Swedish Baker

A decade before Julia Child gave us "The French Chef" and more than 40 years before the launch of "The Food Network", t...

In the last two years I've acquired another half dozen books devoted to cookies (my collection of baking books is now at 65 volumes). T...

Exotic ingredients and outlandish recipes get an awful lot of attention these days. Cookbooks, television programs and food magazines are fu...

It's 78° here in Chicago making it a near perfect day. This is summer at its best, without too much heat and humidity. I still feel lik...

This is my fourth book by Carole Walter - the preceding three being single-subject volumes covering Cakes, Cookies, and Pies & Tarts. L...

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to meet a fellow classmate whose parents were from Lithuania. Kristina, and Marcy, her roomma...

It's officially summer - at least "meteorologic summer"- the first day of June, and hot days are ahead. For my part, nothing ...

The idea of Strawberry-Rhubarb Ice Cream occured to me this spring while I was pondering the various uses for rhubarb. For pies, I like jus...

I don't grill. That is, I don't grill outside on a charcoal or gas grill. I grill inside with a grill pan or under the broiler. Whe...

Indian Mangoes are in season and Alphonso Mangoes, if you can locate them, are a little piece of heaven. How fortunate that the U.S. trade ...

As a matter of course, I regularly read other food blogs and websites. One of my favorites belongs to uber baker, pastry chef and cookbook ...

Today, May 16, is the Feast of Saint-Honoré, the French patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. There's even a special cake, Le Gâteau...

Late last night, my colleague and friend Heidi and I were e-mailing back and forth. It was getting on to midnight and both of us commented ...

The beauty of Panna Cotta is in its remarkable simplicity. It's made with just a few ingredients - milk, cream, sugar, and gelatin - an...

You know how it is, you start chopping onions and you realize you didn't apply the waterproof mascara. Your eyes start to sting and you...

The famous theoretical physicist, John Archibald Wheeler said, "In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it." For ...

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night , Sir Toby Belch says, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes an...

In the 1965 film, "The Flight of the Phoenix", a single-engine aircraft (piloted by Jimmy Stewart) crashes in the Sahara desert. ...

We human beings are a strange lot. We spend a lifetime acquiring things that we're afraid to use. The precious jewels and luxury timepi...

Last evening I dropped an entire half-gallon of milk on the kitchen floor. Of course it was a glass bottle that shattered in 846,836 pieces...

Last month I was looking for a dessert recipe as a take-along for an impromtu celebration. It was already the middle of the afternoon and I...

You might want to strangle your parish priest for putting you through those long homilies every Sunday, but why not invite him to dinner in...

My college experience was a remarkably happy one. I attended a small Catholic institution 30 miles from Chicago. The school was a little ge...

A few years ago, when I headed a not-for-profit institution in Chicago, I was asked to entertain a group of young would-be not-for-profit e...