The Pie's The Thing... (with apologies to W. Shakespear)

All legends are based on truth but the farther you get from the actual event, the more suspect the legend becomes. You need eye witnesses or participants to bring veracity to the story, to corroborate, verify and independently confirm what happened. This is the story of a pie – an egg custard pie – that became a legend. Pretty much everyone who takes up baking and sticks with it through the inevitable failures, ends up with at least one dish that becomes their signature dish – the one everyone requests at family gatherings and holidays. For my...

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This just in!

I talked with my father about his banana pudding and he confirmed that the recipe for the pudding itself did indeed come from the Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers box, but the meringue technique came from his mother. Unfortunately he hasn't made it in about six years. Hopefully he'll break that dry spell soon. Personally, though, I can't imagine anything made with Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers tasting good these days. Is it just me or has the taste completely changed? The last time I had any they were so awful I had to toss the box. When we were kids, our great...

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Inspiration Inspection Interlude: Like Father?

There are several people who have imprinted themselves on my baking memory. From time to time I'll post a little bit about them. Most people who delve into cooking and baking usually trace their love and desire for the art to their mothers/grandmothers/aunts. I'm a little different because I can draw my baking lineage directly to my father. True, my mother, grandmother and at least a couple of aunts all contributed to my interest in cooking – directly...

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Of Ginger and Lemon and Cream (Cheese) - Part The Fourth and Final

You know in the science fiction movies when Earth is invaded by aliens with more advanced tech and we're getting to pojees beaten out of us? Some quirky genius guy comes along and figures out how to reverse-engineer the technology he shouldn't be able to understand, no matter how much of a genius he is, and saves the day, right? Well, I'm here to tell you that advanced cookie tech is no match for the Quirky Guy Who Bakes! (Please notice that I didn't...

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Of Ginger and Lemon and Cream (Cheese) - Part The Third

They say you can learn more from your failures than you can from your successes. If that's true, then what about your near misses? Your qualified successes? What did I learn from my first attempts at my ginger-lemon creams? I learned that I needed some new tools, a refined technique and a couple of different ingredients to make them the cookies I so desired. And that I needed to figure out the cool factor pretty darned quickly because my next test...

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Of Ginger and Lemon and Cream (Cheese) - Part The Second

All I really wanted were cookies that I could rely on to a) make my mouth curl into a smile when I bit into them and 2) not make me have to fight my wallet to afford them. Oh, and c) they had to actually look kind of cool, too. I'd already established the parameters that would satisfy the first part: gingery, snappy, lemony and creamy. I quickly gave up on the second part because if these cookies could satisfy the first part, I wouldn't care about...

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Of Ginger and Lemon and Cream (Cheese) - Part The First

Gingersnaps are perhaps my favorite cookie of all time. I remember occasionally liberating one or two from the pantry late at night when I was a kid (I believe the brand was Archer's but I could be wrong). After I moved to Manhattan, I discovered that Nabisco made a pretty good snap and from time to time I'd buy some and have them with a glass of cold milk. I did this even though I'd gotten from a co-worker a really good gingersnap recipe that I loved to bake. That changed the day I bought a box and noticed something different about them. Gingersnaps...

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Gotta Start Somewhere!

In case the title didn't give it away, this is a blog about my adventures in baking. To be honest, I never would have thought to create a "food blog" if not for a friend of my wife's who, upon tasting the latest iteration my ginger-lemon cream cookies, blurted out "Food blog! Corporate sponsorship! Food Network show!" (He's an incredible "anything is possible" kind of guy, so it was a really small leap from blog to television show for him.) Once...

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This is a test of the Just A Guy Who Bakes blog. If this was a real blog post, you would be directed to the nearest comment box for further instructions. This is only a te...

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