Ever been in a sticky situation? We all have. But probably none as sticky as the Great Molasses Flood, sometimes called the Molasses Massacre, which hit Boston in 1919. The tragedy occurred when over 2 million gallons of molasses stored in a 50-foot tall tank at the Purity Distilling Company burst forth, when the temperature rose from below zero one day to 40 degrees the next. A wall of molasses estimated to be as high as 30 feet swept down Boston's Atlantic Avenue at the rate of 25-35 miles per

What’s the most dangerous cake in the world? Some say wedding cake, but a better answer, I think, is mug cake. A mug cake is a single serving of cake made by quickly stirring up batter in a mug and nuking it in the microwave. It apparently came to widespread public attention in a YouTube video back in 2009. The publisher of the video said she got the recipe in an email, but a year earlier the King Arthur Flour company published a mug cake recipe in its magazine observing that the recipe was

Recently the leader of the choir in a small church learned firsthand how much difference one letter in a word can make when he spotted in the church bulletin this notice: "The choir director invites any members of the congregation who enjoy sinning to join the choir." In the culinary world one letter can also make a big difference. Take, for example, the distinction between macaroon and macaron . Though identical words except for one extra letter "o," the confections they refer to couldn't be

Every culture feeds on the belief that eating certain dishes on New Years Day brings good fortune. Perhaps the Chinese have the most New Years food rituals. They take two weeks to ring in the new year and during that time literally everything eaten is considered auspicious. Having first domesticated the pig the Chinese consider pork to be a lucky food but they are hardly alone in that. The pig is a symbol of good fortune around the world. Perhaps because a family who owns one is guaranteed to

On Christmas Eve not even mice will be stirring, stockings will be carefully hung by chimneys, and children will be snugly nestled in their beds. Moreover, dancing in their heads will be visions of sugar plums. I must've read the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" hundreds of times - I even had to memorize it for a school play when I was in the first grade. And yet, despite all those readings, I never thought much about what sugar plums are, let alone why they were dancing. It turns out, that the

Over seventy-five years ago Irving Berlin wrote what has become the most recorded song of all time: "White Christmas." It’s easy to understand how Berlin, born in a town near Siberia, could feel nostalgic about a winter snowfall. Even those of us who grew up in temperate climates typically long for a white Christmas. I know I do. In my case, however, I am never disappointed. That’s because regardless of the weather I know my Christmas will be a white one, a white chocolate one, that is. Now I

If, like me, you think of Christmas as a time for cookies, you ought to be grateful to the Germans because they invented that custom. German lebkuchen the Cadillac, or should I say the Mercedes Benz of spice cookies, was probably the first cookie traditionally associated with Christmas. Lebkuchen may also very well be the oldest form of cookie know to human kind. The first recorded reference to it appears in an 11th century manuscript at a German monastery, and if that's not old enough for you,

Most of us have an image of the first thanksgiving that we learned in grade school: of the Pilgrims sitting with the Indians at a large table with a white tablecloth celebrating the harvest together over a meal of turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But research shows that the traditional depiction of the first Thanksgiving may not be altogether accurate. In fact, whatever happened at Plymouth 398 years ago, it may not have been the first Thanksgiving at all. There are no less than twelve

Contrary to conventional wisdom, putting together a Thanksgiving Day menu is not particularly challenging. After all, the fundamentals of the holiday meal are hardly open to debate. Sure, you may have a choice in how you’re going to prepare the turkey, but you’re probably going to have turkey. Similarly, cranberries will unquestionably be on the table. And when it comes to dessert, you’ll likely offer some sort of pumpkin treat. No, picking the menu for Thanksgiving is not the hard part. The

Rose Levy Beranbaum, in her book, “The Pie and Pastry Bible,” a volume which I’ve read religiously, says, “There are two kinds of people: cake people and pie people.” All my life I’ve believed I’m in the second category. I even served once as a judge at the National Pie Championships sponsored by the American Pie Council, of which I was a charter member. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve always regarded cake as little more than a delivery system for frosting. Recently, however, I came