Financiers

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This delicious little cake gets its name from its shape, in the form of a gold ingot.
326K 24.6 20 min. April 14^th 2020

Citrus crunch

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These are fine crumbs of candied citrus peel. It can be used to sprinkle a dessert or other preparation to add both crunch and the flavour of the chosen citrus fruit. It is easy to prepare well in advance, and will keep in an airtight jar. This recipe is given for clementines, but can be made with...
225K3.7 1 hour 16 min. February 2^nd 2016

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).
444K 25 44 min. January 23^th 2022

Real custard sauce (crème anglaise)

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Real custard or vanilla sauce consists of egg yolks beaten with sugar and cooked slowly in vanilla milk. It is the base or the accompaniment for many desserts.
406K 24.3 44 min. January 17^th 2018

Chocolate sauce

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This rich smooth chocolate sauce, with its full flavour, is one of the indispensable ingredients of profiteroles, but it can be used with many others desserts.
296K 24 32 min. February 21^th 2011

Fruit coulis (fruit purée)

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Contrary to what people usually think, coulis is not just a simple fruit purée with sugar. Of course, this is the general principle, but it's possible to make something much better and more refined. This recipe is for a strawberry coulis (see below for other fruits): how to make it, but also how...
764K 44 24 min. October 20^th 2012

Chantilly cream

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Chantilly cream, it's simply whipped liquid cream with sugar. It is use in many desserts, but already delicious simply with strawberries or other fruits.
658K5 18 min. September 17^th 2013

How to glaze a tart

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Professional pastrycooks usually say that "a beautiful cake is already half sold", it is one of the reasons why they do not put a tart on sale without glazing it ("abricoter" in Fench), i.e. coating it with a thick apricot syrup. This glaze gives a glossy finish to the tart (see the photographs...
439K4.4 7 min. February 15^th 2016

How to use gelatin

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Gelatin is a gelling agent use in some desserts where a rather firm texture is required when cold. It can also be used to stabilize a dessert (mousses especially) that you need to keep longer than usual.
398K4.8 7 min. July 9^th 2018

Puff or flaky pastry (pâte feuilletée)

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Puff pastry is an incredible assembly of thin layers of butter enclosed in thin layers of dough. After cooking this give a succession of thin crisp pastry leaves that produce exceptional desserts or pies. It's a jewel of French patisserie. Making your own puff pastry is not very difficult, it's just...
440K 63.3 2 hours 45 min. January 19^th 2011

Tart Tatin

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Tart tatin is one of the great classic desserts of French cooking. It's an apple tart cooked upside down. Apples are cooked in sugar until they caramelise. Then a circle of puff pastry is put on top, and the whole tart is baked at 356°F (180°C) for 20 minutes. To serve, the tart is turned over so...
396K 13.8 1 hour 17 min. October 30^th 2015

Individual charlottes with morello cherries

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The French "griottines" are delicious little wild morello cherries, stoned and macerated in a Kirsch syrup, used here in individual vanilla charlottes.
188K 15 4 hours 49 min. February 21^th 2011

Crème caramel

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Crème caramel (upside-down caramel cream) is a classic of bistro cuisine. The vanilla cream is made with eggs, cooked in a dish with a layer of caramel in the bottom, and placed in a bain-marie. It's traditionally served turned out so that the liquid caramel runs down over the cream.
254K5 3 hours 33 min. February 21^th 2011

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.
208K 24.3 13 min. October 13^th 2010

How to prepare rhubarb

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Rhubarb and its characteristic flavour can be the basis of delicious desserts, but it needs to be prepared a certain way before using.
208K4.9 30 min. October 13^th 2010

Almond dacquoise

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A dacquoise is a sort of almond meringue that can be eaten like a biscuit or can be used as the base of more sophisticated desserts.
195K5 44 min. June 28^th 2011

Toasted flaked almonds

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Toasted flaked almonds are the perfect finishing touch for desserts, ice creams in particular, because of their delightful crunch.
303K4.8 27 min. March 9^th 2020

