In addition to great spice storage, a sharp knife, cast iron skillet, and a kitchen scale, every kitchen deserves a thermometer. It’s the most reliable way to cook foods to the proper/desired doneness. Well, it’s reliable if your thermometer is correctly calibrated.

Thermometers galore!

Though I’m an enormous fan of my Raytek MiniTemp infrared thermometer (note this style only measures surface temperatures, not internal temperatures) and my ThermoWorks ThermaPen, I happily used inexpensive dial thermometers for years with great results. One of the things I made sure to do is calibrate regularly. My method was rather standard, filling a glass with ice, adding cold water, and placing the thermometer in the ice water to get a reading. Ideally it should read 32˚F and if not the nut under the display head adjusts the reading when turned.

Dial thermometer adjustment

It wasn’t until I recently saw a post about calibrating thermometers on ThermaPen.com that I realized I didn’t have the process quite right. There are a few subtle details that are rather important when setting up a water bath for calibration. Here’s what I learned.

Fill a glass with ice

Calibration ice bath

Add just enough cold water to fill in the gaps between the ice and keep the water level 1/2”  below the surface of the ice. Check to be sure the ice isn’t floating up off the bottom of the glass. If it is, you have too much water. This picture is a bit deceptive; the ice is sitting on the bottom of the glass, but the glass has an inch-thick bottom.

Give the ice water a stir and let it sit for 1 minute.

Right where it should be

Insert the thermometer probe 2” below the surface and gently stir. This will give you an accurate reading. If you have a dial thermometer you can then turn the nut to adjust the needle to read 32˚F if it doesn’t already. ThemoWorks has a nice video demo of this water bath calibration technique.

To get an accurate reading when checking food for doneness with a probe thermometer it’s important to insert the probe deep enough into the food for the temperature to register. The sensor on some probes can be ½” to 1” from the tip, depending on the manufacturer. One of the reasons I like my ThermaPen is that the sensor is in the very tip of the probe, plus it registers temperatures at lightning fast speed.

In addition to thinking about where the probe will sense the temperature, it’s important to consider where to take a reading in the food. Generally inserting the thermometer at a slight angle into the thickest part of a piece of meat or the center of a casserole is the best approach.  If the item is thin, inserting the probe into the side at an angle nearly parallel with the surface will allow the probe enough contact to register the temperature. Be careful to avoid hitting bone or cartilage with the probe because you won’t get an accurate reading of the temperature of the meat.

If you want to make a great investment and buy an outstandingly high-quality instant read thermometer I can’t say enough good things about the ThermaPen, but if you aren’t ready for that level of commitment consider an inexpensive dial thermometer, after all you now know the proper technique for making an ice bath for calibration.

If you are cooking a turkey tomorrow, it’s ready to come out of the oven when the thickest part of the thigh registers 165˚F. Be sure to check both thighs before pulling the bird out of the oven. This doesn’t mean it’s done though, there’s still the critical rest period. Don’t skip it. Let the cooked turkey rest for 20-30 minutes before carving. You can tent the turkey with foil if you like, but be sure to poke a few holes in the foil so steam can escape and the skin stays crispy. I found a nice run-down of cooking temperatureson the Thermapen site that might be a handy reference.

If you’re staring at tomorrow with no plans and no prepped turkey, pick up a whole chicken or turkey breast to roast. Below is a recipe link for a Basic Roast Chicken from Rouxbe Online Cooking School, it’s a perfect stand-in for turkey. I’ve also included a few other recipes on our site that might round out your menu. Note, the recipes on Rouxbe are free to access, but by using our affiliate link you can access all the content, including the entire cooking school curriculum, on their site free for 14 days! If you like what you see and end up buying a membership, you help us raise money for Share Our Strength.

Recipe Links

• Basic Roast Chicken
• Cornbread Stuffing Baked in a Squash
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Pearl Onions
• Veggie Cheesy Torte
• Spiced Cranberry Sauce

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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This week the Tuesday’s with Dorie group is playing with more cranberries. The two most quintessential November ingredients to me are winter squash and cranberries. They bookend the month; pumpkins show up in full-force for Halloween and cranberries seal the deal as the crown jewel of the Thanksgiving table. Sadly, the last week of November feels like a lost cause, dominated by Christmas, it might as well be rolled into December. 

