Archive for the ‘Product Reviews’ Category
Nonstick parchment paper is a great tool to have in the kitchen. Perfect for lining cookie sheets and cake pans, parchment paper makes cleanup easy and prevents your baked goods from sticking to your pans. Parchment paper is best used on flat surfaces (such as the bottom of pans), but there are things that I bake that I like to be able to lift out of the pan for cooling, slicing and serving. These include coffee cakes, brownies and bar cookies, and when making these types of baked goods, I typically line my pans with aluminum foil and lightly grease it. I can lift the foil right out of the pan (I wrap it up, over the sides) and my baked goods don’t stick.
Reynolds Wrap has managed to combine aluminum foil and parchment paper into one product, their new Nonstick Pan Lining Paper. This paper has foil on one side and parchment on the other. The idea is that the foil allows the paper to conform to the shape of the pan – sides and all – but the parchment paper gives it a nonstick finish with no extra greasing required. This product is a little more expensive than both foil and parchment are, but I picked up a roll recently to see how it performed.
The paper feels heavy, much thicker than either plain aluminum foil or parchment paper. It pressed easily into my pans (sheet pans with shallow sides and deeper, rectangular baking dishes), wrapping into the corners and up the sides easily and staying exactly where I contoured it to my pan, although I noticed that it didn’t have quite as much flexibility as plain aluminum foil. The parchment side of the paper worked just like regular parchment, so it definitely didn’t need to be greased. Overall, I was happy with the performance, but lightly greased aluminum foil works just as well for most baking applications. I would choose this for more heavy duty baking (like lasagna, which Reynolds Wrap actually recommends) where I would think that foil alone might not hold up to the job.
When you think of Nestle Toll House, you probably think of their chocolate chips and classic chocolate chip cookies. The company makes a wide variety of chocolate chips, including seasonal Mint Chocolate Chips and fancy-looking Peanut Butter Swirled Chips. Due to the ever-increasing popularity of dark chocolate (and to more consumers interested in quality chocolate), Dark Chocolate Morsels with 53% cacao content were introduced to the Toll House family. They’ve followed this up with a Nestle Toll House Dark Chocolate Baking Bar.
The baking bar is made with 62% cacao and, while its wrapping matches the signature chocolate chips of the brand, it has the exact same ingredient list as many higher end chocolates. The bar is relatively thin and is divided into eight half-ounce squares that break up easily when you need a portion of the bar for a recipe. The chocolate itself is very smooth, with fruity notes and a rich cocoa flavor. It is slightly sweeter and has fewer bitter notes than some similar dark chocolates, but it is definitely a tasty bar and worth eating on its own as well as using in a recipe.
This chocolate bar can be used in most recipes that call for dark chocolate, including chocolate mousses and chocolate puddings, as well as cookies, brownies and cakes that use dark chocolate. The thin bar chops up easily and melts down quickly. If you prefer, you can even cut it into chunks and add them to your chocolate chip cookies, though you might want to stick with the dark chocolate chips for convenience (and price, since this bar is only 4-oz and you would need a couple to replace the chips in most chocolate chip cookie recipes) and save the bar for other occasions.
You might put out a tray of cookies or other baked goods when entertaining friends and family, but to keep them at their peak they should be stored in airtight containers to preserve their freshness if they’re not going to be eaten within a few hours. I used to have a few ceramic cookie jars (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one) that were beautiful to look at but didn’t keep my cookies fresh. Since then, I’ve kept a few cookie jars for decoration and switched to storing my cookies in large tupperware-type containers that I know are airtight. Cookie jars have a much more appealing look to them than plastic boxes, no matter how airtight, so when Cook’s Country Rated Cookie Jars in a recent issue (Feb/March 2012) I was interested to see how they worked out and whether it would be worth adding one to my collection.
Cook’s Country looked for jars that would keep their cookies fresh, intact and easy-to-grab, and they chose jars that had at least a four quart capacity with strong seals and wide openings. Their tests included tasting cookies stored over a period of days and monitoring how much moisture the jars let inside. Their top pick was the OXO Good Grips Pop Storage Container, which had a completely airtight seal, was made of clear (BPA free) plastic and was easy to clean. The container had a four quart capacity, but was available in other sizes, as well.
