fidzu : blog

Learn AI literacy via Google's latest AI Quests lesson on neuroscience, "Polar Peaks."

26 Oct 2026 4:00pm GMT

We asked 15 college students about their favorite Gemini features for learning, studying, taking notes, and more.

26 Oct 2026 4:00pm GMT

On October 25, Akismet turns 21. We're celebrating with a few new guests: an official Drupal module, a PHP SDK, and another year of improvements to our WordPress plugin. Spam still isn't on the list.

Akismet launched in October 2005 to help people spend less time dealing with comment spam and more time enjoying their blogs. The web has changed a lot since then. People build communities, collect inquiries, accept donations, and create applications on all kinds of platforms. Each of those places gives people a way to contribute. It also gives spammers somewhere to try their luck.

Since then, Akismet has blocked over 570 billion pieces of spam. Every one is something a site owner didn't have to spend time sorting through. Our birthday wish is to keep making more room for the real people.

Welcome, Drupal

This year, we released the official Akismet Drupal module, built by the team behind Akismet. It brings our spam protection to Drupal comments, contact forms, webforms, and user registrations, with tools for moderators to review submissions and send corrections back to Akismet.

We've continued building on that welcome. The latest release supports Drupal 12 and passes richer bot-detection signals into spam scoring. On Drupal 12, comments and registrations are supported now; contact forms, webforms, and the Key module will follow as those modules become ready for Drupal 12.

For people using the older community module, we also built an upgrade path to the official module that carries their API key and protection settings across. The migration guide explains the requirements and which settings need attention.

Welcome, PHP developers

Akismet's API has long made it possible to protect sites beyond WordPress. This year's official PHP SDK gives developers a first-party client for bringing that protection into their own PHP applications, including projects built with Laravel or Symfony.

The SDK handles the Akismet API integration so developers can focus on their application. It supports checking submissions, reporting spam and legitimate content, and retrieving usage and account information. The official Drupal module uses it too.

If you're building a place where people can post, sign up, or send a message, there's a new tool to help you keep the spam out.

A familiar guest, with a few improvements

WordPress has been with us from the beginning. This year, we kept improving that experience: clearer setup and error messages, accessibility improvements, better detection of automated submissions, and compatibility fixes. You can find the details in the WordPress plugin release log.

Version 5.7 also added support for Abilities and Connectors, helping Akismet fit into WordPress's evolving tools for integrating external services.

More room for real people

A comment worth replying to. A message from a future customer. A donation to a cause someone cares about. Those are the things we want coming through.

Thank you to everyone who uses Akismet, builds an integration, reports a problem, or helps us improve. You've been part of these 21 years, and you're very much invited to the celebration.

Whether your site runs on WordPress, Drupal, or something you're building yourself with the PHP SDK, there's room at the table.

Just no room for spam.

Try out the Drupal module today!

26 Oct 2026 3:16pm GMT

Google spent the past three years collaborating with Ignite Energy Access through our Startups for Sustainable Development program.

26 Oct 2026 3:00pm GMT

As AI revolutionizes cybersecurity, organizations struggle with rapid vulnerability detection versus slow human remediation. Balancing efficiency and accountability is crucial, as maintaining human oversight prevents potentially catastrophic errors.

26 Oct 2026 11:35am GMT

Howdy,

Before anything else: check which version of PHP your sites run. On October 21, the PHP project released fixes for two critical vulnerabilities, and they affect any server running a PHP application, not only WordPress. You'll find your version under Tools → Site Health → Info → Server in your WordPress admin. If you manage your own server and are still on a version older than 8.2, I highly recommend updating. While many hosts have patched older PHP versions that are end of life, it's best to stay on versions that PHP officially supports.

On a happier note, I'm back. I was sick for a stretch earlier this month, which is why there was no edition on October 10. Rather than try to cram four weeks into one post, this edition sticks to the last two. Much of what happened in the gap is covered in my October roundup for developers, linked below.