Cranberry Lime Galette

I’m thouroughly enjoying November right along with this Cranberry Lime Galette (gah-LEHT). A galette is basically a free-form rustic pie and both sweet and savory fillings are common. This one is definitely sweet, but the cranberries aren’t sugared into submission. Rather they hit your mouth with a puckery tang that is carefully tempered by sweetness and softened by the rich buttery crust. The dueling taste of floral and bitter linger from the lime zest while ginger pipes in with just a touch of heat. If your taste buds have been bored, jolt them back to life with a slice of this.  

Cranberry Lime Galette

Snuggled in with the fresh cranberries are dried cranberries and fresh apple. Additionally, ground nuts and a touch of breadcrumbs add body and help to thicken the filling. As is often the case, I didn’t have a few of the called-for ingredients. I used dried figs rather than dried cranberries which worked really well, but the pear I substituted for the apple turned out to be a weak point. Once cooked, it was so soft it got lost in the filling. Next time I’ll go to the store for a nice crisp apple that will hold up during cooking, something along the lines of Cameo, Honey Crisp, Empire, Jonathan, Fuji, Rome, or any other apple that isn’t likely to be reduced to mush when exposed to the toasty oven environment. Next time I will also just do a rough chop on the nuts rather than mincing them down to a fine texture. I think the added crunch and more prominent flavor would complement the cranberries. 

Galette ingredients

In addition to my convenience-motivated substitutions, I added a little spice just for the fun and flavor of it. The filling was spiked with ½ teaspoon of freshly ground allspice and I also mixed a bit of allspice with sugar for dusting the crust. Allspice combines the flavor and aroma of nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, along with a peppery note in one handy little berry. Check out our Spice Library to learn more about this magnificent spice. 

Grinding allspice berries

As luck would have it, I had a pie crust in the freezer ready and waiting. So rather than make Dorie’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough, I used my pie crust made with butter and some spectacularly decadent Mangalitsa lard I rendered. The sisters that write Celestial Confections, chose this week’s recipe and have posted the recipe for the Cranberry Lime Galette as well as Dorie’s crust. The link at the end of my post will take you there. 

Cranberry Lime Galette

Though a galette boasts the rustic, hand-made look, it still requires rolling out pastry dough. Don’t let this dissuade you from making home-made crusts. On a side note, when making pie dough, if you have a food processor, use it. When rolling out dough, give it enough time in the fridge to become well chilled. Then place it on a lightly floured work surface and roll from the center to 12:00. Spin the dough ¼ turn and roll again from the center to 12:00. Repeat the rolling and spinning adding a dusting of flour on or under the dough as needed if it starts to stick. I find a bench scraper to be invaluable in this process. A large spatula will work as well. Slide the blade under the dough to release it from the work surface if it sticks between rolls. Then spin the dough a quarter turn and toss a little more flour down. Before you know it you will have a nice big round of dough ready to be filled. 

French rolling pin and bench scraper

I use a straight French rolling pin. Gale Gand mentioned this was her favorite style of pin on her Food Network show, Sweet Dreams, back in the day. I bought one and love it. Tapered wood pins are another popular style of French rolling pins, but I’ve not had the chance to try one so I can’t tell you how they compare. 

In all of my enthusiasm to get the dough filled and in the oven, it wasn’t until assembly was complete that I noticed a most unfortunate oversight. 

Ready for the oven - not so fast...

See the little bowl of what looks like it might be crumb topping? It’s actually the breadcrumb mixture that was supposed to have been spread on the dough before adding the fruit. Damn. What folds up, unfolds, so I carefully unfolded the dough, scooped up the filling, spread the breadcrumbs and then put it back together. The galette was no worse for the wear and into the oven it went. 

If you are looking for a slightly less obvious pie for Thanksgiving embrace the punchy-tartness of cranberries and give this Cranberry Lime Galette a try. Just save yourself some grief and remember to put the breadcrumbs in before you get it all assembled! 

Recipe Links 

• Cranberry Lime Galette and Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough

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Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 152 recipes completed 69 to go!

I hear the word blondies and I can’t help but think blandies; pale bar cookies that don’t offer much flavor beyond simply being sweet.

Let’s just say I cranked out this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe with very low expectations. In true Dorie Greenspan form, this bar cookie is packed with goodies that make it anything but bland. Chocolate, toffee bits, walnuts, and coconut are Dorie’s suggestions. In addition to the mix-ins, brown sugar adds a tremendous amount of flavor to these bars. I will go so far as to say I loved these, David too.

