This is my very favorite Salted Butter Caramel Sauce, and judging by the message I get about it, it’s the favorite of many others as well. The great thing about this sauce is that there are no real tricks or fancy techniques, or thermometers. All you need is a skillet or wide saucepan. I came up with it while staying in a friend’s house in…
I recently did an event with Deb Perelman for our new books, L’appart and Smitten Kitchen Every Day. We’d both been traveling around, and not one, not two…but three times, we were in the same city at the same time, but didn’t see each other. One night, I was having dinner by myself before an event and after a two-hour slog through traffic, I needed a…
The name of one French dessert that people find confusing is crème caramel. Caramel-topped custards like this are called flan in Spanish, which confounds people who come to France and see a slice of flan in a bakery, that looks like (and is) a tart baked with a flour-stiffened custard, rather than the wobbly, caramel-topped custard that some of us are used to. To confuse people…
Flo Braker was a good friend to me and many others, in addition to being one of the best bakers that I knew. She unexpectedly passed away last week and will be deeply missed by everyone in the baking community who knew and loved her as much as I did. She was known for her generosity, which came through in her recipes. I wrote a…
I used to have a hard time with certain cooked vegetable salads, such as ratatouille, even though people have insisted that I would like their version. Which I’ve always found odd, because if someone told me they didn’t like chocolate (I know – horrors!), I would not try to sell them on a brownie or chocolate cake. Ratatouille always tastes like a lot of stewed vegetable all mixed up,…
My favorite fruits are plums, which, confusingly for anglophones, are called prunes, in French, or pruneaux, when they are dried. (And boy, are they delicious!) They show up late at the markets in Paris, but stick around longer, overlapping with apples and pears, which arrive in early fall. Most of the plums that you see in Paris markets aren’t the tart varieties that are eaten out…
I’m never quite sure what to say when people ask if they can reduce sugar in a recipe. My inclination is to say Non! right off the bat. Not because I’m in France, and it’s reflexive, but because when I test or develop a recipe, I get the sugar balance just to where I like it before it goes into a book or on the blog. It’s…
With some exceptions (white chocolate in fresh ginger ice cream, caramel corn, marshmallows, and candied peanuts, for example), I tend to like things that aren’t too sweet. That occasionally confounds people because I’m a baker and I am no stranger to sugar, honey, and maple syrup. But I tend to gravitate toward things that get their flavors courtesy of chunks of bittersweet chocolate, a swirl of dark…
France is the land of wine but it’s not necessarily something of adulation. I was told the average price spent on a bottle of wine in France is €3,20, which means a lot of people are spending less than that. To many, it’s just a drink and not something that’s considered a special-occasion beverage. And while people scoff at things like boxed wine, or wine in…
A
Get David's newsletter sent right to your Inbox!
Sign up for my newsletter and get my FREE guidebook to the best bakeries and pastry shops in Paris...