With that, let's get down to the latest news.

Your friendly neighborhood developer advocate,
Justin Tadlock

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

The final major release of the year has entered testing. David Baumwald announced that WordPress 7.2 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing, with the final release set for December 8. Notes move into a margin beside the canvas and pick up emoji reactions. Text shadows and form element styling arrive in the design tools, a new Secrets API gives plugins a standard place to store API keys, and client-side media processing extends to the Media Library. There's even an On This Day dashboard widget. Not everything made it, though: The Repository reports that Notes suggestion mode was punted to 7.3.

The quickest way to try it is the 7.2 Beta 1 Playground instance, or wp core update --version=7.2-beta1 on a test site. Not on production.

Not sure where to start? Noruzzaman's Help Test WordPress 7.2 breaks the release down by area: security, collaboration, admin, blocks and APIs, design, media. It also walks through the different ways to run a beta, from Playground to a staging site on your host, and points you to where feedback goes. The Beta 1 post is clear that testing counts as contributing, whether or not you've done it before.

Your first contribution to WordPress shouldn't start with installing Git, Node.js, npm, and Docker. That's the friction the WordPress Contributor Toolkit removes, and Ryan Welcher announced Contributor Toolkit 2.0, a redesigned app in your language. It's rebuilt on the WordPress Design System, ships in ten languages, and adds a settings dialog. After you apply a patch, you can revert a single file without losing the patch itself. It's also about 350 MB smaller, which helps when a whole Contributor Day room downloads it at once.

Jorge Costa shared what's new in Gutenberg 24.2, and the Notes feature is the big headline. Notes now float in a margin the editor reserves next to the canvas, so you no longer have to choose between reading feedback and keeping the Settings sidebar open.

The Navigation block's link search now looks through pages, posts, categories, and tags at once. Gallery can sort hand-picked images and tint all of them with a single duotone. And the design tools push continues with about 80 more PRs. Minimum width and height controls, for example, went from five blocks to 40.

For developers, React 19 is now on by default. Test your plugins and themes, and if something breaks, you can switch it off under Gutenberg → Experiments. Gutenberg 24.3 RC1 is already out, too, with rich text formatting across blocks, so expect that next week.

On the Developer Blog, I put together What's new for developers? (October 2026), and I tried something different this month. Instead of walking through every aspect of the project, it focuses on the changes I think matter most if you build on WordPress: custom blocks building their own responsive controls, wp_kses() being rebuilt on the HTML API, stroke-based Core icons, and the automated security review for plugin releases. Everything else is linked at the end.

Readers may remember Chris Zarate's post on moving collaboration to the server from the last edition. Alec Geatches follows it up with a guide to the sync engines for real-time collaboration, comparing yjs-server, DE-RTC, and intent-log on their strengths and weaknesses. In every engine, each change goes through WordPress, which confirms who sent it, checks their permissions, and validates it before merging. You can try all three in the experimental Gutenberg Sync Engines plugin. It needs WordPress 7.0+ and the Presence API plugin, and it bundles its own copy of Gutenberg, so deactivate the Gutenberg plugin first.

Feature Notifications has been quiet since version 0.2.0 shipped in April 2023. Jonathan Bossenger is reviving it with a status update and plan for 0.3.0, aiming to ship it with WordPress. That would be the project's first working MVP: a notifications system that creates, stores, displays, and dismisses notifications. His honest assessment is that the foundations are solid but nothing is wired up end to end yet. He's posting weekly updates if you want to follow along or help.

Benjamin Zekavica published the recap of the WordPress 7.1 "Mary Lou" retrospective, summarizing what contributors would keep, add, and change for future release squads. If you answered the survey, this is where your feedback landed.

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Sticky headers are one of those things you end up fixing on nearly every block theme site. Jamie Marsland turned his fix into a free plugin, Jamie's Header Effects.