I kept half of the batch “pure” for David, only mixing in the chocolate. My half had all the goodies except for the toffee bits (only because I didn’t have any). I also used large flake unsweetened coconut rather than the sweetened shredded variety. How do I know David was a fan of these? The regular inventory updates I was getting.

“I only have three blondies left.”
“I’m almost out of blondies.”
“ I’m having the last blondie with lunch.”
“All the blondies are gone.”

A big thanks to Nicole of Cookies on Friday for picking such a winner of a recipe. Now I know good blondies do exist. She has the recipe posted on her blog if you would like to prove it to yourself (link at the end of this post).

I’m a big fan of finding the best way to do something (just look at SpiceCare!). In a recent blog post, the ever-clever and talented CakeSpy, Jessie, has put some serious thought into the best way to cut bar cookies. For the times when the cookies get plated rather than eaten straight from the pan while standing in the kitchen, a perfect cut is important.

She’s way ahead of the game with her tool of choice, a New West Knife Works knife. These knives have become my latest obsession after reading about them for the first time on Bren Herrera’s blog post, “El Cubano!” The Amazing Cuban Sandwich & an Amazing Knife. The Fusionwood Super Bread Knife makes my heart race. I have already vowed that when I own one someday I won’t use it to chop chocolate, an abuse my current bread knife suffers on a regular basis. A serrated knife is terrific for chopping big blocks of chocolate, but then it’s not so good for slicing bread anymore. If you are in the market for a high quality knife, take a look at the New West Knife Works lines. They are made by bona fide food and knife geeks in Jackson Hole, WY. They think of each knife as a work of art and that’s the kind of knife I’d spend money on.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 131 recipes completed 89 to go!

Recipe Link

• Chewy, Chunky Blondies,  by Dorie Greenspan

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 136 recipes completed 85 to go!

I was thinking ahead when I made all that dulce de leche over the weekend. As it happens, for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie group it’s Dulcle de Leche cookies!

I’ve made these before so I knew they would be good, which is one of the reasons I wanted to try making my own dulce de leche, which if you read that post you will see was only marginally successful. I ended up with dulce de leche that was too thin to act as a cookie filling, so my solution was to mix in some leftover chocolate ganache I had in the fridge. It turned out to be a deliciously perfect solution!

This recipe suggests spooning out rounded teaspoons of dough, but I found making such tiny cookies it to be entirely too slow a process. The last time I made these I must have scooped out much larger cookies. I reached for my pastry bag and had an entire sheet pan piped out in no time.

Piping Tip
A gental tap on the top of each cookie with a wet finger will press down the points. This wet finger trick works for smoothing piped meringue and pâte à choux dough as well.

My pastry bag fitted with a smaller tip made quick work of filling the cookies . To avoid filling too many halves and being caught without tops or having to hunt for a similarly sized top, I stacked the cookies in stacks of similar diameter. Grabing them two at a time I placed each duo upside down on a sheet pan, piped the filling, and sandwiched them together.

These are soft cookies and I preferred the ones I let bake to a deep golden color because they had a nice crispy outer crust.  After storing them in an airtight container overnight, they became very soft and cakey. Serving them the day they are baked is the way to go. The soft texture of the cookie screamed  ice cream sandwich to me and I have no doubt that someone in the Tuesdays with Dorie group will have had the same idea and filled their cookies with dulce de leche ice cream.

Thank you to Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake for selecting the recipe this week. She has it posted on her blog if you feel a dulce de leche craving coming on.

Disposable pastry bags
I always keep a stash of disposable pastry bags on hand. You can buy them at any restaurant supply store, most kitchen stores and online. I find the fabric bags difficult to ever get clean after filling them with buttercream or chocolate, so I prefer the disposables.  

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 118 recipes completed 103 to go!

I’ve made dulce de leche once using fresh milk and sugar cooked on the stovetop and had lack-luster results in the form of a gritty texture. Wanting to conquer dulce de leche I decided to research some recipes and test various methods head to head. 

My options: 

Boil in the can method: Sweetened condensed milk cooked right in the can. This method comes with the warning that it’s possible for the can to explode, followed by, “ but it’s never happened to me.” 

Bake in the can method: Same concept as boil in the can, but the explosion danger is contained to the oven. 

Bake in the oven not in the can method: The convenience of the cook in the can method without the risk of an explosion. This sounds worthy of testing. 

Cook fresh milk and sugar on the stovetop method: Having had lousy results with this one, I was eager to try it again armed with better instructions. 

