extra crispy

How often do you use your cookie cutters? And how many times have you pulled them out after a long gap between batches only to find them covered in rust? Though rust can be removed fairly easily by scrubbing the cutters with steel wool, it's a pain to have to deal with that on top of cookie preparations. What if you can just prevent rust from forming on your precious baking implements to begin with?

Eggshells usually go straight into the trash or the compost bin, but, like garlic skins and potato peels, you don't necessarily have to throw them out. They have a lot of calcium, which means they can be useful for gardening. If you're really deft about breaking your eggs, you could use a shell as a planter.

It’s cold outside.

When pound cake became a thing in the mid 1700s, the recipe was as simple and dense as the name implies: one pound each of butter, eggs, sugar, and flour. Butter is the key ingredient for good pound cake since it can affect the flavor, color, density, and moistness of your cake. Because of its fundamental role, I baked and tasted our own (updated) version of classic pound cake with three different kinds of butter: Amish butter, European butter, and regular American butter.

January is rough. You're coming off the momentum of the holidays and the promise of a blank slate. You’re huffing that heady New Year smell that'll keep you fueled through roughly 8 a.m. on January 3.

Did you spend some of your holidays blissfully watching the contestants of The Great British Baking Show as they attempted creme patisserie or complicated breads? Did you ever wonder what actually happens to the leftovers of those fabulous technical challenges? Do they get boxed up and taken home? Composted? Furtively eaten by Paul Hollywood? How much sponge cake can one man really eat?

Raise your hand if you’ve been in the midst of scooping brown sugar into a batter only to realize the recipe you’re using calls for dark brown sugar. Huh?

Grapefruit, one of the lovely citrus gifts of winter, has so often been associated with austerity and diet culture, probably because of that whole grapefruit diet thing that started way back in the 1930s. But it feels unfair, because grapefruit has so, so much more to give.

I have been doing a lot of roasting lately. Not the traditional holiday things, like beef tenderloin or turkey, but duck. Duck is delicious, and it's a great party trick. And it's relatively easy (as long as you watch out for the duck fat catching on fire) to roast in the oven. Twice over the last two weeks I've made duck a l'orange for family or friends, a delicious dish that made me feel extremely like Julia Child. Twice, discovered what I've always suspected: You mostly don't need a roasting pan.

2018 is nearly at an end. Cleanse it from your memory and start the year anew.