Pigs trotter can be the making of a great meal. Braised tender or roasted to crisping its skin, it is terrific for the German specialty schweinshaxe which I made recently. That dish led me to try using it for a batch of cotechino (or zampone), a trotter stuffed with...
Every year I try to sneak a stollen in my Christmas-time baking. I view it as my "naughty dough," a nod to a Kurt Vonnegut story. It also serves as a narrow window to my birth country, Germany. To me, it's a baby Jesus bread, whose fruit and nuts give it...
While preparing buttercream for my annual Christmas bûche de Nöel, I decided on praline as flavoring. Carefully caramelizing the sugar, I mixed in the nuts, my eyes watching carefully for any attendant burn. The final result was worth the vigilance. I finalized it by...
There’s an art to mixing up panettone. Ignio Massari, a master of this annual holiday bread, says he changes the structure of his panettone annually, using variations around salt, fruit and raisins. But for Ignio, the base egg quantity stays the same. In...