I followed David Lebovits’ instructions for baking sweetened condensed milk in a shallow pan in a water bath at 425 degrees F for an hour to an hour and a half. Simple. (Not wanting to crank up the oven just to bake a little pan of milk I baked a batch of muffins at the same time!) After an hour the milk had a nice caramel color, but wasn’t deeply golden, so I let it go for another 30 minutes. That would be a little too long. The center is clearly burned, but the edges were nicely salvageable and resulted in a lovely dulce de leche with a nice thick texture. Next time I won’t cook it as long, and I’ll place a silicone pot holder in the water bath to add some insulation to the center of the pan. 

Simultaneously I had a pan of milk and sugar simmering on the stove following Pim’s instructions. I made half of her recipe and decided to spice it up by adding a cinnamon stick, 8 allspice berries, and a 3” long dried New Mexico chile with the seeds removed. My first experiment with making dulce de leche suggested stirring occasionally; Pim mentions nothing about stirring once it’s set on a very low heat to cook. It seemed like keeping the milk moving would be a good thing, and I had the perfect underutilized tool for the job. 

I bought a StirChef years ago thinking it would be handy to have a pot sitr itself while I went about other tasks in the kitchen. It would be, but this little guy stirs so slowly that I have yet to find a good application for it. Dulce de leche could be it. The milk doesn’t put up much resistance and the slow pace is fine.  After about 3 hours it quit. Likely the batteries died, so I just pulled it out and let the milk sit over the lowest heat of my burner. After 3 ½ hours the milk had taken on a bit of color and reduced by about a third, but was still quite thin. The flavor with the spices was fantastic. While it was still so thin, I strained out the spices and returned it to the heat bumped up just a touch to try and move things along; it was getting late. Next thing I know it’s boiling and looking very curdled.  A blast with the stick blender smoothed it out and I returned it to the very lowest heat. After cooking for 4 hours bedtime was approaching, so my only hope is that it would thicken once chilled.  

After an overnight chill, it’s delicious but runny. I have bread ready to bake and decide to take advantage of the hot oven and bake this dulche de leche to see if it will thicken.  Using the silicone potholder trick, I manage not to burn it and it does thicken somewhat, but not enough to be filling for cookies, though rather perfect for drizzling over ice cream. 

Dulce del leche before and after baking.

I haven’t yet conquered dulce de leche, but I am a little further along on the learning curve. I was surprised that the sweetened condensed milk version had a stronger milk flavor and was less sweet than the batch made from fresh milk. The spices I added to the fresh milk version could account for this. It could be that the constant stirring prevented my stovetop batch from thickening the way Pim’s did, so the next time I have a spare quart of milk and six hours I’ll give this another try without stirring. Now, what to do with all this tasty dulce de leche…

The only thing we love more than hearing about the different ways that SpiceCare has helped people tame the spice chaos in their kitchens is when we get to see pictures! We thought we’d share a few of the ones we’ve received so far.

It seems only fair to start with our own spices. The drawer shown on the left was only one of several places spices were stored throughout the kitchen. At right, a much more organized and functional system!

Customers in Montana transformed their unruly spice drawer into a thing of beauty!

Up in Anacortes, Washington, a pile of baggies was replaced by an elegant selection of SpiceCare containers on a lazy Susan.

In Altanta, a rack of messy bottles and jars became much more usable once SpiceCare was employed!

This SpiceCare owner in California gained a considerable amount of shelf space.

If you’re getting ready to replace your current spice mess with a SpiceCare system, don’t forget to take a picture of it now so you can better appreciate the transformation once it’s all finished. Then send up copies of the pictures and we’ll include them in our next update.

Vanilla ice cream is about the pleasure of tasting pure ingredients. It is the naked truth of ice cream. There are no ripe berries, rich chocolate ribbons, or crunchy mix-ins to hide behind, so if the ingredients aren’t top notch, the ice cream will be, well, rather vanilla. Though I dressed my dish of vanilla ice cream up with a papaya accent and some candied nuts, this vanilla ice cream is anything but hiding.

It’s 103 degrees F in Seattle today and 99 degrees F in my house at the moment. Somehow writing about ice cream seems like it should make me feel cooler, but it’s not working. Weather this hot is as befuddling to Seattleites as snow is. Having a stash of freshly made vanilla ice cream in the freezer from this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe has made for many brief escapes from the heat, so thank you to Lynne of Café Lynnylu for picking such a timely recipe for us to make. You can find the recipe on her blog if you need to create a summer escape of your own.

