Four quarters

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It's "the simpliest cake in the world", called four quarters, because it's made with 1/4 eggs, 1/4 sugar, 1/4 flour and 1/4 butter.

Natural leaven

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Leaven is a natural raising agent, a fermented mixture of water, flour and the microscopic yeasts which are present in the air. It's a delicate living substance, sensitive to the external environment. The recipe is around 4000 years old and dates back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs, via a beautiful history...(note: the ancient Egyptians seem not to have had exclusive knowledge of the process: in Germany evidence of cooking a fermented dough has been found from 8000 BC (the Neolithic era). The...

Sandwich bread

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Soft and moist, almost like brioche, it can be made in a tin or mould or as a classic long French-style loaf.

How to roll out pastry for a tart

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Lining the bottom of a tart tin with pastry is not as simple as it sounds. To help you get it right every time, here's an illustrated procedure.

How to use a forcing bag (piping or icing bag)

(Found inTexts)
The forcing bag is the tool needed whenever you need to deposit a blob of something precisely in a particular place (in a mould, a glass, on a plate, etc). Here is how you do it.

How to butter a dish or a mould easily

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Often when making gratins, crumbles or other oven-cooked dishes, you will need to butter the dish or mould. To butter (or grease) means to rub inside the mould with a knob of butter to prevent the mixture sticking too much. Instead of putting a knob of butter in the dish and wiping with paper, here is a smart and quicker way.

Nanterre brioche

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This is the classic, but delicious, brioche recipe that you can find in any good baker's. Her unique shape is made from small balls of dough put in a mould.

Pecan fruit rolls

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These pecan nut and dried fruit rolls, wrapped in golden caramelized puff pastry, are really delicious.

Preserved lemons

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For this recipe, the lemons are sliced first (this makes them easier to use later), then salted to drain off the juice before being bottled in herb-flavoured olive oil. These preserved lemons can be used in all sorts of dishes, especially with fish and poultry.

Polenta

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Polenta is made from maize meal and can be prepared in a number of ways. In this recipe, it is cooked in milk, then moulded and set before being fried.

Mixed salad stack

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A stack ("pressé" in French) can be made of sliced vegetables or other ingredients piled up and pressed in a ring mould to keep them in shape. The ring is removed before serving. This stack consists of tomato, avocado, red onion, hard-boiled egg and anchovy fillets. Serve surrounded with with a drizzle of vinaigrette dressing.

Flognarde

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Flognarde is a dessert that originated in France's Limousin region. The recipe is very simple: a vanilla-flavoured egg custard, thickened with flour, and sometimes made with seasonal fruit (apples, cherries, pears...). This is a very old recipe that has come down to us virtually unchanged since medieval times.

Fruit crémeux

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This kind of "crémeux" (it means "creamy", but contains no actual cream) is a basic recipe in the repertoire of French pastry chefs. It is smoother but less frothy than a mousse and uses gelatin to set it as it cools. Often used as a tart filling or in other desserts, crémeux is usually poured to set in a mould. This fruity version is made with raspberries.

3-fruit brioche loaf

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This long brioche is called a "lingot" (ingot) in French. It is filled with three layers of different fried fruits: apricots, raisins and cranberries. When sliced, the three layers are revealed - and it's every bit as delicious as it looks.

Moist chocolate cake

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A moist, loaf-shaped cake with all the chocolate flavour that comes from a double dose: melted chocolate and cocoa powder.

Lemon and lime cakes

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These little cakes get their double citrus flavour by combining the delicate bitterness of lemon and lime zest with the slight sharpness of the juice in a syrup, soaked into the cakes while still hot from the oven.

How to make a good pastry tart case

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Lining a tin or mould with pastry to make a tart or pie seems simple enough: you roll out the pastry, put it in the tin and trim off any overhanging bits. It may not be rocket science, but if you want a tart with a perfect pastry case, it really helps to take care over a few details, which I will show you here.

Comtoise apple charlotte

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This "Comtoise" charlotte, inspired by the Franche-Comté region of eastern France, is a more rustic take on the famous dessert. It is made with sliced bread, lightly buttered and fried, then filled with sugared apple pieces, drizzled with clarified butter and baked.

How to peel pistachios

(Found inTexts)
If you buy pistachios shelled but still in their skins (cheaper than ready peeled), you shouldn't use them like this. They need to be "skinned", removing the skin which is pretty unpleasant to eat. Here's a fairly easy way to do it.

Citrus tart

(Found inTexts)
This is an unconventional tart, though the recipe is quite simple: no cream filling in the bottom, just slices of lightly poached fruit in a sweetcrust pastry case.

Some hints for a pizza-party

A pizza party is always a very pleasant and convivial occasion. Good people (friends and family) get together to enjoy delicious pizzas, baked right in the oven. Here are a few tips to help you make yours a success.
July 14^th 2025194 K3.7

A mist free mirror

I don't know if you're like me, but I find it very annoying after a shower or bath to have to wipe down the bathroom mirror 36 times with a towel just so I can see myself shaving (or putting on make-up for the girls).How do you solve this tricky problem? First of all, by looking at the cause of the...
August 29^th 2023237 K 13.6

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 2024760 K 413.6

Circles vs. moulds tins

If you like to bake or make quiches, pies etc. you must surely have one or more pie pans at home, in different diameters and perhaps materials. They are indispensable, without them there is no way to make beautiful pies, and they work very well, but you have another option, instead of moulds,...
October 2^nd 202016 K5

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 202138 K4.6

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,8415

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 201218 K4.4

A memo of utensil weights

You will no doubt have come across this problem while cooking: after starting a recipe, when you already have some ingredients in a pan and have maybe cooked them, you need to know the weight of the pan's contents so that you can take half out, or add the same weight of sugar, for example.
May 9^th 201128 K4.6

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...
February 27^th 201346 K4.3

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 201935 K4.2

The cake and the raisins

When you bake a cake, like a cake or pound cake, you may have already encountered this thorny problem: How to make sure that the raisins, or the candied fruits, or any other small filling, do not fall to the bottom of the pan during the baking process?
May 31^th 201915 K4.7

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.
June 9^th 201935 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 201945 K4.1

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...
March 20^th 202066 K4.3

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...
April 18^th 202021 K4.5

The 3 secrets of successful mousses

When you make a traditional mousse, that is to say without using a siphon, whatever the recipe, it's always the same principle: on one side you have a dense mixture, very tasty, and on the other side egg whites beaten until stiff. All the difficulty of the success of a mousse, it will be to mix the...
April 3^rd 20219,7054.6

Let's rehabilitate the burger

The burger is a sandwich that is very fashionable at the moment, and as for all other sandwiches, the worst (often) rubs shoulders with the best (much more rare). In principle, I'm probably not teaching you anything, it's a sandwich made of a small round bun, rather soft, like a sandwich bread,...
April 10^th 20219,7034.9

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 202115 K4.9

Egg whites management

Quite often, in cooking or pastry-making, we have recipes that use only egg yolks: gâteau breton (brittany butter cake), confectioner's custard, spaghetti carbonara, etc. And so, inevitably, we end up with unused egg whites that will have to be used elsewhere, in another recipe, and certainly...
June 12^th 202111 K4.9

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252195