Total Time: 45 minutes
Preparation Time: 0 minutes
Active Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 1 pound fresh pasta
Make Ahead: Pasta can be kept at room temperature for several hours
Difficulty: Intermediate

Fresh pasta is surprisingly easy to make at home. Yes, you will need a hand-cranked pasta machine, but the ingredient list could not be shorter (just eggs and flour) and the results are much better than anything you can buy.

You will be making 1 pound of Fresh Egg Pasta. We will be cutting the pasta into fettuccine that you should use for the Fettuccine Alfredo recipe in this lesson.

While we suggest using a pasta machine to cut fettuccine, you can cut fresh sheets of pasta by hand. Simply fold each sheet crosswise into thirds or quarters. Use a sharp chef’s knife and cut perpendicular to folds to form noodles of desired width. This technique comes in handy when you want to make wider shapes, like pappardelle or tagliatelle.

Here are the guidelines for cutting fresh by hand:

Pappardelle: 3/4 to 1 inch wide
Tagliatelle: 1/4 to 3/8 inch wide
Fettuccine: 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide

• We like Italian-made hand-operated manual pasta machines. We’ve tested the Imperia and Atlas pasta machines—the two major brands in Italy and widely available in cookware shops around the world—and found them equally good.

Total Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Active Cooking Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Yield: 4 to 6 as a first course
Make Ahead: Serve immediately
Difficulty: Intermediate

This elegant dish has become a popular offering on Italian trattoria menus. It features a multitude of flavors—squashy, sweet, savory, buttery, herbal, and nutty—working together to create complexity, and contrasting textures—silky filling and pasta, crunchy nuts—to add interest.

The butternut squash must first be cooked to drive off excess moisture and render it soft and velvety; we use a microwave to expedite and simplify the squash-cooking process. Grated Parmesan cheese in the filling not only adds flavor, it also acts as a binder that holds the filling together.

The browned butter sauce is simple, but very rich. This dish is best served in small portions either as a first course or a pasta course before the main dish.

This recipe uses fresh pasta from the Fresh Pasta recipe. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to make the fresh pasta. You will need a food processor and pasta machine in order to prepare the pasta. To be as efficient as possible, make the pasta dough, prepare the squash filling while the dough rests, then roll out the dough while the squash is in the refrigerator. By the time the dough has been rolled out into thin sheets, the filling will be cool enough to use.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/learn-to-cook/2013/02/4-tips-for-making-homemade-ravioli/

http://www.yumsugar.com/Butternut-Squash-Ravioli-Recipe-28700365

SERVES 12 TO 16

While this recipe takes several hours from start to finish, the actual preparation is simple, and baking and cooling proceed practically unattended. The cheesecake can be made up to a day in advance; leftovers can be refrigerated for up to 4 days, although the crust will become soggy.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Pairing citrus with cream cheese for our best lemon cheesecake recipe required finding the perfect balance of juice, zest, and sugar so that the citrus flavor would be neither too fleeting nor too harsh. Lemon curd on top of the cake gave our lemon cheesecake recipe special pizzazz.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/cooking-science/2013/02/we-prove-it-the-best-way-to-store-lemons/

Serves 10 to 12

Baking the pastry on two stacked baking sheets prevents it from burning on the bottom. Be sure to cool the pastries completely before glazing. If the glaze is too thick to spread smoothly, whisk in an additional tablespoon of milk.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We found that we could streamline this two-dough pastry by making more pie dough than we needed and then turning half of it into the crust and cooking the other half and adding eggs to turn it into choux paste for the “puff” top. The pâte à choux needed lengthy baking to prevent collapse, but by the time it was finished cooking, the pie crust bottom was overbrowned. Stacking two sheet pans slowed browning on the bottom, buying time for the top to finish cooking without burning the bottom. To make this pastry live up to its name, we added an extra egg and some water to help it puff higher. Slitting the sides of the pastry to let the steam out after baking dried out the inside and prevented it from imploding.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/02/secrets-to-danish-puff-pastry/

MAKES 12 BROWNIES

Be sure to use semisweet chocolate and not semisweet chips—the additives in chips will result in a drier, squat brownie. To ensure moist, fudgy brownies it is important not to overbake them. Be sure to check the brownies for doneness several minutes before the specified baking time has elapsed.

