New newsletter coming soon! Sign up here with your email address to get our monthly newsletter, with news updates and seasonal recipes.
Easter has some of the most colorful candies and decorations of any holiday. Some holidays, like Halloween and Christmas, are deeply connected to specific colors. Easter is a little bit of a free-for-all when it comes to colors, thanks to the fact that it falls in the springtime when flowers are starting to …
Marshmallow Peeps are an Easter staple – or, at least, they were for me. As much as I like chocolate, I was always excited to get a package of Peeps in my Easter basket. They were cute, colorful and light enough to be the perfect contrast to a heavy chocolate egg. I still …
Royal icing is a hard white icing made from egg whites and confectioners’ sugar. It is described as a “hard” icing because it dries hard, unlike buttercream frostings which remain soft even after they have sat out for a long period of time. It is typically made from meringue powder, rather than …
There are several different styles of buttercream out there, including basic American buttercream and slightly more labor-intensive Italian and Swiss buttercreams. All are delicious ways to frost a cake or top a batch of cupcakes. I usually recommend that people make more buttercream than they need …
Acidulated water is water that an acid has been added to it, usually lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar. Citric acid and ascorbic acid can also be used. The water is used to prevent the cut skin of fruits and vegetables from browning when they are exposed to air. Recipes often call …
Toasted nuts almost always taste better than untoasted nuts, whether you’re eating them as-is or incorporating them into a recipe. They have a crisper texture and a more pronounced nuttiness, with less of the vegetal notes that some raw nuts can have. Toasting hazelnuts makes them especially delicious because it gives them …
During the holidays, I feel a lot more inspired to go over-the-top with cake and cookie decorations. I want to make desserts that are just as vibrant as all those decorations that you’ll find on a Christmas tree. In fact, those twinkling strings of tree lights were the inspiration for this Christmas …
Pie crusts are intimidating to many bakers because we always hear how difficult and temperamental they are to make. Pie crusts are not that difficult to make, but there are quite a few problems that you can encounter with them and, unfortunately, sometimes you won’t know what is wrong with a pie …