The standout is Chameleon mode: as visitors scroll, the header picks up the background color of the section beneath it and flips its text between light and dark to stay readable. There are also frosted-glass, solid, hide-on-scroll, and transparent overlay styles. It finds your header template part on its own, respects prefers-reduced-motion, and lives under Appearance → Header Effects.

Meta Box's custom models no longer have to sit in isolation. A few weeks after moving model creation into the builder, Lua Nguyen announced the new Custom Model field, which lets you pick one or more items from a custom model the same way the Post field picks posts. MB Relationships also gains a Model object type, so you can connect models to posts, terms, users, or other models in either direction. Think hotel rooms as a post type with bookings attached from a custom model-no IDs stored by hand.

On WordPress.com, Ronnie Burt covers what's new with WordPress Agent: it now designs a custom theme from your answers, hands you off to a simplified AI Editor with Preview and Edit tabs, and can install and manage plugins when you ask. The latest WordPress.com changelog also opens premium themes to every paid plan, starting with Personal.

WooCommerce 11.2.1 fixes two regressions: classic checkout on stores that remove address fields with filters, and postcode validation in the Checkout block for Argentina and a few other countries.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

If you've ever had to explain to a client why they should move to a block theme, Simon Cooke has done the work for you. His Human Made guide on how a WordPress block theme is built, and why it matters for enterprise sites walks through each part of a block theme and who owns it, with a side-by-side comparison to classic themes. He's clear that moving is a project, not a theme swap. The point he lands on: when design rules live in the theme, a page built by someone who joined last week follows the same rules as one the designer built.

What if you could point a tool at any static HTML and CSS site and get an editable block theme back, headers and footers included? That's the Static Site Importer, and Chris Huber of Automattic talks it through with Nathan Wrigley on WP Tavern in episode #238 on making migration to WordPress easier than ever. You'll hear how it crawls a site, maps HTML elements to blocks, and handles trickier features like WooCommerce, plus how it fits into the broader Data Liberation effort.

WooCommerce's Purple theme has a new home. Luigi Teschio announced that Purple development moves to the WooCommerce monorepo, as the first theme in its new themes/ directory, so contributions and bug reports go there now. One of the stated reasons is that keeping themes next to the blocks they use makes it easier for contributors, and AI coding tools, to see how templates and patterns use WooCommerce blocks. Nothing changes for existing installs, and Purple still releases on its own schedule. For more background, Bob Dunn's Do the Woo episode on WooCommerce themes in 2026 covers Purple and theme performance.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

The new @wordpress/ui package will gradually replace @wordpress/components, so how much of an existing plugin can you move over today? Ryan Welcher found out live by migrating Advanced Query Loop to @wordpress/ui with the Design System MCP.

Once your page registers WebMCP tools, those tool definitions are an API, and the consumer is a language model. Pascal Birchler built playwright-webmcp for testing WebMCP tool surfaces, with linting, Playwright matchers, agent evals, and a site audit CLI. He lists the failure modes that make this tricky: vague descriptions the model ignores, schemas the browser quietly rejects, and two tools on the same page with nearly identical names.

Extension developers no longer need to duplicate a WooCommerce ability just to expose a few extra fields. Luis Felipe Zaguini opened a call for testing extensible abilities for extension fields, an experimental API in WooCommerce 11.3. Extensions can add fields to product, order, and order item reads and writes, register query filters, and refuse a change with a validator before it saves. It's off by default, so turn on Extensible abilities under WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced → Features to try it. The gift wrap example in the post is a good place to start.

What's new in Playground?

The best way to find out what's hard about site editing is to watch someone try it. Jamie Marsland built a user testing app for WordPress on Playground and Spacefast to do exactly that. You send a tester a link, and Playground spins up a fresh site in their browser from your existing demo blueprint, with a card of five to seven tasks in the corner. The results page shows how long each task took, who needed the hint, and whether the site actually changed. It's also an MCP server, and it'll flag a task that gives away the button name.