I grew up eating ice milk. I have such fond memories of ice milk with the sweet icyness that melted so easily on my tongue.  Ice milk, which is defined as having less than 10% milk fat, has been replaced by modern-day low fat ice creams. These new fangled low fat ice creams are designed to mimic the texture of full fat ice cream making them a completely different experience from eating ice milk. The imprint of ice milk on my young palate makes me biased toward lighter ice creams, which is one of the reasons I really like this recipe. Dorie uses equal parts cream and milk and 6 egg yolks. I have made many recipes with a higher proportion of cream and up to 9 egg yolks, and find them to be too heavy.

Have you ever wondered what the key is to making really luscious smooth ice cream at home? The length of time it takes to freeze the ice cream is key. I learned this from Kate Zuckerman in her book The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. She is a big proponent of ice cream freezers that use a frozen canister rather than the more expensive machines with built-in cooling mechanisms. This is because they are so cold they get the job done in about 15 minutes, and the faster the freezing time the smaller the ice crystals, which results in smoother ice cream. The machine that I own has a built-in compressor and takes at least twice that long to freeze a pint. One tip she gives that I employ is to churn less ice cream at a time which makes it freeze faster, so I broke this recipe into two batches to freeze it.  Obviously having a really well chilled base is important, but by letting the base rest in the refrigerator overnight it becomes slightly thickened and will have a nicer texture once frozen.

A number of years ago I came across a recipe for Five Herb Ice Milk that was published in Gourmet magazine. The combination of herbs, cream (or milk in this case), and sugar is shockingly delightful. It was a jump-up-and-down-around-the-kitchen-squealing-with-joy type of flavor discovery.  If you are an ice milk fan you will love the consistency of this, and if you aren’t, just infuse the herbs in your favorite ice cream base recipe.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 84 recipes completed 137 to go!

I usually have a general idea of what something will taste like as I am making it, but there are those occasions when the first bite of the finished product is a complete surprise. Of course surprised can be good or bad, and this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was a delightfully good surprise.

Blanc-Manger (for those of us that don’t speak French, it’s pronounced blah-man-jhay) is cream, milk, sugar, ground almonds, and gelatin. I expected it to be like panna cotta or flan in texture and when I tasted the batter before it chilled that seemed like a logical conclusion. It behaved quite like a panna cotta or flan would when unmolded from the pan, but the moment the first bite hit my mouth this dessert immediately deviated from the smooth  texture familiar to custards and other gelatin desserts. It was light and foamy as though it was effervescing with every chew. This was much more of a creamy rich mousse that just happened to be in the unexpected form of a tart. The big difference between this and panna cotta for example, is the cream is whipped and folded into the milk /gelatin mixture which incorporates air bubbles; air bubbles that pop and tickle your mouth as you eat it. It was the most delightful and unexpected surprise.

Now, a light airy gelatin tart might seem intimidating to make, but it’s as simple as whipping some cream, warming some milk, adding a few flavoring agents and spreading it in a pan to chill for a day. How perfect is this when you need an elegant dessert for a dinner party and you don’t need one more thing to do the day of? I cut out the rounds and placed them on a cocoa-star anise cookie so I could deliver these to friends and they could easily be eaten out of hand, but for a plated dessert I would opt for a thin layer of sponge cake under the tart. I spread a bit of raspberry jam spiked with Chambord and a touch of gelatin over the top. Overall I loved this dessert and thank Susan of  Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy for selecting it for this week’s baking activity. Susan has the recipe posted on her blog if you would like to experience the delicious effervescence yourself.

I experimented with leaf or sheet gelatin for the first time. Though there seems to be some debate about it being any better than the common granular gelatin, I wanted to try it because it’s what all the cool kids use. The trickiest thing about working with it is trying to decide how much to use when a recipe calls for granular gelatin. I have seen all sorts of different conversion rates in my research. For this recipe I settled on 3 ½ sheets (3” x 6” each) and the texture was perfect.  Like granular gelatin it must be soaked in cold water before being added to anything hot; if gelatin isn’t pre-soaked it can clump and not dissolve easily when added to warm mixtures. The texture of the soaked sheets is very strange. They become very slippery and floppy, but surprisingly are still very strong. Once added to hot liquid the sheets seem to dissolve instantly, which I suspect is the primary appeal of working with leaf gelatin. The other big benefit for me is I don’t end up spilling little granules of gelatin everywhere while measuring.  Somehow I always manage to spill gelatin and yeast when measuring them.

