eat dessert first
Last summer Graham and I went to NYC to eat, take in a few museums, visit with cousins and eat some more. Graham’s cousin Riad is the executive chef at Pastis and Balthazar (and the author of the The Balthazar Cookbook). It goes without saying that Riad is an amazing […]
My husband is going to have a fit when he realizes that I’m talking about his diet on my website. It really does have some relevance to this post, so I hope he will forgive me! He went to the doctor recently and was basically told he needed to cut […]
Butterscotch is one of those flavors that can make you travel through time. I remember eating it, still warm off the stove, when I was just a kid. It was straight from the box of Jell-O instant pudding and it was fabulous to my 7-year-old taste buds. Today I’d probably […]
Many of you may have read about my aunt Kristin in past posts. She is a true lover of food and cookbooks. In fact, she supplies me with a great number of the books that fill my shelves. That is saying a lot considering I own hundreds of them. In […]
Every New Years Eve my husband and I stay home and have raw oysters, lobster and champagne. This has been our tradition ever since we moved to Minnesota, 15 years ago. Graham proposed to me on NYE so it has always been a special night for us. This year our […]
Biscotti are the cookies I can’t keep my hands off of. I force myself to give some of them away so that I don’t eat the entire batch all by myself! This chocolate biscotti recipe is one of my favorite cookies to give as a holiday gift. Biscotti are ideal […]
Around the holidays you find many recipes that call for candied fruits. I use them in my Panettone recipe from Artisan Bread in Five, in a chocolate ginger biscotti, a Trinidadian rum cake, for my granny’s maple brown-butter shortbread cookies or just dipped in bittersweet chocolate.
This fall I met Chad and his partners at the Mill City Farmer’s Market in Minneapolis. My co-author and I did a bread presentation from our book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. When I came off the stage, there was Chad and these funny round pans, which were […]
Order my new cookbook, Zoë Bakes Cookies, now! When I was growing up I looked forward to Christmas morning at my Granny’s house. It seemed like magic how I’d go to bed at night and wake up with a stocking stuffed with goodies at the foot of my bed. Later […]
This week was my husband’s birthday and he requested a true American classic for his cake, Boston cream pie. Light pillowy sponge cake with layers of rich vanilla pastry cream and topped with a smooth chocolate glaze. Why do we call this cake a pie? It was invented in the […]
It is my birthday and I decided to make myself something fun to celebrate. Now that I am squarely in my 40s I find it especially important to make this occasion a special one. I was in the mood to play with sugar. It has been years, many years, since […]
Last week I made a Génoise, the classic ethereal cake that is the perfect base for so many desserts. It is a cake just begging to be flavored with a syrup. If left all alone it can be a bit on the dry side. In fact, it is also known […]
I'm Zoë François and I love to bake. This is where I play with sugar and take the mystery out of baking everything from cookies to wedding cakes. More...
