Just Baking

I’m a little stalled right now in my pursuit of artisanal breads.  The reason isn’t that I’m no longer interested or even that I’m not baking… It’s that the holiday season has started.
Why would the holiday season distract me from trying to make the perfect French country bread?  Easy… I’m very much a traditionalist when […]

Two weeks ago I did an article on must-have ingredients for baking.  Today I’m going to cover a few of the tools you’ll need when baking even the most simple desserts.  A lot of these items can be on the pricey side, however making sure you buy durable, quality items is key so your desserts […]

The French are charmingly smug about their devotion to red wine, Gitanes and food cooked in goose fat.  A study of 34,000 Frenchmen, conducted in 1997, indicated that a glass or two or red wine each day reduced mortality rates by a startling 30%.  This is despite heavy consumption of saturated fats, stressful working conditions, […]

Last week I told you about the Pumpkin Upside Down Cake with Cranberry Pecan Topping that I was auditioning for a role on the Thanksgiving table.  It was a crowd pleaser, to be sure.  Ultimately, however, I chose to go with a simpler, more understated Ginger Cake with Warm Caramel Sauce, with the thought that […]

Hey y’all!  From all of us here at Just Baking, we hope you have a wonderful weekend.  We’re taking the weekend off to test out new recipes, and go in search of great new ingredients and tools to tell you about.  We’ll be back Monday with more great recipes, the best baking tips and more!
While […]

Talk about a way to give thanks…
It all started with a simple email two years ago.  Germain Broussard (aka the Cookie Lady) sent an email asking for permission to send her homemade cookies to troops aboard the U.S.S. Shreveport.  She received clearence, as they would say in the military, and a few weeks later the ship […]

It’s a given that with the holidays comes lots of eating.  And one of the things I look forward to the most is dessert.  All those gorgeous cakes and cookies, and those mouth-watering pies.  Not only is eating dessert one of the things I look most forward to when it comes to the holiday meals, […]

Ah, Holiday Season, we know ye well.  Like an old friend we haven’t seen in a while and beg for more time to catch up with.  Though more and more it feels like a game of musical chairs where the music keeps getting faster and faster until…oops, times up.
Not that I have such a cynical […]

For a beginning baker, I’ve probably baked apple pie more than any other baked product.  However, I do this only during apple season.  In Ohio, where I live, we have a really good apple season, and I enjoy using local apples to make pies.
The recipe I use is one that my mother taught me about […]

Sometimes an ingredient has been sitting for so long in your cupboard that it becomes as familiar as that little spider that made its’ home in the vent in the bathroom or the pile of bricks on the draining board that have been sitting there, just waiting to be used, for months now.  You look […]