Just Baking

A friend of mine asked me to make a strawberry cheesecake for her birthday. Here are several tips that will assist you in achieving an amazing cheesecake:

When using any fruit in cheesecake, always use fresh or dried, never frozen. If you use frozen fruit, it will “bleed” once it starts to thaw out .
Make sure the fruit […]

Here is a recipe for killer buttermilk brownies.  For a bar, these are the most requested bar ever. I was given the recipe by a former baker who pulled it off the internet. We cut these bars 6×4 so we get 24 out of each pan. And, this recipe easily doubles. 
The recipe makes a […]

I was at a mall not long ago that had a small bakery. I took one of the to-go menus and looked it over. They had a brown butter tart. Brown butter is something you must make; it’s not something you can simply buy.
To make brown butter you take whole butter, either salted or unsalted, […]

My last post was concerning a question about muffins, so now we’ll go back to basics with a great basic muffin recipe.
You can add anything you like from fruit to nuts to chocolate. I have had this recipe for years, I’m not 100 percent sure but I believe I received this recipe from the Cooks […]

These biscuits are great. One guy told me they were so good that if my wife ever dies, he would marry me. I told him that if my wife ever dies, I will stay single. I figure if a guy wants to marry me over biscuits, then (Russ, buddy), he might as well try using these as […]

I am posting on beef tenderloin because Sandy posted under the Dinner Party entry on my blog that she had never cooked one before. Over all, it really is not that hard to do. What people might not know is that the tenderloin has something called “silver skin” that really needs to be removed. It will not […]

18 oz (3 cups) Semolina flour
13-1/2o z (3 cups) flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1-2/3 cups water
1/2 cup olive oil
Mix the dry ingredients with the rosemary, then add the water and oil and mix by hand to form a smooth dough. Knead about 2 minutes; do not overmix. Wrap in plastic and let rest about […]

I know what you’re thinking: Caesar salad is not baked in the oven! While that is true, the Parmesan cheese bowl that this salad is served in is baked in the oven. With that said, Caesar salad is my all-time favorite.To make the Parmesan cheese bowl, buy fresh grated cheese or grate it yourself. Do not […]

The crust for empanadas is pretty much nothing more than pie crust, so you can use the recipe I give, or use your own favorite recipe.
I was looking for something fun to do at work and decided to make these. The recipe for the crust is:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white sugar
8 ounces cold […]

We make four different muffins at work, and they typically never change, day in and day out. When I was asked to replace two of them, I was more than happy to. I love a good lemon-flavored muffin. The only problem was that I have never found a good lemon-poppy muffin recipe. So, I took the recipe for the muffin batter […]