Stella Parks's Profile | Serious Eats

8 Easy Upgrades for Better Banana Bread

@tatiemily, quick question: did you use raw or natural sugar by chance? Due to their natural fructose content, they are much more likely to form hard clumps. I've certainly had sugar that clumped a lot in the oven despite stirring, but I haven't experienced the petrification you've described. I'm also wondering if humidity might be a factor; I've had the good fortune of working in fairly dry conditions, but if it's considerably more humid where you live, I wonder if the sugar was able to draw in that moisture as it cooled.

Very glad your BlendTech was able to handle it, though! If you've got a kitchen scale, you can still use it ounce for ounce like plain sugar.

Toasted Sugar

@KEB, yiiiiiiikes! If it's any consolation, you didn't do anything wrong, nor is shattering a particular risk for this recipe; it's just some baking dishes are made from standard rather than tempered glass, and more prone to breakage.

For the Easiest Angel Food Cake Ever, Just Beat It

@quirkykitchen, when you whip things up, just be sure to use the visual cues rather than the timetables listed, since the horsepower of your mixer is going to be less than a stand mixer, it may take much longer. In this recipe, I prefer liquid acids rather than cream of tartar since they also provide h2o for steam.

Since you've baked so many angel food cakes in the past, I'm hopeful you'll have a good sense of intuition when it comes to judging the doneness of the cakes in smaller pans. I'd say to poke your head into the oven about 10 minutes before the listed time. That said, since the mixer itself is going to be a wild card for you, it might be better to bake in the 10" pan first, just to minimize the number of variables you're dealing with in a trial batch.

BraveTart's Homemade Milk Duds: All That's Missing Is the Yellow Box

@sarah fama, if you've had success with that method in the past, then go for it! The starch content of the cocoa may thicken the caramel even more, but hopefully not a deal breaker for you.

@CiciC, considerably more tricky :( They're made with a unique piece of machinery, so DIY techniques are forced to rely on aerated sugar (think brittle) or aerated proteins (think meringue) and the results are never quite Whopper-like enough for me. It's been something I've chased after for quite some time.

Homemade Milk Duds

@dogface, that should be the perfect swap; it's possible the coconut milk will produce a more tender caramel (due to a higher solid content), but I can't say for certain. Let us know if you try it out!

Classic Banana Bread

@Evie, thanks for helping me diagnose that issue! prior to our exchange I didn't even know there were "fake" Greek yogurts out there, I thought the term referred exclusively to strained yogurts. I've added a note to the recipe, and all my others that call for Greek yogurt.

@tatiemily, no typo; the ingredients list is for the weight of whole, unpeeled fruit, then step 1 starts with peeling that fruit to get at the 12 ounces pulp. I like to include before and after weights for folks who may be shopping and not sure how many bananas they'll need to get 12 ounces fruit.

Classic Banana Bread

@arielleeve, I'd go with sour cream since it has a consistency much like Greek yogurt (buttermilk would definitely make the batter too thin). If you give it a shot, please let us know how it turns out!

Homemade Milk Duds

@Breadandsuch, that can happen for a number of reasons, but the most common would be cooking the caramel too fast, which can drive off the water before the sugar has a chance to fully dissolve. In extreme cases, you'd get outright crystallization, in other instances you may be left with just a few grains of sugar that slowly trigger crystallization over time. It can also be from improper storage, leaving the sauce or candy exposed to air.

BraveTart's House of Horror: How to Make a Super-Spooky Halloween Gingerbread House

@chanjying, I've seen the article you mention, and it sounds like they're judging strength strictly in terms of shatter resistance for an "indestructible" house. So they're looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist for most people, royal icing is plenty sturdy under normal circumstances, while complicating the assembly process with a glue that must be kept warm for use and is gooey/stringing/difficult to apply.

Homemade Milk Duds

@Josh1981, that's right, tempering solves it. You can certainly pop 'em in the fridge to help them last even longer, but they keep really well at room temperature (likely for longer than indicated in the recipe, it can just be really hard to test for upper limits on storage because homemade Milk Duds are vulnerable prey to hungry snackers).

BraveTart's Homemade Milk Duds: All That's Missing Is the Yellow Box

@Riesen-fan, oooh, I should get to work on Riesens STAT. The recipe would be almost identical to this, but maybe cooked a few degrees lower, then mixed with dark chocolate at the end. Only question is: how much. Hmmm...

Sunny Lemon Bars

@mghins, no, no, you have great taste. ;) We're running the recipe in December, hang tight!

Classic Banana Bread

@CheapWeenie, I'm sorry you weren't able to find the banana bread you were looking for; it seems you've been redirected here instead of a recipe that's no longer hosted on Serious Eats. If you're so inclined, you should be able to find an archived version with the Internet Wayback Machine.