Two last little notes:

According to the food science guru, Harold McGee, gelatin doesn’t strengthen hair and nails. He says there just isn’t any good evidence to support this widely held claim. The protein found in our hair and nails is keratin and gelatin isn’t any better at creating the elements needed to form keratin than any other type of protein source. So you can eat gelatin, but you could also have a nice juicy steak, beautifully grilled piece of fish, or a tall glass of milk and provide your hair and nails with the building blocks they need.

If you want to add a little zip to chocolate cookies, but don’t want to go the common cinnamon route, try a little star anise. It adds the same warm sweetness like cinnamon, but with a fennel/anise flavor that is a nice twist.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 83 recipes completed 138 to go!

Sunny warm air and a bounty of ripe fruit can only mean summertime. Of all the luscious seasonal offerings a perfectly ripe peach stops my world. Plump and fuzzy with blushes of ruby red, orange and pale yellow, based on appearance alone there is a promises something lovely.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, selected by Tommi of Brown Interior, had me down at Pike’s Place Market searching for some beautiful peaches to make Honey Peach Ice Cream, and though I love ice cream, I knew it would be a challenge to forgo eating the fresh peaches to make this recipe. Standing at the counter staring at glistening pile of juicy ripe peach slices was a test of will, but most of them did make it into the ice cream.

I really can’t seem to heat milk or cream without the thought of a flavor infusion creeping into my mind. I became fixated on the idea of mace with this ice cream and infused one large mace blade in the cream and milk for 10 minutes, and then preceded with tempering the eggs and cooking the custard with the mace blade, removing it before chilling the mixture. The flavor was exciting, spicy, warm and peachy. The mace seemed a touch too pushy but when I tossed in a pinch of pink flake salt the flavors balanced to a lovely harmony.

The cool creamy texture initially hijacks the tasting experience, but once the texture is satisfactorily processed, the sunny flavor of fresh peach blooms bringing with it smooth spicy hints of nutmeg from the mace infusion. I used my good honey for this ice cream; the honey that gets to live in my new honey pot.  Last month I attended the International Food Blogger Conference organized by Foodista, and one of the sample products, or gifts, graciously bestowed to the participants was a ceramic honey pot from Le Crueset. Growing up we always used a honey pot with a wooden honey dipper, but I seem to have gotten by all these years using the handy upside down squeeze bottles, which are an amazingly clever idea. Though clever and handy, the squeeze bottle misses on the pleasurably tactile experience of dipping and drizzling honey from a pot.

Special honey now lives in my pot. I don’t know if it was a happy coincidence or a well planned strategy, but a beautiful jar of Guajillo honey from Range Honey in Texas was also gifted to us conference attendees. I had a Winnie the Pooh moment while making this ice cream when I was standing over the sink licking every last drop of honey out of the measuring spoon. Needless to say, I really like this honey.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 78 recipes completed 143 to go!

Chocolate cream pie is one of David’s all time favorite eats, so this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe caught his interest in a big way. No nuts, no raisins, no coffee, no coconut, no liquor, just pure chocolate cream goodness.

I actually followed the recipe as written, though I did double the salt in the crust. What did we learn from World Peace Cookies? Salt and chocolate are good! Though there is plenty of opportunity to spike the crust with spices, the whipped cream with liquor, or the filling with mix-ins, and I bet some of the other Tuesday with Dorie bakers took creative license to experiment with great results, I stayed true on this one.

The chocolate cream filling is a basic pastry cream made with cornstarch so the filling sets to a nice consistency that doesn’t run or ooze when cut. The flavor is rich and chocolaty and the use of bittersweet chocolate keeps it from becoming overly sweet. The dense rich texture is reminiscent of pots de crème   rather than chocolate pudding, which makes the tart quite decadent. The light whipped cream topping is a perfect contrast to the unctuous chocolate pastry cream.

Behold the saucier pan; essential in my mind if you like to make puddings, pastry creams, and various other creamy dessert items or sauces that require constant whisking. What makes this pan so outstanding for intensive whisking or stirring is the lack of a sharp angle between the bottom and side wall. The rounded transition allows you to whisk or stir the contents of the pan thoroughly and evenly creating a smooth evenly cooked result.

Kim of Scrumptious Photography selected this week’s recipe that was enjoyed by all. If you would like to make someone very happy by serving them this delicious chocolate tart, click on over to Kim’s blog for the recipe, or you can find it on page 352 of Dorie’s book.

I, along with over 350 other baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 71 recipes completed 150 to go!