Good Things by David

February was a wonderful month filled with delicious and tempting sweets for all.  I developed a chocolate cookie made to be used with a multitude of cookie cutters for any type of celebration or baking project.  The cookies in that post were cut with a nice heart cutter that I use every now and then (it comes with a stamp made to imprint messages onto the surface of the cookie), because I wanted to ship them out to my niece & nephews.  What I love about the chocolate cookie dough is that, not only does it taste chocolaty and decadent, it is also wonderful to roll out and cut.  The cookies remain perfectly shaped when they come out of the oven, so royal icing decorations can be applied with ease. Those beautiful heart cookies that were iced for my niece and nephews were such a hit with both you readers and my little ones!  I’m glad they were enjoyed all around.  Icing them was such fun over the weekend afternoon I set aside for them, but it wasn’t...

Boston Cream Pies are delicious cakes made from sponge cake layers that are filled with ultra-rich pastry cream and topped with the smoothest of chocolate ganaches.  It is thought that the cake was originally called a pie, because back in the 1800s, cakes were usually baked in pie tins (these were called Washington pie plates).  Washington Pie was another tender cake which was split and filled with a pastry cream, although some versions used jam or jelly instead of cream.  It wasn’t until the mid 20th century, however, that the idea of adding a rich ganache topping came into play. Boston Cream Pie If you’ve never had the pleasure of baking a Boston Cream Pie then I think you should treat yourself to one very soon.  The cake layers which I showed you in a previous post are perfect for this this type of cake.  Most recipes for Boston Cream Pie give you one cake layer to split and fill, but my recipe produces two wonderful layers that are thick and lig...

Sponge cakes belong to the foam cake family which rely on beaten eggs for volume and structure.  Angel food cakes, chiffon cakes, genoise cakes and hot milk sponge cakes all fall under this umbrella, yet each one of them differs in terms of ingredients and recipe technique.  Closely related to the European genoise cake, hot milk sponge cakes, as the name implies, have the addition of heated milk and a little butter which result in a very light & tender crumb.   Whole eggs and sugar are whipped until thick and doubled in volume and are then combined with the lightest of cake flours (with a bit of leavening) and some hot milk which has been infused with extracts & some melted butter.  Poured into layer cake pans or sheet pans, the cakes come out golden and spongy, light and quite delicious.  Hot milk sponge cake layers are classic in Boston Cream Pies, but because of their tender quality, they can be used any number of ways.  They can be made int...