I created this pie recipe to be be memorable and to prevent many of those pesky problems that many people have when making pumpkin pie. Not only have I tested and tweaked it in my home kitchen, but professionally as well. So I feel confident in sharing this recipe with you.| ShirlGard
This has been my go-to pie dough recipe for a long time and it never let's me down, that's why I call it My Trusty Pie Dough. I hope you find it as trusty as I do. It's easy to work with, probably because it has an additional ingredient that most recipes don't have: a small quantity of egg. Also, ease of handling requires you to keep it chilled while working with it. Any warm pie dough will tear easily, including mine. If you work with cold dough and never stretch it, you'll be successful.| ShirlGard
I developed this recipe as a garnish for plated desserts in the restaurant where I was the pastry chef, especially for Creamy Pumpkin Pie. It consists simply of sliced fresh kumquats simmered in a sugar syrup until tender crisp. But it's just as good for home desserts or as a topping for vanilla ice cream. Candied Kumquats are so pretty and are also an easy to make treat.| ShirlGard
I learned how to make caramelized nuts when I took a professional Petits Pours class at Lenôtre in France. The original recipe was for hazelnuts, but I have adapted it for pecans. Actually, the recipe works for any kind of nuts. I've also made caramelized walnuts. It's just a good basic recipe to have in your repertoire. The photo you see above shows the Caramelized Pecans garnishing my Creamy Pumpkin Pie, along with Red Wine Poached Cranberries and Candied Kumquats.| ShirlGard
Poached Cranberries are the most eye-catching garnish you can put on your holiday plates or platters. They look like shiny red jewels, unless you would rather have them frosted with a light coating of granulated sugar. I like them either way. It's a simple process: just take a box of fresh cranberries and toss them into a skillet of red wine syrup made with equal parts red wine and sugar. There's no water in the recipe so they keep for weeks in a plastic container in the refrigerator. So if...| ShirlGard
10 Tips for Making: Shirl's Cranberry Almond Granola. All granola recipes are not created equal. This one has been tested, tweaked, and re-tested over the years since I first developed it years ago, when the chef asked me to create a house-made granola that he could use on the breakfast menu. This recipe was the result. The biggest challenge was getting the ratio of dry ingredients to liquid ingredients correct. If there’s too much liquid, the granola will be soggy; if too little, the ingre...| ShirlGard
Cranberry Cream Cheese Scones I’m one of those scone lovers−who prefers them thick and crusty or thin and crunchy−but not so fond of that in-between thickness. It’s just one of my quirky preferences and is more about the esthetics, how they look, than flavor. The flavor will be the same scrumptiousness no matter how you shape them. This recipe is for one of my favorite chubby thick scones.| ShirlGard
Easy Weekend Cake: Nectarine Almond Cake [Variation: Almond Plum Cake] This recipe for Nectarine Almond Cake makes a moist cake underneath a colorful arrangement of sliced fruit baked on top. It is easy to make in two important ways. The cake batter, which uses almond paste, is easy because it can be made in a food processor. If you haven’t used almond paste before.....| ShirlGard
My Favorite Vietnamese Spice: Cinnamon Pecan Bundt Cake - After tasting four varieties of ground cinnamon from Penzeys, an on-line spice company, their Vietnamese variety was an easy pick as my favorite, then as well as now, for this Cinnamon Pecan Bundt Cake. At the restaurant where I worked at that time, we chose to go with this brand when we were looking for spices with distinctive flavor.....| ShirlGard
4.22.18 Blackberry Flashback: Blackberry Cobbler This is how I became inspired to create this Blackberry Cobbler. A few years ago, when I lived in Lenox, Massachusetts, a small blackberry bush with a few scraggly berries, just appeared in my garden one summer. It must have been wild since I didn’t plant it. Nevertheless, there it| ShirlGard