AI in WordPress

Two weeks after the MCP Adapter arrived on WordPress.org as a canonical plugin, the AI team got approval to make MCP a default part of WordPress. Rae Morey reports on the move to make MCP a default part of WordPress, with 7.3 floated as a target. That doesn't necessarily mean merging the adapter into Core: bundling it, enabling it through existing interfaces, and building specific capabilities into Core are all on the table. It's also a reversal of the reasoning behind the canonical plugin, and maintainers are asking what changed. The AI contributor summary for October 21 has the meeting's side of the discussion.

Andy Peatling launched WordPress Agent Benchmarks to measure how AI agents handle WordPress, and Rae Morey walks through the first results. Across 193 sites built for requests that suited WordPress, agents chose it zero times, even though they named it as an option about half the time. Using the MCP Adapter alone, they completed no tasks on existing sites, largely because it doesn't yet bundle the abilities for common operations. Brian Coords asks what WordPress would have to change in helping agents choose WordPress, drawing on a WP Minute panel with Andy.

Is the MCP Adapter safe? Brad Williams of WebDevStudios calls it a door: "You decide which rooms it opens into." He explains why production use of the MCP Adapter is a governance decision, not a plugin decision. An agent gets whatever abilities are exposed, using the permissions of the user it connects as, and every plugin you install can add more. His advice is to write the agent's job description before you hand over the keys.

If you connect an AI client to WooCommerce, this one needs action before you upgrade. Darren Ethier explains that WooCommerce 11.3 removes its deprecated MCP endpoint. Requests to /wp-json/woocommerce/mcp will return a 410. Install the MCP Adapter, create an application password for a user with only the capabilities the client needs, and point the client at the adapter's default server. Extensions that hooked into the old endpoint's filters should check the post's full list of what's been removed.

WPShout's guide on how to connect Claude to WordPress opens with the question most guides skip: where your site is hosted decides which route you take. WordPress.com, Jetpack, and other self-hosted sites each get their own path, and the walkthrough uses a free MCP plugin with a least-privilege grant. It's also candid about a gap: the WordPress MCP Adapter has no OAuth server of its own, so claude.ai's sign-in can't connect to it directly yet.

Post revisions spent years bloating databases. Human Made thinks they're about to become valuable. In WordPress revisions: agentic gold?, Noel argues that every revision records what changed, who changed it, and when, which makes them a log of how your team really works. Mine them for repeated changes and you've found the workflows an agent could take over. The post includes a prompt you can run, on a copy of your database and never on production.

	Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg's master branch? Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience.

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don't hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com

24 Oct 2026 4:18pm GMT

Un réseau multimarque réunit sous un même toit plusieurs constructeurs, du neuf comme de l'occasion, pour simplifier la comparaison et l'achat de votre futur véhicule. Choisir une voiture relève rarement d'une décision simple. Entre les motorisations qui se multiplient, les prix qui varient selon le segment et les budgets qui doivent rester maîtrisés, l'acheteur a [...]

L'article Réseau de concessions multimarques : comment bien choisir son véhicule ? est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

22 Oct 2026 2:25pm GMT

Quelles enseignes vendent des jeux de société pas chers ? Comparez les prix par magasin et type de jeu pour acheter sans dépasser votre budget.

L'article Quelles enseignes proposent des jeux de société pas chers ? est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

22 Oct 2026 9:06am GMT

Céline Dion souffre du syndrome de la personne raide. Symptômes, diagnostic, traitements : comprendre cette maladie neurologique rare.

L'article Syndrome de la personne raide : comprendre la maladie de Céline Dion est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

19 Oct 2026 5:18am GMT

Much as I love pasta, I'm not sure it loves me. Last year my carb-heavy comfort food diet led to some weight gain so I looked into low carb pasta as an alternative. There's a lot out there and I'm still trying different brands and styles, but I thought now would be a good time to share what I've learned so far.