Peach Melba

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Peach Melba is a famous dessert created in 1893 by an equally famous chef, Auguste Escoffier, and inspired by the singer Nellie Melba. There have been many versions of this well-known dish but, in principal, it consists of vanilla ice cream, poached peaches, raspberry coulis and sweetened whipped...
118K3.9 2 hours 20 min. September 9^th 2012

Cigarettes Russes (Piroulines)

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The French name for these tubular biscuits means "Russian cigarettes". Cigarettes Russes are perfect for serving with ice cream or other desserts. The basic biscuit is fairly easy to make; the tricky bit is rolling the tube once cooked.
98K 54.5 46 min. May 25^th 2014

Lemon Meringue Pie Verrines

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This is a new twist on the classic lemon meringue pie. All the elements are there: sweet crunchy bits, meringue and lemon custard, but presented in layers in a glass.
57K5 21 min. July 12^th 2015

Ice-cream and sorbets

All about ice-creams and sorbets, their differences and how to make the most of them .
425K4.0 August 29^th 2023

My best addresses...

My good addresses, favourite suppliers, ingredients, products and equipment.
297K4.0 August 29^th 2023

Closed fire cooking

Construction of a Fayol bread oven: closed fire cooking, with the embers removed .
51K4.4 August 29^th 2023

Advices for writing your recipes

On-line document for writing a personal recipe.
56K4.4 August 29^th 2023

The amateur baker

You may have noticed over the pages of this site, I am passionate about everything that is related to the bakery: I love making bread, pastries, maintain my leaven, etc.. This page contains links to all the different parts of the site where we talk about bread: recipes, special pages, etc.
166K 44.1 August 29^th 2023

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.
14K4.4 October 15^th 2012

The time of the jams

We are well into summer as I write this, and this is the time when most of the fruit is giving or about to give in full. And for many of us, it will also be the time for jams and jellies, one of the best ways to preserve fruit for the next winter.
23K4.5 July 12^th 2021

The painter, the restaurant owners and the opera singer

You might well have noticed that there are recipes involving names that have been so overused (often for any old thing) that they have almost become common nouns.
17K4.4 September 25^th 2012

Different kinds of pastry and dough

When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
105K 14.0 November 6^th 2012

The art of the charlotte

In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
39K4.3 February 27^th 2013

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...
55K4.5 June 14^th 2013

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? .
121K 14.1 February 7^th 2017

The right way to use a blender

You may well have a blender in your own kitchen. You know, that useful gadget that allows you to liquidize stuff at high speed into a smooth liquid. Of course, the most obvious use that comes to mind is for soups: if you have boiled some vegetables in water, with just a quick blast of the blender,...
19K5 May 31^th 2017

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.
54K 24.2 June 21^th 2017

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
40K 24.6 February 8^th 2018

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.
27K4.2 January 23^th 2019

Drawing a pattern in pastry

Often in the kitchen, in pastry-making, or in baking, we need to trace a pattern on a pastry. It's just a question of aesthetics but it has its effect after baking on a galette, pithiviers, pâté en croute (terrine in a pie crust), etc.
26K4.1 May 23^th 2019

The baker always gild twice

I've already told you about gilding, the beaten whole egg that is spread with a brush on anything that needs to brown in the oven: puff pastry, pastries, etc. and that professionals use a lot, I'm going to come back to this to clarify a bit how to do it, and give you a professional tip.
27K4.2 June 9^th 2019

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.
39K4.1 June 28^th 2019

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
59K4.3 March 20^th 2020

Baking a cake at the right time

When you make a cake, which most likely contains butter, a cake for example, chances are that as soon as the batter is finished, you put it in the pan and bake it immediately. Classic, everyone does it like that, and then if, on top of that, you have a few kids around you who are getting...
15K4.5 April 18^th 2020

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.
9,1624.9 November 16^th 2020

Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi?

Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi? Maybe not, in which case let me tell you a little about him.
3,9594.8 December 19^th 2020

Let's go easy on the salt

In terms of cooking, I'm probably not teaching you much, salt is ubiquitous, we put it in almost all our dishes, in varying amounts depending on our taste, some like salty, others less, others still not. Its main role is the flavor, the taste, we say that it is a flavor enhancer, ie it reveals the...
4,7674.8 February 20^th 2021

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...
7,0234.9 March 27^th 2021