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, particularly the tricky parts. This variety of flavours means that I test many alternatives, so don't be surprised if in the pictures the colour of the macarons changes, I used the best photograph available...

Croute à thé

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Under this strange name (literally "crust for tea") there hides a delicious cake in crusty sweet pastry, filled with a smooth almond mixture and icing sugar on top. It's an excellent cake for tea time, but it goes very well with fruit salad for example.

Surprise eggs

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These look like perfectly normal boiled eggs, but when the shell is cracked open - surprise! They contain a mixture of scrambled egg, cured ham, fried prawns and chives.

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.

Hot tomato sauce

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This is a quick tomato sauce, just the thing for dipping crisps (chips, if you are American), or nachos. It is very similar to the sauce served with aperitif snacks in Tex-Mex restaurants.

Crackers

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These crisp savoury biscuits are ideal for dipping into a sauce as an aperitif snack. It is quite easy to make your own crackers at home and they are much healthier and even more delicious than the commercial kind.

Papadums

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Papadums (pronounced "poppadoms") or papad are very thin, crisp Indian crackers. They are often served as an aperitif snack in Indian restaurants. The tricky part of making them at home is rolling them out thinly enough.

Pesto crackers

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These are delicious little aperitif biscuits, really crisp and with the full-on flavour of pesto. They can be eaten on their own with dips, such as hot tomato or houmous.

Craquelin (sweet cracker dough)

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This sweet cracker dough ("craquelin" in French) is a very simple mixture: equal parts of flour, butter and light brown sugar. It is simlilar to a shortbread dough and can be rolled out very thinly and cut into any shape as desired. Craquelin is mostly used (though not exclusively) on top of choux pastry (pâte à choux) to give a more attractive and regular result, with eclairs, for example, and gives them a delicious crisp...

Galette de Fougerolles

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This Galette de Fougerolles is a flattish cake filled with a hazelnut buttercream and topped just before baking with a "craquelin" (sweet cracker) crust, studded with griottine cherries.

Crisp apricot and pistachio tart

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This delightful tart has a caramelized puff-pastry base, topped with apricots and pistachios. The recipe is simple and delicious.

Broken eggs with mushrooms

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For this quick and easy recipe, we pour beaten eggs over sautéed mushrooms and bacon.

Chester

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Chester biscuits are shortbread biscuits made with Cheshire cheese, and are known as "Cheshire cheese cookies". Here's a version with Comté cheese.

Lime meringue tart

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For this delicious tart, you will see how the crisp, sweet pastry is the perfect foil for the distinct taste and slight sharpness of the lime filling and, of course, the smoothness of the Italian meringue topping.

Foie gras fingers

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An elegant canapé which consists of a crisp layer of shortcrust pastry topped with a layer of foie gras.

Olive twists

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These savoury puff-pastry twists (rather like smoked salmon sacristains) make an ideal aperitif snack. The pastry is simply spread with tapenade.

Tomato feuilleté with pesto

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This is a fairly simple recipe, but the result is an elegant, thin tart, bursting with delicious Italian colour. The base is a a feuilletage, but savoury this time, topped with the concentrated flavours of Italian cuisine: pesto, tomatoes and Parmesan.

Chinois

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"Chinese" - what a strange name for this cake! A kind of brioche, filled with confectioner's custard (crème pâtissière) which can be decorated with fondant icing.

Chouquettes

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Chouquettes are small choux puffs with sugar crystals on the top. They are usually eaten plain, but can also be filled with a variety of things: cream, fruit, chocolate... whatever you like.

Little apple turnovers with almonds and raisins

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These are small apple turnovers ("chaussons") of puff pastry, filled with a mixture of caramelised almonds, stewed apple and rum-soaked raisins. To be eaten just as they are...

