From Scratch

These really ought to be called OMG Cupcakes, especially after I chose a peanut butter frosting — other buttercream choices included peppermint, coffee and orange. I love dark chocolate to begin with, but the complexity of Dutched cocoa with the zing of sour cream is wonderful. And whoever first paired chocolate and peanut butter is […]

Sometimes the old ways are perfect. I’ve mentioned that I’m a sucker for kitchen toys and that includes tools as well. This long-handled old tool is a favorite when I’m making something small, as I did today — six dark chocolate cupcakes, which I’ll post tomorrow. I got it many years ago in New York […]

Forget Paris Hilton — if the media will let us. Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was sentenced to 30 months in jail for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation. Tom Toles gave us his take in the Washington Post on Friday. Pardon me?
Add to: | del.icio.us | furl

Sphere: Related Content

Notice I did not say bread “making” although of course they go hand-in-hand. No, I’m talking only about the baking of that wonderful magic we call yeast bread.
I started making bread soon after college. I could barely boil an egg back then, but I’d grown up watching one of my grandmothers make bread, so I wasn’t […]

By the end of the year, Starbucks customers in the US and Canada will no longer have to request lower-fat milk in espresso-based drinks. The Seattle-based chain is moving from whole milk to 2% fat as its standard.
The change will happen gradually. Stores in New York switched over on Tuesday, as did those in four test […]

I’ll take a real chef over a “personality” any day, so I’m not too fond of The Food Network’s current crop of popular shows. Many of the chefs are gone or diminished, but every now and then I run across Tyler Florence. I always watch if I have time. He’s a chef who hasn’t forgotten […]

I feel a bit bad for Carl Bernstein. After years of work to produce 600+ well-crafted pages about Hillary Clinton, sex still sells. Three television interviews and three times now he has had to say there is no sex act in the book. It must be somewhat frustrating. As usual, we need the print media to […]

Here’s why I love pressure cookers. The day got away from me yesterday — I was out with a friend — and it was almost 7 when I got home, famished. The Democratic presidential debate was on at 8, so there wasn’t much time. I dug out the pressure cooker and an acquaintance’s recipe that’s been in […]

So Rupert Murdoch might be buying The Wall Street Journal after all. The news reminded Huffaker at Cagle Cartoons of one of the most famous headlines in Murdoch’s New York Post.
Add to: | del.icio.us | furl

Sphere: Related Content

Some of my fondest memories are of Lugano, Switzerland, about an hour from Milan by train and one of the most beautiful spots on earth. I call it the Riviera by the Alps. Lake Lugano is ringed by palm trees but glance up and the Alps are in view, snow-capped even in summer.
There’s a promenade around […]

Carl Bernstein was to have gone on the Today show next Tuesday, when his biography of Hillary Clinton is published; the competing book by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta will be excerpted in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday. So who showed up on Today this morning? Bernstein, of course, in an interview […]