With the approximately 697 varieties of crackers on supermarket shelves, why would you ever, EVER choose to make your own crackers?

Because you can.

Because it’s fun. And because you like spending time in your kitchen surrounded by cookbooks and bowls and timers and butter and flour and your kids, who hang out to lick the bowl and get some face-time with Mom. (more…)

What’s the first food you think of when you hear the word “Passover?”

Matzo, for sure. Charoset. Horseradish. Parsley. Eggs. Matzo ball soup. And for me, popovers.

Doesn’t everyone associate popovers with Passover?  Well, apparently not.  But at the Silver family seders, popovers were always the star, thanks to my grandmother. (more…)

So Monday is the first day of Passover. I’m sure you’ve got your seder meal all planned. Except maybe the dessert. Hmmm, what’ll it be this year? Same old, same old? How about something different, like almond cookies?

Almond cookies?! B-O-R-I-N-G…

Not if you like almond flavor – and certainly not these particular almond cookies, the likes of which you’ll never encounter in the cookie aisle at your local grocery store.

First of all, these aren’t the crumbly-textured almond cookies you’re served at the end of your American-Chinese restaurant meal, with chunks of pineapple and fortune cookies. Or fragile, lace-like Almond Crisps. Or dunkable almond biscotti.

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Ah, Easter! Another holiday, another occasion to make pizzelle.

I didn’t grow up Italian; I never heard of, saw, or tasted a pizzelle till after I’d married my Italian husband, and began visiting Boston’s North End – close by the Haymarket, where Rick’s family sold vegetables from their farm.

Since we lived in Maine, the trip to the North End was pretty much confined to holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We’d make the rounds, from the meat market, with its hanging skinned rabbits; to the bread bakery, where we’d pick up light-as-air loaves showered with sesame seeds; to Trio’s, where you could get every kind of fresh pasta imaginable. (more…)

It’s with some trepidation that I approach April each year.

Not because of the prospect of showers (which do indeed bring May flowers); or tax season; or Major League Baseball’s opening day, which means I have at least 6 months of Red Sox-induced angst in front of me.

No, it’s because April brings Passover. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is my opportunity to be thoroughly humbled by my total lack of knowledge regarding Passover baking rules. Never mind kosher; Passover alone is enough to send me cowering into a corner. (more…)

What is it about coconut that’s so attractive? Enshrined in popular culture from South Pacific to the Marx Brothers to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it’s a food that’s provided as much entertainment as sustenance.I’ll admit, until a few years ago, it was a food I could take or leave with equal aplomb. I think the breakthrough happened in a restaurant kitchen where I was working, and someone made coconut shrimp with mango salsa for an appetizer one evening. Holy cow, was that good! Ever since, it’s been Katy bar the door, further cemented when King Arthur started carrying our dried coconut milk powder, and I started playing. I added it to classic buttercream, and used the resulting frosting on top Kahlua-soaked chocolate cake layers for a colleague’s wedding cake.

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Have I ever mentioned before that I love cookie cutters? Love ‘em! I have the basics, the funky and the unusual. Graduated circles? got ‘em. Stockings, ornaments, trees? Check, check and check. I even have a lobster.   But what’s a gal to do when she doesn’t have …

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The Windy City. The Cubs. The Magnificent Mile. Pizza and hot dogs. The Blues Brothers…

…the Housewares Show!

The International Housewares Show, held in Chicago every March, gathers tens of thousands of kitchenware-focused store owners, product manufacturers, catalogue marketers, and online retailers from all over the world for three hectic days in one spot: McCormick Place, certainly the largest building complex I’ve ever been in.

My fellow test baker Susan Reid, who once lived in Chicago, said that she always found it discouraging to pass the place on her daily jog. “You’d jog, and jog, and jog, and 15 minutes later, you’d STILL be jogging past the darned McCormick!”

Yes, it’s that big. According to the literature, McCormick Place covers more than 100 acres. And I feel like I walked every one of them.

So what did I see at the show? (more…)

I know, I know, this looks like – gulp – fruitcake.

Not only that, it has – double-gulp – DATES in it.

Are you still with me?

Thank you! You wouldn’t believe the moaning and groaning and eye-rolling that goes on around here whenever I make something with dates or raisins or currants or any of those other “icky dried fruits.”

Like prunes – which this bread includes as well.

Are you STILL with me? (more…)

In June 2009, eleven members of the King Arthur Flour sales and marketing team met in Kansas for a week-long, 1000+ mile journey across the state – from Kansas City to Denver. Our objective was to meet in person the folks who grow and mill the wheat that becomes King Arthur Flour. Several people on our team already knew many of the farmers and millers and possessed an in-depth knowledge of wheat, milling and baking. Yet it was still very important for us to meet them as a team and to show our appreciation for the work they do. I had a secondary objective: to shoot some video that would allow us to share the experience with you, our customers.

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