Month: February 2012

Reader Rosemarie writes in with an interesting question:

Of all the cakes, including Sponge, Chiffon, Genoise… which type do you think is the CLOSEST in light consistency and texture to a boxed yellow cake mix for a layer cake? I tried a Sponge, which although spongy, the air holes are bigger and the crumb is more coarse. My jelly roll is most like it but I can tell that it wouldn’t have the strength to bear up under frosting and other layers. I think it has to have some fat content.

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Basque Country is known for many things, among them meat and fish, but also cherries. That makes sense in that it’s a mountainous region located right at the far-Western edge of where France and Spain meet, where the Pyrénée mountains hit the Bay of Biscay. Basque black cherries thrive all around the area in the cool high-altitude climate, however the most famous come from a town called ltxassou.

I had a feeling somebody might bite on that little morsel of blogger bait. Reader Wendy, I made up that term, but it’s a fair paraphrasing of what the symbol meant prior to its adoption by the Nazis. The swastika is one of mankind’s oldest symbols. In fact it’s so old nobody really knows exactly what it means anymore. Swastikas have been used at one time or another just about everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, from Japan all the way around to the pre-Columbian Americas, where it was a sacred image among peoples as diverse as the Mississippeans, Navajo and the Kuna of Panama.

Several folks weighing in so far telling me what they want to see as the filling in the gâteau Basque. As I mentioned below, classically they come in fruit versions (usually black cherry) and pastry cream versions. In Basque country they generally make one or the other. And while French pastry makers like Daniel Boulud no doubt make a great French gâteau Basque that combines both, the French aren’t Basque — just ask any Basque person, even and especially the French Basques.

This is a truly great — and mostly simple — preparation. If you’ve never tasted it before, you’re missing one of the world’s ultimate afternoon tea (or coffee) accompaniments. Gâteau Basque is really quite an unassuming little pastry. Classically it has but one filling: black cherry preserves or pastry cream. However I’ve seen versions with up […]

Here’s a problem. Not a catastrophic one for my pastéis de Belém, but a disappointing one. The classic method for shaping pastéis de Belém involves rolling your puff pastry dough into a tube like this:

I think we can safely count the claim made by the proprietors of the Antiga Confeitaria de Belém bakery — that they bake pastéis de Belém at 750 degrees Fahrenheit — as a myth (of the intentionally created variety). Probably a diversionary tactic they use to discourage people from trying to make their pastéis at home.

Thanks for the question reader Alan. As you may recall from other posts on custard, custards are gels that are created when egg proteins are heated. Gentle heat coaxes these long, bunched-up molecules into releasing their chemical bonds and opening up. As they unwind they get tangled up with and/or bond with their neighbors. That has the effect of restricting the flow of the water and fat molecules that are are among them, and the mixture firms.