This recipe was published in The Best Light Recipe.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We found several ways to lighten our brownie recipe without sacrificing moistness and chocolate flavor. We used a combination of semisweet chocolate and cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate (which is higher in fat and must be used in combination with more sugar and butter). A little espresso powder accentuated the chocolate flavor in our lighter brownie recipe. And we used just 2 tablespoons butter, instead of the usual 8 to 12 tablespoons, along with 1 tablespoon warm water added to the batter to help bloom the cocoa flavor and keep our low-fat brownies moist.

Nutrition information per brownie: 130 cal., 5 g total fat (2.5 g saturated), 25 mg chol., 19 g carbo., 2 g pro., 1 g fiber, 55 mg sodium.

Makes 16 brownies

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave set to 50 percent power. For a truly fudgy consistency, don’t overbake the brownies; as soon as a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with sticky crumbs attached, the brownies are done. If the toothpick emerges with no crumbs, the brownies will be cakey.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Swapping full-fat sour cream for low-fat was an easy—and healthy—substitution that helped us trim a good deal of butter from our Fudgy Low-Fat Brownies recipe. Chocolate syrup added rich flavor with no fat, and cocoa powder blended with bittersweet chocolate boosted the chocolate flavor of our Fudgy Low-Fat Brownies recipe without boosting the fat. Slightly undercooking the brownies ensured they came our fudgy instead of cakey. Traditional brownies have 220 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 7 grams of saturated fat per brownie. Our Fudgy Low-Fat Brownies have 110 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, and 1.5 grams of saturated fat per brownie.

Serves 4 to 6

The combination of rotisserie chicken and store-bought broth gives this soup a rich chicken flavor in minutes.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Store-bought broth proved a good substitute for homemade stock in our Quick Chicken and Dumpling Soup, especially after we added flavorful vegetables and seasonings. Shredding a precooked rotisserie chicken—available at most supermarkets—saved us cooking time as well as cleanup time. Rolled noodle-style dumplings were too labor-intensive for our streamlined stew. Dropped biscuit-style dumplings were easier to make and just as fluffy and soft.

MAKES 64 TRUFFLES

In step 3, letting the chocolate to rest on the counter for 2 hours allows it to “cure”, and contributes to its creamy texture. In step 5, running your knife under hot water and wiping it dry makes cutting the chocolate easier. In addition to the related variations, the truffles can be flavored with 2 tablespoons of your favorite flavored liqueur. We recommend using one of the test kitchen’s favorite baking chocolates, Callebaut Intense Dark L-60-40NV or Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar for this recipe. If giving the truffles as a gift, place each one in a 1 1/2-inch candy cup liner and then place the truffles in a gift box. Keep refrigerated until giving.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
The problem with many homemade truffles is that they have a dry, grainy texture. There are three keys to creating creamy, silky-smooth truffles. First, start with melted chocolate. Melting the chocolate before adding the cream allowed us to stir—rather than whisk—the two together, reducing the incorporation of air that can cause grittiness. Second, add corn syrup and butter. Corn syrup smoothes over the gritty texture of sugar, and butter introduces silkiness. Finally, cooling down the ganache gradually before chilling prevented the formation of grainy crystals.

Makes 12

This recipe is a simple muffin base into which flavorings should be added; see the variations for our favorite flavors.

Our basic muffin recipe can be endlessly varied depending on what you have in your pantry or freezer.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2012/01/no-muffin-left-behind/

Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies

Nutella is a chocolate-hazelnut spread that can be found near the peanut butter in most grocery stores; you will need one 13-ounce jar for this recipe. These cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Instant espresso powder in this recipe for Hazelnut Chewies deepened the chocolate flavor without calling attention to itself. We used the creaming method to mix the dough—beating the fats and sugar together until light and fluffy before adding the liquid ingredients, and finally, the dry ingredients. Creaming ensured the best spread and rise. When we used cold butter, it didn’t mix nearly as well with the sugar as softened butter and, consequently, the cookies turned out flat.