Just Baking

Today we have Chef Michael Olson of the Niagara Culinary Institute showing us how to make puff pastry. Puff pastry is created by first making a base dough and then folding in a fat, often butter, thereby creating hundreds of layers within the finished dough. When it is baked, the water becomes steam, […]

Who wouldn’t love to merge health and dessert?  Recently I had the luck to stumble across a well known pastry chef, Fran Costigan, who specializes in this very concept.  In fact, Fran’s extensive culinary experience combined with her desire to have her cake and eat it too, has resulted in too many ‘healthy’ dessert recipes […]

Last week a delightful shipment landed on my doorstep.  It contained four attractively designed packages of the latest non-dairy cheese to hit North America, Sheese.  Produced in Scotland, this stuff has been all the rage among the vegan community.  As someone who’s writing and baking revolves around all things dairy-free, I was insanely eager to […]

As shows like Semi Home-Made Cooking and 30 Minute Meals rise in popularity, it would appear that the average American is very easily swayed by attractive people that flaunt “easier” ways to make presumably labor-intensive dishes, but in reality their cooking skills don’t go much further than the ability to work an oven. Beyond that, […]

Often it’s the flakey crust that really makes a pie.  You can have the best filling in the world, but if the crust is hard or lacks taste that just seems to ruin dessert.  I’m not the most experienced when it comes to scratch-made pie crust.  And I think due to the lack of experience there is a bit of an intimidation […]

I was recently given the opportunity to review a cookbook with 175 recipes using puff pastry.  Now before you stop reading, give me just a few more minutes.  I wasn’t big on puff pastry either - I had a few boxes in the freezer that I had bought on sale, thinking some day I’d […]