with the oatmeal and the raisins, just before putting them in the oven. The cookies were a bit cakey – which is not a bad thing in this case, since the cookies are inspired by a cake to begin with – and had a nice, chewy texture to them. I used my pumpkin pie spice blend for the spices in the cookies, but you can mix in cinnamon, etc. separately if you don’t have the mix.
I would definitely recommend using freshly grated carrot in these cookies instead of pre-grated, in the event that you keep that on hand as a “convenience” item. It doesn’t take very long to grate them and you really only need two carrots, depending on the size you have on hand. The fresh carrots add moisture to the cookies, too.
The cookies are best within a day or two of baking, but freeze pretty well. If you’re so inclined, you can sandwich them with some cream cheese frosting for a more indulgent treat.
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Springform pans are a unique type of bakeware. Round and high-sided, the pans do not have fixed sides. Instead, they have an adjustable ring that forms the sides of a cake or torte and fits onto a bottom plate with the aid of a spring or clamp. The advantage of this type of pan is that a delicate baked good can be removed from the pan very easily; unlike a solid-sided pan, the ring can simply be unclamped and lifted off, leaving your cake undamaged on the base, which can double as a serving plate.
These pans can be difficult to work with, however, because many of the more “delicate” baked goods they’re used for – like cheesecakes – require that they be baked in a water bath and it is almost impossible to wrap enough foil around the outside of the pan to prevent some water from leaking in. The best way I’ve found to line a sprinform pan is to cover the base of the pan with a large sheet or two of aluminum foil (I prefer heavy duty foil for this because the sheets are larger), then clamp the side ring around the base and fold the aluminum up towards the top of the pan, pressing it tight. By putting the foil inside of the pan, you are essentially protecting your baked goods from water bath leakage with an aluminum foil sling that separates the product from the (leaky) base of the pan. If your water bath goes higher than your foil, you may still have a bit of a leakage problem, but I’ve had far fewer problems with this method than other pan-wrapping methods I’ve tried.
When you are ready to remove your cake/torte and serve, simply trim back the sides of the aluminum foil until it isn’t really visible. Or, if you feel comfortable with the general sturdiness of your product, you can put a round of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan before baking and use that to slide your cake from the springform pan base to a serving plater.
Walk into almost any ice cream parlor (and the first thing that you’ll notice is a delicious, warm smell. It’s not the ice cream, it’s the smell of homemade waffle cones. Or, at least, it was the standard and should still be. A lot of chain-type ice cream shops have nixed the from-scratch waffle cones and, while there are plenty of ice cream stores and frozen yogurt shops that still carry on the tradition, you can always get some satisfaction by making the cones at home.
This is the Chef’s Choice Waffle Cone Maker. It is basically a waffle iron that makes very, very thin waffles. When the just cooked waffle comes out of the iron, it is wrapped around a cone-shaping cone and left to crisp up one its own. The finished cones can obviously be filled with ice cream or any other treat that comes to mind. And, of course, you’ll get the smell of freshly cooked waffle cones each time you use the iron – which alone is almost reason enough to consider getting one.
This isn’t a gadget that you absolutely need at home, but if you like waffle cones (I do!) and ice cream, it might very well be worth it. Chef’s Choice also makes a waffle cone mix to help streamline the process if you’re looking for something a bit faster than “from scratch” for that ice cream parlor speed, too.
