Archive for the ‘Product Reviews’ Category
The hull is the leafy stem of the strawberry and the small part of the fruit that it is attached to. This part of the berry always needs to be removed before cooking with them, or chopping them up for a salad or other dish, and there are several ways to go about it. You can simply chop off the whole top of the berry, or you can use a small paring knife to cut out the hull. I usually use the paring knife method, but was tempted into trying out the Chef’n Stem Gem on a recent trip to the kitchen store.
The Chef’n Stem Gem is a neat little strawberry huller that looks like a berry and promises to make very short work of the strawberry hulling process. You simply push the button on top to open the stainless steel claw at the base. Press the claw into the berry, around the hull, then release the button and twist the gadget to remove. The claw doesn’t have sharp edges, just uses pressure and good design to cut through the berry. This little gadget also works well with tomatoes, easily removing the stem and “hull” of those fruits, so it’ll multitask every time you want to make gazpacho or salsa.
It works very well and is very efficient. I never had to go back to a berry to get anything it might have missed and it never gets too much “good” berry as it hulls. It might be a fraction slower than my paring knife (if I’m working very fast), but the difference is not noticeable and this is much easier to use. I’m definitely glad I gave in and picked one up because it’ll get a lot of use in my kitchen this strawberry (and tomato) season!
In addition to the cake mixes you can buy at the grocery store and the ones available at higher end gourmet stores, there are many mixes out there made by smaller producers that can give you great results and make fun gifts. One example of this is the Vintage Bakeshop, which specializes in all natural baking mixes packaged in stylish, vintage-inspired wrapping.
I tried a mix for their Red Velvet Cupcakes to see if the cupcakes turned out to be as lovely as the packaging. As with most mixes, you simply add a few of your own eggs, oil, etc. to the mix and stir, then you’re ready to bake. The mix comes together easily and has a very intense color to it that carries over into the finished product. I should note that all of the mixes from the Vintage Bakeshop line are complete natural (i.e. sugar, flour, etc.) with no artificial preservatives or other ingredients – except for this red velvet mix, which contains artificial red coloring (red dye no. 40). I like red velvet cupcakes and am not bothered by a bit of food coloring, but I wanted to point out that their other mixes do not contain any for those who keep an eye out for certain dyes.
The finished cupcakes were very moist and tender. I could taste the hint of cocoa that was in the cupcakes, as well as a hint of vanilla, just as you should be able to do in a real red velvet cake. This made them feel a lot more homemade than many mixes. The best part about this mix is that the packaging is simply adorable. It is the kind of thing that makes a great addition to gift baskets for Mother’s Day or other holidays. The frosting recipes included with the mix (all scratch recipes) are nice, too, and it will always improve a cupcake to use homemade icing.
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and what could be a better gift for mom than a copy of The Baking Bites Cookbook? The book is packed with great recipes and plenty of full color photos that make each recipe look oh-so-delicious, and almost every recipe is exclusively in the cookbook, not on the blog. The only thing better than getting a copy for Mother’s Day would be baking something from the book ahead of time and giving your mom a fresh batch of cookies, scones or a cake to go along with the cookbook to give her a preview of what’s inside! The recipes are easy to make and use ingredients that you probably already have in the kitchen. You – or your mom, of course – can whip them up yourself or bring the kids in to give you a hand in the kitchen (or do they work for you if you’re the one being celebrated on Mother’s Day!).
As a special treat, each cookbook ordered between now and Mother’s Day, May 13th, will ship with free priority shipping in the US when you buy the book directly from me via PayPal. Simply select standard US shipping when checking out. There is a discount for orders of two or more – in case you have another other special mothers or grandmothers who might need a copy, as well, and US orders on multiple books will also include free priority shipping. The book can also be found on Amazon.com.
Frosting Creations are a new product from Duncan Hines that attempts to revolutionize canned frosting. Canned frostings typically come in basic flavors, such as chocolate and vanilla. With Frosting Creations, you get a can of plain frosting and can choose from a variety of flavorings to add to it to make flavors that are much more distinctive than those you’ll usually find in the baking aisle. There are a dozen flavors and they include Caramel, Cherry Vanilla and White Chocolate Raspberry, as well as over the top kid flavors, like Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum. The flavors are concentrated and come in a powder that you simply stir into the plain frosting.
I don’t typically use canned frosting, but I usually have one tucked away in the back of the pantry just in case, and I admit that I was very curious about how these new flavors would taste – especially some of the flavors that had a more “premium” sound to them.
The base frosting was your typical canned frosting, creamy and sweet but with little flavor. The flavor packets stirred in easily, with a little bit of vigorous stirring with a knife or spatula. I tried Orange Creme, Caramel and Bubble Gum. Orange Creme promised to be a creamsicle flavor and it did add a subtle orange flavor to the frosting. It was even better with a little bit of orange zest added to it, which popped the citrus more and let the frosting provide the vanilla. Bubble Gum looked and tasted like, well, bubble gum. It was not something I would eat again in all honesty – but I do know a few kids who loved it (especially on a chocolate cupcake) because they had never had anything like it before. My favorite was caramel, which did have a nice caramel flavor and tempered the sweetness of the plain frosting a bit. It’s still not going to replace homemade, but it was a lot more interesting than most canned frostings I’ve had and would be great on a yellow cake.
Overall, I think that this is a really fun concept and can deliver a lot more flavor options than you could find with off-the-shelf frostings. It’s fun to play with the flavors (especially if kids are involved) and couldn’t be easier.
And if you want to know a little secret, you can use these flavoring packets with homemade frostings (American buttercream made with butter, confectioners’ sugar and milk) for a very easy way to change the flavor of your frosting but start with a little bit tastier base.
Whether you’re using them for grating cheese to fill up a quesadilla or shredding carrots for a carrot cake, a grater is a tool that just about everybody has in their kitchen. The more often you use graters, the more you will notice how different they are. Some grate smoothly, some leave you with chunks of cheese or other crumbly products in your hand after grating. Some are simple, others have a half dozen different sizes and shapes of shreds to offer. In a recent issue (May/June 2012), Cook’s Illustrated decided to revisit the question of which type of grater is the best.
A few years ago, the CI test kitchen asked themselves this same question and picked out a four sided box grater with multiple functions, including a slicer and a super fine grate due to its versatility. The reason that they decided to revisit the issue is that they realized that they really only used the grater for one type of grating: producing long shreds of cheese, potatoes, carrots and other foods from large holes. For very fine grates, the test kitchen uses a microplane (which can’t be beat for very fine grating) and they never used the slicer that was included with their previous top choice.
They decided to look for a grater that could produce consistently excellent shreds, and not just do a little of everything. They rated ease of use, stability and ease of cleaning. They also took into account durability and, of course, performance. The best performing graters shredded soft and hard items easily and with minimal waste.
Their top pick was the Rosle Coarse Grater, which performed excellently in repeated tests and fit nicely over bowls, while still offering stability for hand grating with its rubber feet. It was compact and easy to use (and easy to store), and since the vast majority of shredding that the test kitchen needs is a coarse shred. Their two runners up were the Microplane Specialty Series 4-Sided Box Grater and the Cuisipro 4-Sided Box Grater.
Their previous top choice, the OXO Good Grips Box Grater fell to a “not recommended” thanks to a strange redesign from OXO. The new design added grates that opened both upwards and downwards and made grating messy, and the grater difficult to clean.
