eat dessert first
I’m a huge fan of supporting smaller wheat growers and trying their flour. Below is a Flour and Grain Resource Guide to Upper Midwest growers, millers, and some of the bakeries who use them. I have personally baked with Baker’s Field and Sunrise Mill flours locally and I’m excited to […]
I love this crème brûlée with lavender, but it’s optional! If you’d rather, you can leave it out and it will be a delicious vanilla crème brûlée. Enjoy! Crème Brûlée was the first French dessert I’d ever had in a restaurant. When I was in junior high school, I’d take […]
This ethereal crown of meringue, filled with cream and berries is a Pavlova. The name comes from Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was performing around the world in 1926 and made a stop in the land down under. From there the details get a little fuzzy and no one is […]
These fluted confections are the official dessert of the Bordeaux region of France. The interior of canelés is like a lovely, creamy custard that is rich with both vanilla and rum. The trick to success, IMHO, with making canelés is using Copper Molds lined with beeswax and butter. That’s how you […]
I developed this butterscotch pot de crème recipe for Tilia‘s dessert menu. Steven Brown, the chef/owner wanted a turbo charged version of the butterscotch pudding from his childhood. We went with a Pot de crème, which is essentially as decadent as creme brulee, without the crack of caramel resting on […]
This simple flan recipe is beloved by my son, and I hope your family loves it just as much. It’s a great dessert for Cinco de Mayo, and simple enough to whip together any time. A Family Favorite Flan is one of my youngest son’s favorite desserts. He orders it […]
How do you elevate this simple chocolate mousse recipe? Add toasted meringue! Yes, you get to use my favorite kitchen tool, the blow torch, for the beautiful, toasted brown top. And the chocolate mousse is rich and delicious. For another mousse recipe, try this popular triple chocolate mousse cake! My […]
This burnt sugar soufflé is such an elegant dessert, that is quite easy to make, but takes some timing to get it into the oven and puffed properly. Once you take it from the oven it will slowly start to deflate, so get it to the table as soon as […]
It just takes a tweet to get a company like General Mills to realize they’ve made a big mistake. Ok, the tweet has to come from Katy Perry and then be backed up by the frosting evangelist, Benjamin Johnson, who started a change.org campaign and got 7,000 Rainbow Chip Frosting fans […]
In 2013 my husband and I bought a house. It’s a gob-smacking piece of 1902 architecture with ornate woodwork, the likes of which I’d never seen before. It was built by T.P. Healy, who made a name for himself in Minneapolis building homes for the flour barons and other folks […]
“Lightning!” That’s the literal translation from French I got when I put éclair into google translate. I’ve read a couple of explanations for this name, but only one makes any sense to me. “They disappear in a flash, quicker than a bolt of lightning.” This is the absolute truth. Eclairs […]
By the time I became a pastry chef in the mid 1990s tiramisu, the decadent Italian dessert that defined the 80s, was banned from all high-end restaurants. It was a matter of bad PR, not because it wasn’t well liked or frequently requested. In fact, it was its very popularity […]