« Back

Next »

Picture 1 from 15: Next, once the candy has hardened, it is cut into bite-sized pieces. The woman cutting the candy said that this is the hardest step to learn in the candy making process. She said it is easy to break the candy into tiny shards and not into nice slices.

In October, I blogged about a great shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood that hand makes hard candy called Papa Bubble.

The last time I was there, they were just finishing a batch of lollipops, but today I caught them earlier on in the process and photographed several of the steps involved in pulling sugar candy by hand. The candy makers were really fun to watch and chatted with me about where they learned to make candy while myself and several others observed. Pretty cool…

While it’s winter in North America, summer is in full swing in South America, which means great tropical fruits like pineapples, mangoes and coconuts are at the peak of their season and easily found on the shelves of our local grocery stores.

So, in honor of the season, I’m posting my favorite Coconut Macaroon recipe.  When I first came across it in Martha Stewart’s Desserts cookbook, I followed it “to a T,” but over the year’s I’ve changed it a little by substituting half of the vanilla extract for almond extract and adding chopped almonds and chocolate chips to the base before baking.   My variation makes it more like a home-baked Almond Joy candy bar.  Either way, the macaroons are easy to make and just delicious!

I have a good friend who lives in NYC’s Chinatown neighborhood, so inevitably I find myself buying all sorts of different foodstuffs when I go to visit her.  It’s impossible for me to pass block after block of Chinese fruit stands and fish markets without finding something new to pique my interest.  This evening’s surprise, after a dinner of dim sum, happened to be a wooden stick of what looked to be candied apples.

The little skewer pierced through four little crab apples, dipped in a bright red hard candy coating, was way too tempting to pass up.  And once we arrived back at her apartment, we decided to cut into one to see just what lie underneath that shell.

Crab apples they were indeed!  However, they had been pickled!!!  A very startling discovery (that I may not want to have again…), considering the candy apples I grew up eating have always been sweet and juicy, not chewy and tart!

As I perused the shelves of a little gourmet food shop in my neighborhood, I came across a tube of remoulade sauce.  I was appalled.  I did not live in New Orleans, proud home of many a homemade remoulade-smothered dish, to find it neatly packaged in a tube reminiscent of toothpaste!

Of course, I had to try it.  So, of course I slapped down the $4.99 and bought it.

I hate to admit it, but to my surprise it wasn’t that bad.  It tasted like jarred tartar sauce.  I would never use it to substitute any remoulade sauce I’ve ever had before, but if I ever needed a portable and quick squeeze of sauce to don a child’s frozen fish sticks, this would certainly do the trick.

If there is one thing you should make from scratch on Thanksgiving, it is cranberry relish. Yes, I know. You have a laundry list of other items you are making and so it’s not the end of the world if you buy canned cranberry sauce, right? It’ll save you some time, right? No one really likes the stuff anyway, right? Wrong!

Read more »

As a child, I hated peanut butter and simply ate jelly sandwiches.  But now, as an adult, my tastes have changed and I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!  However, on my most recent visit to the Doughnut Plant (my favorite NYC doughnuts), I ate a giant peanut butter doughnut filled with homemade plum jelly and am now wondering if a regular old PB&J will still satisfy.  Maybe if I deep-fry it?!

What a cool idea! Although perfectly scary for Halloween, I doubt these skeleton-decorated gingerbread cookies will keep anyone from eating them! Joe emailed this photo to me but could not find a link to the source. If anyone knows who baked these frightful cookies, I’d love to find out!

I’ve walked passed the Papa Bubble storefront on Manhattan’s Lower East Side several times, each time being after hours. So, when I walked past yesterday afternoon to find the shop open I was really excited. And even more so, when I realized they were also making candy that afternoon!

Read more »

I grew up in an area of Chicago that neighbored a predominantly Korean-occupied commercial district.  As I child, I remember browsing its grocery stores and marveling at all of its wonders.  It was in these stores that I was introduced to many snack foods that I grew to love—snack foods that most American kids would never dream of eating, like dried cuttle fish and lychee jelly candies.

Last week, while wandering the streets of NYC’s Chinatown neighborhood, I found myself thinking about those treats and realized that when I have a hankering for some of those things, they may be but a 15-minute subway ride away.  Or better yet, maybe I can try some new Chinese snacks foods (shrimp chips being number one on my list so far) to replace my older stand-bys…

These cupcake wrappers are too cool and would make any Halloween festivities that much scarier!  Simply wrap the band of decorated paper around each cupcake, after it has been baked and frosted, and you have a to-die-for dessert…