Pasta with Butternut Squash and Brussels Sprouts

My introduction to legume and bean-based pasta was thanks to Barilla. I was lucky because I got to attend a webinar with Barilla's incredible chef, Lorenzo Boni. I tried his recipe for pasta with butternut squash and Brussels sprouts which I definitely recommend and have now made several times. If you've seen his wildly popular (150k+ followers!) Instagram feed you know he's a master at making all kinds of pasta dishes and that he often eats plant-based meals. I followed up with him to get some tips on cooking with pasta made from beans and legumes.

Pasta made with beans and legumes is higher in protein and so the recommended 2-ounce portion is surprisingly filling. But the texture isn't always the same as traditional semolina or durum wheat pasta. Chef Boni told me, "The nature of legume pasta makes it soak up more moisture than traditional semolina pasta, so you always want to reserve a bit of cooking water to adjust if needed." But when it comes to cooking, he says that with Barilla legume pasta you cook it the same way as semolina pasta. "Boil in salted water for the duration noted on the box and you'll have perfectly al dente pasta." They are all gluten-free.

Chickpea pasta

When I asked Chef Boni about pairing chickpea pastas with sauce he said, "Generally speaking, I prefer olive oil based sauces rich with vegetables, aromatic herbs and spices. Seafood also pairs well with chickpea options. If used with creamy or tomato-based sauces, keep in mind to always have some pasta water handy to adjust the dish in case it gets too dry." He added, "One of my favorite ways to prepare a legume pasta dish would be a simple chickpea rotini with shrimp, diced zucchini and fresh basil. The sauce is light enough to highlight the flavor of the pasta itself, while the natural sweetness helps keep the overall flavor profile more appealing to everyone." I like the Barilla brand because the only ingredient is chickpeas. Banza makes a popular line of chickpea pasta as well although they include pea starch, tapioca and xanthan gum.

Edamame pasta

I tried two different brands of edamame pasta, Seapoint Farms and Explore Cuisine. The Seapoint pasta has a rougher texture than the Explore. With the Seapoint I found the best pairings were earthy chunky toppings like toasted walnuts and sautéed mushrooms. The Explore Cuisine edamame & spirulina pasta is smoother and more delicate, and worked well with an Asian style peanut sauce. I was happy with the Seapoint brand, but would definitely choose the Explore brand instead if it's available.

Red lentil pasta

Red lentil pasta is most similar to semolina pasta. Barilla makes red lentil pasta in a variety of shapes. But for spaghetti, Chef Boni says, "Barilla red lentil spaghetti is pretty flexible and works well with pretty much everything. I love red lentil spaghetti with light olive oil based sauces with aromatic herbs and some small diced vegetables. It also works well with a lean meat protein." I have to admit, I have yet to try red lentil pasta, but I'm excited to try it after hearing how similar it is to semolina pasta. It is made only with red lentil flour, that's it. It's available in spaghetti, penne and rotini.

Penne for Your Thoughts

Do you remember seeing photos from Italian supermarkets where the shelves with pasta were barren except for penne? I too seem to end up with boxes of penne or rotini and not a clue what to do with them so I asked Chef Boni his thoughts on the subject. He told me, "Shortcuts such as rotini and penne pair very well with all kind of ragouts as well as tomato based and chunky vegetarian sauces. One of my favorite ways to prepare a legume pasta dish would be a simple chickpea rotini with shrimp, diced zucchini and fresh basil. The sauce is light enough to highlight the flavor of the pasta itself, while the natural sweetness helps keep the overall flavor profile more appealing to everyone." Thanks chef! When zucchini is in season I know what I will try!

15 Feb 2022 6:46pm GMT

Julia is a new film based on Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz and inspired by My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme and The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme. Julia Child died in 2004, and yet our appetite for all things Julia hasn't waned.

