The Aeropress is one of the best things to ever happen to coffee. This $25 device is capable of producing an espresso-like brew that rivals even the best espresso machine, and it does so in a fraction of the time and effort. When I woke up this morning in need of some coffee, I knew that it would be the perfect thing to use for my first “Tools and Gadgets” post.

Casting sugar is used mostly to make bases and supports for showpieces, but it can also be a quick way to form custom shapes. Once you learn the technique, you’ll look at everything with new eyes, wondering what would happen if you poured sugar into it.

Before I start showing any sugar work techniques, I want to give you an idea of what equipment I use and how I set it up. However, keep in mind that you don’t need all of this stuff to get started in the wonderful world of sugar. It all depends on what you want to do, and there are low-cost alternatives to some of the more expensive items.

We’ve had a Cuisinart food processor for years, and I’ve been using the standard blade for making pie dough for quite awhile with fairly decent results (I usually make an all-butter, 50% whole wheat dough, so it just can’t compete for texture with lard/shortening all-white-flour crusts). For some reason, we never really paid much [...]

Isn’t she beautiful/he gorgeous/it fantastic? I struggled quite mightily to bring it out into the world. Cooking.com must be obsessed with boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes, which become very difficult to part when they’re huge and wedged together by packing peanuts. But I can’t really complain, since so far it seems to have weathered shipping without any harm done.