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 2024575 K 63.9

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

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 2023326 K4.0

Advice on heating oven

For good results with a wood-fired oven, it's very important to manage the heating process well. Here is some advice to help you succeed in this delicate operation.
August 24^th 2024185 K4.0

From website to blog

Hello everyone, Today I'm inaugurating the cooking-ez.com "blog". The idea is to have a space for discussion open to everone, but not necessarily linked to a particular recipe or page. I hope the posts will be sufficiently interesting that you'll enjoy reading and discussing them. The...
January 1^st 201120 K3.9

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.
July 12^th 202127 K4.5

Preserving egg yolks

If you're using only the egg whites in a recipe (such as meringues ), you'll need to store the yolks until you're ready to use them again. There's nothing very complicated about this in principle - all you have to do is chill them, but there are a few pitfalls to be avoided in practice.
June 18^th 20247,7345

How to choose a good password

These days more and more websites ask you to create a user account, so that you can be identified before being allowed to access some service or other. To create an account you need to choose a user identity. This is simple, as your email address is used in most cases (ann.other@gmail.com, for...
March 29^th 201320 K4.1

20 measures to protect your privacy

As we use more and more new technology, we leave ourselves increasingly vulnerable to companies who make money out of collecting our personal data. For instance, when we use the internet, we need to be wary of what is collected about what we do, our habits, etc. Here is a list of simple...
April 16^th 201319 K4.0

5 really useful cooking tips

Cooking is about recipes, of course, but it is also an impressive collection of small gestures, ways of doing things, knowing what to do and what not to do. All these little tips and tricks can be very important: they can affect the way a recipe turns out, simply because you did just the right...
March 29^th 201624 K4.9

What can I use for blind baking a pastry case?

When it comes to home-made desserts, tarts are always popular. They can be divided into two basic types: those cooked with their filling, such as an apricot and almond cream tart, and those where the filling is added after baking the pastry case, such as a strawberry tart or chocolate tart. For...
May 2^nd 2017111 K4.5

The mock CAP baker's certificate exam

The next instalment in my life as an apprentice baker at the French INBP professional school. I’m now halfway through training and it’s still as exciting as ever, and exhausting – but maybe I’m just getting old, or both… Anyway, a few days ago we had to go through the mock CAP exam. A sort...
May 1^st 201821 K4.4

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202033 K4.4

Coarsely chopped herbs

Although we are in the middle of winter as I write these lines, you should not hesitate to make salads at this time, it is actually quite simple, rather fast, and so pleasant. A while ago, I already told you that a salad is a salad, but a salad with herbs is immediately something much better:...
January 9^th 202114 K4.9

The perfect boiled egg

Making boiled eggs is always a delight and it pleases the young and old alike. This little transgenerational side puts them on the list of "things to do on Sunday evening when you don't know what to do" in many families (including mine)... That said, it's not that simple, you have to pay...
January 30^th 202117 K4.7

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

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 20219,4504.9

Let's rehabilitate spinach

We are currently (as I write this) in the season of fresh spinach, and it is a delicious vegetable that unfortunately has a bad reputation among a lot of people, children and teenagers in particular. I wonder if this lack of appetite isn't due to what I call, probably unfairly, "school food...
May 7^th 20217,9004.8

How to break eggs properly?

It is a very common gesture in pastry, bakery and of course cooking: breaking eggs to incorporate them into a recipe. You have eggs (which professionals call "shell eggs" to differentiate them from liquid eggs in cartons or cans), and you must break them to incorporate the contents into your...
June 26^th 202114 K4.8

Shall I take the tops off?

If you buy your vegetables at the market, at a farmer's stand, once you have chosen a bunch of carrots or beets for example, you must have already heard this proposal from the salesman: "Shall I pull the tops? This sentence is his proposal to remove for you all the tops, which he puts aside, to...
May 7^th 202212 K4.9

The preservation of bread

Eating fresh bread is always a delight, the crust crumbles deliciously, you take full advantage of the taste of your bread (80% of this taste is in the crust), it is a fleeting moment to enjoy. Who hasn't already eaten the crouton or croutons of his baguette, on the way back from the bakery? ...
June 11^th 202214 K4.7

Grilled bacon is much better in the oven

Some recipes call for thin slices of bacon to be cooked and added to the recipe, or to prepare one of those delicious breakfasts known as "à l'Anglaise".
April 25^th 20254,8055