Pastry cream is indispensable in the pastry kitchen — it can be used to fill puffs, eclairs, used as a filling in cakes and tarts, and be transformed into creme mousseline or creme chibouste. Make sure you have everything ready and set your work station up properly and you will produce perfect pastry cream every time!
Ganache For Cream Puffs, Eclairs, and Piping
Ganache is a wonderful mixture of chocolate and cream and comes in many different textures and tastes depending on the chocolate and how much cream is added.
This is a basic ganache in the ratio of 1 to 1. This means 1 part chocolate to 1 part heavy cream by weight (just one more reason to buy that scale!) For example, 1 pound of chocolate is mixed with a pint of heavy cream. So if you have only 10 cream puffs to glaze, just mix 2 ounces of chocolate and 2 ounces of cream. Easy!
Continue reading “Ganache For Cream Puffs, Eclairs, and Piping”
Stocking A Baking Station: Ingredients
If you have decided to bake on a regular basis to improve your skills, (and I hope you have!), stocking a baking station is essential so that you have all the basics you will need. That is not to say you will have every possible ingredient or tool, but there are certain items that appear over and over and having them on hand will make your baking much easier.
New England Yeast Rolls
There is nothing quite like the smell of warm bread just out of the oven and these New England yeast rolls are no exception. Make these and your whole house will smell like a bakery — they are buttery, yeasty, and absolutely delicious.
Linzer Cookies
Linzer cookies are lovely, elegant cookies that look harder to make than they actually are — and they’re delicious! I’m a traditionalist so I make these cookies with toasted hazelnuts, but almonds are also delicious.
Books I Love
After 2 decades of professional baking and a lifetime of cooking, I have accumulated a lot of cookbooks! I have cookbooks from every region of the world, both savory and sweet, and countless books on chocolate, cake decorating, and bread baking. I want to share with you my favorites – the books that I turn to time and time again not only because I use them as a professional reference but because they have wonderful recipes that I enjoy making and tips that actually work! Here are 10 books that I would not want to be without as a baker.
Gluten Free Cheese and Herb Crackers
These crackers are buttery, delicious, and best of all, gluten free. Coconut flour and cheese gives these crackers their structure. Include them on your next hor’s doeuvre tray and they are guaranteed to disappear!
Scones You’ll Want to Eat!
Picking the very first recipe is troublesome. Should I make a big splash and do something over the top? Should I pick a tried and true favorite? What about starting with the basics? I finally settled on an often maligned pastry, and many times with good reason — scones. When they are good they can be sublime but quite often they are, well, just not. I have tasted many — dry, crumbly, tasteless scones and wondered, why?! It’s not a time consuming project nor do scones require special equipment or odd ingredients. They simply need the proper ratio of ingredients and a light touch.
You Can Bake in a Tiny Kitchen!
Lots of people think you have to have an enormous kitchen with all the bells and whistles to make beautiful pastries. While that certainly is nice, you can get fantastic results in a very small space — you just need to be organized! I live in New York City and it’s an amazing place to be, particularly if you are a chef. However, kitchen space is quite tight! So just in case you think I have an unfair advantage, here are pictures of the space I work in.
Welcome!
Thank you for joining me at bakeitfab. I hope you will find this site helpful and inspirational in your journey to be a better baker. It will take time, practice, and patience, but if you commit yourself to improving you will see tremendous results!
Here, I share my favorite recipes with you. They are delicious and I know they work because I have used them for years. Each recipe has detailed instructions and pictures of each stage of preparation to guide you along the way. I also share tips and techniques with you that I have refined over the years — things I learned the hard way so that you don’t have to! Finally, I include helpful articles with topics such as how to organize a baking station, cookbooks that I love, and 10 tools I can’t live without.
I hope you will return to bakeitfab often. My goal is for this to be a resource that you use regularly on your way to being the best baker possible. Enjoy your time here!