Most items bake evenly in the middle of the oven.

When it’s important to brown the bottom of the food—like a fruit pie where the crust can get soggy—the lower rack is required. It puts the pan or baking sheet closer to the heat source, on the bottom of the oven.

Conversely, if you want more browning on the top—a meringue topping, for example—place the pan on the top rack. The meringue will brown without heating the fruit curd underneath.

If you want to bake two cake pans at once, advises Lauren Chattman, author of The Baking Answer Book, two nine-inch pans can be placed side by side. But for even baking, you’ll need to rotate them after the cakes begin to set.

With cookie sheets, you can place one on the bottom and one on the top, rotating them midway. Advises Lauren, “I recommend this only for items like cookies that require a relatively short baking time. With longer-baking items, the risk of burning is greater and not worth the savings on time.”

These directions don’t apply to convection ovens, which have an even circulation of air that avoids hot spots and cold spots of traditional ovens.

Find our favorite cake and cookie recipes.
  

Biscoff spread sweetens a bagel. Photo
courtesy Lotus Bakeries.

Now, a crunchy version is rolling out across the U.S., at Central Market, Cost Plus World Market, The Fresh Market, Market Basket, Schnucks, Shop Rite, Walmart, Wegmans and Winn-Dixie. We even saw a private label brand at Trader Joe’s, called “Cookie Spread.”

Crunchy Biscoff Spread takes the original creamy caramel spread delight and adds chunks of caramelized Biscoff cookies. The combination of creamy and crunchy is even better than the original. Imagine the possibilities:

 
Biscoff Spread Creamy is available at Central Market, Cost Plus World Market, The Fresh Market, Giant Carlisle, Giant Landover, Hannaford, Kroger, Market Basket, Safeway, Schnucks, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Walmart, Wegmans, and Winn-Dixie and others, as well as through Biscoff’s website.

A complete list of retail locations is available at www.biscoff.com.

Or, you can buy it online now.

Find more of our favorite bread spreads: product reviews, recipes and more.

Find it on your grocer’s shelf or online.

Have some dessert tea: with dessert or
instead of it. Photo courtesy TeaForte.com.

Many people enjoy a cup of tea with dessert. But what exactly is dessert tea?

Dessert tea is a relatively new addition to the tea repertoire. It sprouted up with the green tea and white tea push a decade ago. Many non-tea drinkers wanted the antioxidant benefits of tea but didn’t like the taste of plain green and white tea (which don’t taste great with milk and sugar).

So tea blenders started blending green tea, and then white tea, with any number of ingredients that provided flavor and a hint of sweetness: fruits and nuts; butterscotch, caramel and chocolate extracts; flowers (hibiscus, jasmine, rose, saffron); plus cinnamon, mint, vanilla and other flavorings.

At a certain point, one producer saw these nearly-calorie-free flavored teas as appropriate for dessert or as a guilt-free sweet beverage; and “dessert teas” were born.

Flavored Teas Are As Old As “Tea”

Dessert teas are seen as expanding the tea-buying market by appealing to the non-tea-drinker with mass-appeal flavors common in soft drinks and flavored lattes. The concept is not new—only the name and the marketing of the tea for “dessert.”

Since the dawn of man-made fire and vessels, teas were steeped from many barks, berries, leaves and roots. Before tea arrived in Europe in the 17th century (coffee also arrived then, in 1615, along with hot chocolate), this is what was drunk.

Today, “tea” refers specifically to brewed leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, or tea bush. “Herbal tea” is called a tisane in the industry (the word originated with the Greek word ptisane, a drink made from pearl barley).

More about tea.

As the story goes, the Jews had to leave Egypt immediately. They gathered up possessions and livestock but could not wait for the bread dough to rise, resulting in matzo, an unleavened flatbread. Thus, during the week of Passover, no leavened bread is eaten; only matzo (also spelled matzoh, matza and other variations).

So what if you want to celebrate Passover with matzo, but have gluten sensitivities?

Two brands are at the ready:

 
Seder Idea

The Passover seder, the ritual feast celebrated on the first two nights of the holiday, is accompanied from beginning to end by a reading of the Haggadah (“telling”).

This year, participants at our seder are coming as witnesses of the Exodus. Each of us will provide a few minutes of insight into the desires, hopes, frustrations, fears and domestic lives of our characters. Participating will be will be Moses, Pharaoh, a nameless Jewish slave and an Egyptian, along with Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, a first century scholar who appears giving commentary in the Hagadah.

We are going as a baker, faced with feeding the exodus masses without the time to leaven the bread. The result: matzo.

Potatoes are a food known for their versatility, a good staple to have around. They pair well with virtually any protein, from ribeye to halibut, and can be cooked however you like: boiled, braised, fried or roasted.

But beyond their role as a go-anywhere side, these ubiquitous tubers can be made into a dough.

You’re probably familiar with gnocchi, the Italian dumplings whose dough is made up of potatoes and flour. But did you know you that can hold the flour (great for those who want to avoid gluten) and create a dough out of just potatoes?

With a little patience and bit of whatever ingredients you have lying around, you can turn simple boiled potatoes into stuffed potato croquettes, with the crunch of fries, the softness of mashed potatoes and a delicious “surprise.”

How To Make Potato Croquettes

1. Peel the potatoes. Figure that one large russet potato will give you roughly two croquettes. Russets are tried and true for this recipe, but there’s no reason you can’t use whatever potatoes you have lying around (check out the different types of potatoes). Once your potatoes are knife-tender (meaning they are soft enough to stick a knife into with no resistance), run them through a food mill, just as you would if you were going to make mashed potatoes.

2. Put the mashed potato “fluff” back into a pot. Continue to cook for another few minutes at medium heat to eliminate as much moisture as you can. Stir constantly to prevent the potatoes from burning (lower the heat if you begin to see brown), but the more moisture you can take out now, the easier the next step will be.

3. Shape the croquettes. Once you’ve dried out the potato fluff, cool it down just enough so that you can handle it without burning yourself (feel free to use gloves if you have sensitive hands). In the palm of a cupped hand, press about a half cup of potato fluff to form an open pocket roughly a half-inch thick. Gently press 2-3 tablespoons of filling into the pocket, then cover with more fluff. Use both hands to gently form the croquette into as even and round a shape as you can (perfect spheres are not necessary, and oblong or somewhat cylindrical shapes work well). Your finished product should be the size of a large egg.

This technique will probably take a little bit of practice. The key is pressing hard enough to compact the croquette into a stable, solid piece, but not so hard that it cracks or squashes. Pay close attention to how the croquettes behave as you apply pressure, so that you can learn to squeeze them just right. If you ever made snowballs as a child, you’ll have a head start on this process!

It may also help to work on a floured surface (all-purpose flour is ideal, but if you need to go gluten-free you can use rice flour), and use a bit of flour to keep your hands dry, in case there is excess moisture in the potato fluff. Just don’t go overboard and start smothering them in flour.

 
Find more of our favorite potato recipes.

And let us know how you enjoy those croquettes.