Recommended jars included the Oggi Jumbo 9.5-inch Ceramic Cookie Jar and the Anchor Hocking 1 Gallon Heritage Jar, both of which worked well but did not provide the same airtight seal as the Oxo.
Culinary school isn’t for everyone – no matter how appealing it sounds to be able to work with top chefs, improve your skills and learn to create really top-quality dishes – because most people don’t intend to become professional chefs and the time and cost involved in attending a full time school just isn’t worth it when you cook recreationally. That said, there are many at-home chefs who want their skills to be on-par with those of “real” chefs and one way to learn those techniques, recipes and skills is by signing up for an online cooking school. Online cooking schools have sprung up over the past couple of years, offering anyone with a computer and a good internet connection the chance to watch video lessons on everything from basic knife skills to roasting the perfect chicken. These schools are intended to give you a solid base in these skills, not just to entertain you with stories (like most food tv shows do). They’re less expensive than full time culinary school and can be done on your own schedule.
The Wall Street Journal recently took an in depth look at three online culinary schools to see how their online classes – which are aimed at home cooks looking to get culinary school skills – compared and whether they were worth the investment: Top Chef University, Rouxbe and Culinary Institute of America Prochef Podcasts.
- Top Chef University got a thumbs up for their impressive range of subjects, with more than 235 lessons and over 60 hours of video content. The instructors vary by lesson (former Top Chef cast members), but the skills demonstrated were all detailed and lessons were packed with useful tips. The classes are broken into 12 courses and you’re encouraged to complete them in order. It was $199.95 for one year/$24.95 per month for one course at a time.
- Rouxbe is an online only school with more than 75 classes and over 1,000 videos. They were praised for their polished videos, attention to detail and very thorough lessons that walked you through every detail of the techniqes. A discussion forum with staff and other users provided a classroom-like atmosphere, too. $299.95 for one year/ $4.99 per lesson for 90 day access or $9.99 per lesson for lifetime access.
- Culinary Institute of America Prochef Podcasts were not organized into neat courses to follow like the other schools. Instead, these engaging videos allowed you the freedom to pick and choose what topics you were most interested in without being encouraged to view them in a certain order. All videos were taught by CIA instructors, though there were no quizzes, etc. like the other schools offer and no way to really track your progress. $4.95 per podcast
The WSJ didn’t really rank these schools because with their different styles they will appeal to people looking for different things. They’re all worth checking out, however, to get a little bit of that culinary school skill set without leaving your own home.
There are plenty of ways to decorate cookies. They can be shaped and sliced, rolled and cut with cookie cutters, topped with sprinkles or spread with frosting. Cookies can also be stamped with designs, and the Holiday Cookie Stamps from Williams Sonoma are a fun way to decorate cookies for the holidays. The stamps are made of cast aluminum (produced by Nordic Ware) and feature three different festive designs: a snowflake, a gift tag and a wreath. They stamps have very clear designs with a lot of detail, and there are smooth wooden handles on each stamp to make them easy to hold and use. Essentially, all you need to do is push the stamp down onto a ball of cookie dough and your holiday cookie is ready to bake.
The stamps performed very, very well and my cookies came out looking just like the cookies on the box. You could see every detail clearly, including the text that was printed on the cookies! The dough for must cutout cookies needs to be chilled before you roll it out. The dough for these does not need to be as cold (it’s easier to press the cookies the closer the dough is to room temperature). I do recommend chilling whatever dough you’re working with at least slightly, however, as dough that was too-warm did occasionally stick to the stamp. These will stay in my holiday toolbox and I might even keep an eye out for other holiday designs throughout the year.
The stamps are fun to use and the results are great. Choose a shortbread or butter cookie recipe that won’t spread much, such as my Classic Cutout Christmas Cookies, to get the cleanest results from the stamp. Also, be sure to clean the stamps extremely well with soap and water before you use them, as the cast aluminum can leave a little bit of residue/discoloring on the dough if they haven’t been thoroughly washed before use.