Construction Gingerbread

@laurenlily267, ack! Thanks for the catch. 6.25 ounces is 177g, but our style guide has it rounded to the nearest 5; looks like part of the number got gobbled along the way. Fixed now, much appreciated!

Construction Gingerbread

@Creasy Bear, I haven't tried that myself, but so long as the pieces are wrapped very tightly in plastic to protect them from moisture, I think they'd do great long-term. (Heck, we've had the Haunted House standing in the open air for the better part of a month, and it's still doing fine.) The biggest concern is just making sure the pieces don't get smashed in the freezer, so just be sure to give them some space.

Sturdy Royal Icing for Gingerbread Houses

@icecream980, I haven't had a chance to put aquafaba to the test here, but I'm really hopeful it would work in much the same way. I don't think it would be a 1:1 swap due to the differences in viscosity, so I'd try starting out with 3/4 ounce and working your way up from there. If you try it, let us know how it turns out!

Ditch the Kit for a Gingerbread House Good Enough to Eat

@Atomic Walrus, oh yeah! That's a really fun finish for the windows. I went for some low-key gelatin sheets this year, I can't resist their little "panes."

@Rubymae, you betcha, and a video too! Here you go: BraveTart's House of Horror.

BraveTart's House of Horror: How to Make a Super-Spooky Halloween Gingerbread House

@charna, not this year, Serious Eats is in the process of moving to a new office/kitchen space so I won't have a stable "home" to build another house til after the holidays. :( But! The template itself is perfectly suitable for a Christmas centric house, and many of the tips are still applicable. Instead of green and gray luster dust, buy shades of wine /brick reds and golds to give the bricks a warm, inviting hue.

@kimb, it's made from gingerbread dough that's been thinned with a bit of water, and dyed black with gel paste. There's a bit more on that in my earlier post, and the how-to details are in the recipe.

Soft and Chewy Sugar Cookies

@Neofolis, I'm so glad you were able to make the recipe work, but I'm concerned you found the dough to be wet, in my experience it has a very "typical" cookie dough texture, thick and stiff. Textural problems like that often relate to dough temperature; with 60°F butter and a cold egg, the dough should be quite cool and stiff. I'm wondering if there might be any wildcards to your experience, such as baking in the UK where the fat content of butter is higher than it is here in the US.

Love the Latte? Double Up on Autumn Flavor With Pumpkin Spice Muffins

@Rye Bread, I'll see if I can't give it a try this weekend and report back!

@HED, it's such a losing battle. I can always bust out my inner pastry nerd to explain that the techniques are fundamentally different: muffins are mixed straight, essentially everything into the bowl, and cakes are typically creamed, but the sugar loving, Jim Gaffigan quoting muffin crowd is not easily swayed. (Though that bit is really funny.)

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

@anandm, I haven't tried it myself, but I have every reason to trust it would work out a-okay. I think you're right about the streusel; give the loaves a 15 minute head start, then sprinkle away!

@theuselesschef, haha, welcome to the balancing act of texture and flavor! It's tricky, pumpkin itself is so mild, but wet enough to loosen the batter if it replaces too much of the yogurt. I'd start small for your first swap, maybe just an ounce? Another idea would be to scale back the spices just a hair to give the pumpkin flavor more room to shine.

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

@Full Tang, muscle power! ;) If you make another batch, don't hesitate to shave off a few minutes on the baking time; it may be they went a little faster in your oven.

Classic Banana Bread

@Evie, okay, all good on the oat and banana front. I'm wondering if something might be up with the yogurt, though. After looking for La Yogurt online, it seems their Greek style is blended, which indicates thickeners like gelatin rather than traditional straining. I couldn't find an ingredient label online to confirm, but check the package to make sure it doesn't contain any ingredients like that (blended yogurts have a higher moisture content than strained, which would create a thinner batter, producing less rise and a gummier crumb).

If that's not the case, I'll keep at it!

Love the Latte? Double Up on Autumn Flavor With Pumpkin Spice Muffins

@MrsPinecone, the coffee filter's a great idea! Yeah, canned puree is a) not actually made from pumpkin and b) semi-condensed to a standard moisture content, so it's a great idea to drain homemade puree for more comparable results.

@Ananonnie, yes! Anti-cupcake muffins lovers unite! ;)

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

@Nom3x, no special instructions! The suggested mixing times won't be the same, but you can still follow the visual cues.

@Nate. Santos, these are definitely more moist day 2 than my blueberry muffins, but as with any muffin, they're best when fresh.

@Ananonnie, thanks for the full-fat confirmation, hope you like these muffins just as much as the banana bread!

@Enekk, haha, consider toasted sugar the unspoken assumption behind all my recipes. ;) It's great here too, but not as vital because the spices tend to cover up its nuance; at least with lighter shades.