Financiers

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This delicious little cake gets its name from its shape, in the form of a gold ingot.
April 14^th 2020329 K 24.6 20 min.

Fillings for macaroons

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The macaroons recipe shows how to make these small cakes, and gives the example of a raspberry filling. Here are several other possibilities: Apricot macaroons, Chocolate macaroons, Mint macaroons, Blackcurrant macaroons.
May 30^th 2020292 K 24.3 2 hours 1 min.

Macarons (the original French macaroons)

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This recipe really is "of the moment": the success of these small, highly-coloured cakes, in an infinite variety of flavours, is impressive. It's a recipe which needs some care, in order to produce a result worthy of a professional pastrychef. No problem, I will guide you through the recipe,...
October 3^rd 20191.58 M 714.6 2 hours 40 min.

Almond cream or frangipane

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Light and delicious, it is used in a lot of desserts like tarts, cakes and pies (epiphany galette).
January 23^th 2022449 K 25 45 min.

Marzipan (almond paste)

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Very easy to do if you have a food processor which can slice or grate a lot of things.
December 19^th 2021627 K 34.5 15 min.

Sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée)

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Sweetcrust pastry is one of the basic pastry of French patisserie, used in many tart and cakes recipes, but it can also be rolled out and cut into biscuits, delicious with tea or coffee. This recipe is given for those who have a mixer (Kenwood, KitchenAid or other), but it can also be done with your...
July 1^st 2019476 K 24.4 35 min.

Breton galettes (pancakes)

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Of uniquely Breton origin, this is a buckwheat pancake on which you cook an egg with ham and cheese before folding it over. Easy and quick to make, it's an ideal answer to the question "what are we going to eat this evening?".
February 21^th 2011215 K 23.9 20 min.

Almond tuiles

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These delicious little biscuits ("tiles" in French) get their crunch and lightness from the use of flaked almonds rather than ground. It is not difficult to succeed, you just need to work fast after taking them out of the oven.
August 21^th 2019377 K4 1 hour 20 min.

How to make chocolate chips

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These chocolate chips, very fine, are perfect for decorating a dessert, but they can also be incorporated in a preparation like mint ice-cream for example.
February 21^th 2011272 K3.8 5 min.

Moist cereal bars

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Whether bars or rounds, this recipe produces delicous small cereal cakes.
February 21^th 2011292 K4.9 1 hour 5 min.

Coconut pyramids

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Small coconut cakes, golden, crusty, and soft inside.
February 21^th 2011333 K3.7 50 min.

How to dust

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"Dusting" in cooking is sprinkling a very fine layer of something in powder form. Icing sugar or cocoa powder on cakes for example. As this is not very easy to do evenly, here is a way to do it.
October 13^th 2010147 K5 2 min.

Muffin dough

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This dough can be used to make this delicious and classic of the English cooking: muffins. It can be sweet, in different flavours, with fruit, but also savoury in other recipes.
February 6^th 2013556 K5 25 min.

Raspberry muffins

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Delicious when still warm.
February 21^th 2011301 K5 45 min.

Chocolate muffins

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Variation on muffins recipe. In this version each one is filled with a dark chocolate ganache.
February 21^th 2011310 K4.3 1 hour 15 min.

Blackcurrant-almond muffins

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Blackcurrant muffins with a rather special ground almond dough. Blackurrants give a delicious hint of acidity, which goes very well with the almond flavour.
February 21^th 2011255 K3.8 50 min.

Caramelised walnuts

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These delicious nuts can be used in several cakes, but you can also put them on ice-cream, pancakes, fruit salad, or eat them just as they are.
February 21^th 2011363 K5 25 min.

Sushi

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Sushi is probably the best known element of Japanese cooking outside Japan. For the Japanese it's a culinary art learned over time from masters, but we can make simplified and easier sushi which are still pretty and delicious. The most common types of sushi are nigiri: a little oval-shaped mouthfuls...
October 13^th 2010330 K4.5 1 hour 40 min.

Oat shortbread biscuits

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Little biscuits with home-made oat flour (made from rolled oat flakes).
February 21^th 2011275 K 15 2 hours 45 min.

How to make marzipan decorations

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Making marzipan decorations for cakes or desserts is fairly simple. Here are some tips to make it even easier.
October 13^th 2010211 K 24.3 15 min.