I grew up watching Julia Child on TV and learning to cook the French classics from her books, And while I never trained to be a chef, like Child I also transitioned into a career focused on food, a subject I have always found endlessly fascinating. I enjoyed the new film very much and while it didn't break much new ground, it did add a layer of perspective that can only come with time. In particular, how Julia Child became a ubiquitous pop culture figure is addressed in a fresh way.

I reached out to the filmmakers,Julie Cohen and Betsy West to find out more about what inspired them and why Julia Child still holds our attention.

Julia Child died over 15 years ago and has been off TV for decades. Why do you believe we continue to be so fascinated by her?

In some ways Julia is the Godmother of modern American cooking - and eating. Her spirit looms over cooking segments on the morning shows, The Food Network, and all those overhead Instagram shots the current generation loves to take of restaurant meals. Beyond that, though, Julia's bigger than life personality and unstoppable joie de vivre are infectious. People couldn't get enough of her while she was living, and they still can't now.

There have been so many Julia Child films and documentaries, what inspired this one?

Well there'd been some great programs about Julia but this is the first feature length theatrical doc. Like everyone else, we adored Julie & Julia, but a documentary gives you a special opportunity to tell a person's story in their own words and with the authentic images. This is particularly true of Julia, who was truly one of a kind.

The impact of Julia Child how she was a groundbreaker really comes across in the film, are we understanding her in a different light as time passes?

People understand that Julia was a talented television entertainer, but outside the professional food world, there's been an under-recognition of just how much she changed the 20th century food landscape. As Jose Andres points out in the film, almost every serious food professional has a sauce-splashed copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" on their shelves. We also felt Julia's role in opening up new possibilities for women on television deserved more exploration. In the early 1960's the idea of a woman on TV who was neither a housewife nor a sex bomb but a mature, tall, confident expert was downright radical. She paved the way for many women who followed.

The food shots add an extra element to the film and entice viewers in a very visceral way, how did those interstitials come to be part of the film?

We knew from the start that we wanted to make food a major part of this story, not an afterthought. We worked with cook and food stylist Susan Spungen to determine which authentic Julia recipes could be integrated with which story beats to become part of the film's aesthetic and its plot. For instance the sole meunière is a key part of the story because it sparked her obsession with French food, and the pear and almond tart provides an enticing metaphor for the sensual side of Julia and Paul's early married years.

Note: Susan Spungen was also the food stylist for Julie & Julia

Julia is in theaters now.

23 Nov 2021 11:30pm GMT

I met Rick Rodgers early in my career as a recipe developer and food writer when we were both contributors to the Epicurious blog. Not only is he a lot of fun to hang out with, but he has also been incredibly helpful to me and is usually the first person I call when I'm floundering with a project, client, or cooking quandary. His interpersonal skills, business experience, and cooking acumen explain why he's been recognized as one of the top cooking instructors in America. Literally.

You built a career as a cooking instructor and cookbook author. How many cookbooks have you written?

I was asked recently to make an official count, and It looks like an even hundred. Many of those were collaborations with chefs, restaurants, celebrities, bakeries, and business entities, such as Tommy Bahama, Williams-Sonoma, and Nordstrom. I made it known that I was available for collaboration work, and my phone literally rang off the hook for quite a few years with editors and agents looking for help with novice writers or those that wanted a branded book.

Which cookbook(s) are you most proud of?

There are three books that I get fan mail for almost every day: Kaffeehaus (where I explore the desserts of my Austrian heritage), Thanksgiving 101 (a deep dive into America's most food-centric holiday and how to pull it off), and Ready and Waiting (which was one of the first books to take a "gourmet" approach to the slow cooker). These books have been in print for 20 years or more, which is a beautiful testament to their usefulness to home cooks.

How did you get started as a cooking instructor and what are some highlights of your teaching career?

I was a theater major at San Francisco State College (now University), so getting in front of a crowd held no terrors for me. When more brick-and-mortar cooking schools opened in the eighties, I was ready for prime time. During that period, there were at least twelve cooking schools in the Bay Area, so I made quarterly trips here a year from the east coast, where I had moved. My Thanksgiving classes were so popular that I taught every day from November 1 to Thanksgiving, with a couple of days off for laundry and travel. The absolute pinnacle of my teaching career was being named Outstanding Culinary Instructor of The Year by Bon Appétit Magazine's Food and Entertaining Awards, an honor that I share with only a handful of other recipients, including Rick Bayless and Bobby Flay.

Flódni

How have cooking classes changed since you started?

Because there are so many classes available, I can teach at any level of experience. At the cooking schools, we tended to walk a fine line between too difficult and too easy. The exposure to different cuisines and skill levels on TV also has seriously raised the bar. Unfortunately, students want to walk before they can run. They want to learn how to make croissants when I doubt that they can bake a pound cake correctly. It is best to build on your skills instead of going right to the top. That being said, in my online classes, I am concentrating on the more challenging recipes because that is what the market demands of me.

Tell me about your baking school, coffeeandcake.org

As much as I loved my cookbooks and in-person classes, I knew there was a more modern way to reach people who wanted to cook with me, especially since so many cooking schools had closed. I retired the day I got my first Social Security check. But…as I was warned by my friends who knew me better than I did…I was bored, and wanted a new project. I heard about online classes through other teachers who were having success. I found an online course specifically for cooking classes (Cooking Class Business School at HiddenRhythm.com), got the nuts and bolts down, and I finally entered the 21st century!

How do you decide which recipes to teach?

I felt there were plenty of other places to learn how to make chocolate chip cookies and banana bread-just take a look on YouTube alone. I had a specialty of Austro-Hungarian baking thanks to my Kaffeehaus book, so I decided to niche into that category. I have branched out to a few other locations, but my goal is to expose students to something new and out of the ordinary. I also survey my students on what they would like me to teach, and those answers are amazing. People are truly interested in the more difficult desserts. Perhaps it is because so many people discovered baking as a hobby during the pandemic?

For students who have your cookbooks, what are the advantages of taking an online class?

There is no substitute for seeing a cook in action. Plus you get to answer questions during class. In a recent class, I made six-layer Dobos Torte in two hours' real-time to prove that you can do it without giving up a week of your life. And we don't have to travel to each other to be "together." My classes are videotaped so you can watch them at your convenience.

What are some highlights of your upcoming schedule of classes?

Honey cake

In October, I am teaching virtually all Hungarian desserts, things that will be new to most people. I am making one of my absolute favorites, Flódni, which is a Jewish bar cookie (almost a cake) with layers of apple, poppy seeds, and walnuts between thin sheets of wine-flavored cookie dough. San Franciscans in particular will be happy to see a master class that I am teaching with the delightful Michelle Polzine, owner of the late and lamented 20th Century Cafe and author of Baking at the 20th Century Cafe. We will be making her (in)famous 12-layer honey cake on two coasts, with me doing the heavy lifting in New Jersey and Michelle guiding me from the west coast. That is going to be fun! In November and December, I am switching over to holiday baking and a few savory recipes for Thanksgiving, including my fail-proof turkey and gravy, which I have made over 300 times in classes over 30 years' worth of teaching. It ought to be perfect by now

Head to Coffee and Cake to sign up for classes or learn more.

05 Oct 2021 3:56pm GMT

03 Dec 2014 8:12pm GMT

16 Jul 2014 6:08pm GMT

Après presque un mois et demi d'absence, deux bouclages d'albums et plein de projets, je trouve enfin le
temps de poster quelque chose sur ce blog ! Ces jours-ci, je vais avoir pas mal de choses à vous montrer !
On commence tranquille avec un petit dessin aux couleurs estivales.

14 Jul 2014 4:25pm GMT