Bread oven

Building a bread oven was until a few years ago a job for the professionals. But now you can buy a kind of kit which allows you to build your own bred oven without professional masonry know-how. You should know that the kits only provide the main part of oven, the hearth, where you light the fire...
October 15^th 20241.16 M3.6

Flours

At the most basic level, wheat grain is put through a mill, which produces a white-ish powder flour... Well, actually it's not quite that simple. First of all we need to distinguish between the different grains that can be made into flour: wheat of course, but also rye, barley, buckwheat, etc. So we...
June 3^rd 2024728 K 413.6

Recipes

A recipe is really quite a simple thing (or should be): a list of ingredients, a method, and that's all there is to it. Unfortunately its not always the case. Sometimes you might get the impression that a recipe, found in a magazine or on a web site, has been concocted especially to make you fail:...
June 3^rd 2024170 K3.6

Information on weights and measures in the kitchen

The way ingredients are described in a recipe varies from country to country. This difference, which is quite profound, relates not only to units of measurement, but also to the way in which they are measured: weight or volume. Let's take a look.
August 22^th 2024822 K3.7

My best addresses...

Quite a few of you often ask me where I can find this or that? or is such and such a thing a good buy? or which brand is best for this or that? On this page, I'm going to group together my good addresses for suppliers of this or that product or utensil, and good books on the subjects that interest...
August 29^th 2023300 K3.9

Closed fire cooking

For this method, the oven is emptied of embers, cleaned, and door closed until it drops to the cooking temperature of 250°C or 482°F. It's the method used for breads, pies and tarts, cakes, etc.
August 24^th 202452 K4.4

Making your own bread

You'll find a whole range of bread and pastry recipes on this site, but before you get started, perhaps you'd like to know more about the subject, get some tips and tricks, and find out what the main mistakes beginners make? If so, this page is for you.
August 22^th 2024565 K 63.9

For well opened (puffed) cakes

It's always nice to have a well puffed up cake after baking, not only will it taste good but it looks great too. Let's see how to get this beautiful shape almost every time.
January 23^th 201928 K4.2

Baking cakes

Where we see that to put a cake in the oven, once the dough is finished and in its mould, there is no hurry and that the cold is your friend.
June 28^th 201940 K4.1

Unmoulding cakes while hot

When you make a cake, pound cake or whatever (what bakers call a "travel cake" because it's easy to carry around) you've most likely made a batter, either by hand or in a food processor, which you then pour into a buttered pan. It's a classic, and I've already talked to you about 2 or 3 tips on...
February 6^th 202134 K4.6

Devising a recipe

A question I'm often asked is: how do you come up with your recipes? How do you perfect them? This is something I've already mentioned on this page, but I'll take this opportunity to go into a bit more detail.
October 15^th 201214 K4.4

Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.

Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26^th 201239 K4.5

The 3 kinds of meringue

Meringue – what could be simpler? Just beaten egg whites with sugar added. This makes a fairly stiff mixture which can then be cooked in a cool oven to create those lovely, light confections. But in the world of professional patisserie, meringue comes in three different kinds. Even if the...
June 14^th 201358 K4.5

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
June 16^th 202152 K4.8

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
February 7^th 2017123 K 14.1

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201757 K 24.2

The first breads of humanity?

I have already told you in a previous article the beautiful story of the croissants, but do you know what it is about the bread, who "invented" it, where and when? Well, you can imagine that recent discoveries, in 2018, have profoundly changed the history of bread.
February 16^th 20199,8025

Stand mixer tools

Whether we call it a stand mixer, food processor, or simply refer to it by brand (Kenwood, KitchenAid, etc.), this machine is a valuable tool for amateur cooks, bakers or pastry chefs like ourselves. All these machines come supplied with 3 different tools. Let’s take a look at their names and...
November 2^nd 201933 K4.5

Pastry and bakery dough families

There are many kinds, or families, of pastry and bakery doughs, depending on whether you want to make a tart, a cake, a pie, a brioche, croissants and so on. I'll try to give you a quick overview of all these doughs, how they're classified, and what they're used for.
November 16^th 20209,5784.9

The "caves" in the bakery and pastry shop

Maybe you've already done this? You want to make a brioche or a cake with fruit inside, you decide to proceed with your usual recipe, but also to add in the dough pieces of fresh and raw fruit, or whole fruit, for example pieces of apples or pears, good idea. When you bake it, everything seems to...
March 27^th 20217,5974.9

What happens to the bread when you make it?

This bread that we eat every day, and that our baker makes for us, what happens during its manufacture so that it becomes bread? I will try to answer this question, and to summarize the complex alchemy that takes place.
May 28^th 20219,9994.9

The peak of the apple season

As I write these lines, we are in the middle of the apple season, and it's an apple year, as you may have noticed if you have apple trees around you, they are bursting with fruit! Excellent news for the people in the west of France in particular, but let's have a little thought for those in the...
October 23^th 20215,5535

Creams in pastry

In this post, I propose you to make a small tour of the different creams in pastry. If you like to make them at home, you have already noticed the many creams that exist for the different desserts: Chantilly, custard, diplomat, Bavarian, etc. etc. Each one more delicious than the other, they...
March 12^th 20229,4404.5