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We are celebrating the season with two special holiday episodes of Pastries with Paola before season two launches in the spring. First up is Paola's holiday showstopper, the Old Fashioned Doughnut Croquembouche. Here, Paola riffs on the croquembouche, a classic French celebration dessert, by swapping out traditional choux pastry for crispy and fluffy old fashioned doughnuts flavored with toasty browned butter and warming cinnamon. This tower of doughnuts is held together with amber caramel and adorned with spun sugar and gold leaf– the perfect finishes for this wow-worthy dessert. Made popular in France in Paris in the late 18th century,...

A Russian woman has died after molten caramel filled a huge tank she had been cleaning in a tragic freak accident. Natalie Nemets, 36, is believed to have been "boiled alive" in the accident, which happened at Slavyanka factory in Stary Oskol, in the Belgorod area of Russia. The mother-of-one was instantly submerged when the hot caramel started gushing into the mixer, with only her legs sticking out. One onlooker said: "She did not cry, no other noise was heard. She was cleaning the mixer when the caramel suddenly began to flow into the bowl. "The caramel was removed from...

I used to have an elderly neighbor who asked me once to make him a Butterscotch Pie for his birthday, and it became an annual tradition. Once, I added a caramel cage, and was surprised at how easy this is to do. Here is a recipe for the caramel, from ‘The Chef In Me’: http://thechefinme.com/decorating-with-caramel-for-adults-only/The following video from Worldwide Culinary Apprentice shows the technique; he makes it on the inside of a small bowl, but when I did it, I used a large bowl and drizzled the caramel on the outside; then I snipped the cage down so that it...

Five people have died and 21 others have been hospitalized in a listeria outbreak linked to caramel apples, federal health officials said today.. A total of 28 people infected with listeria have been reported from 10 states, according to a statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Eleven of the cases are in the Midwest: five in Missouri, four in Minnesota and two in Wisconsin.

Who would have guessed that, with just a tin of evaporated milk, twelves ounces of muscovada sugar and a bit of shortcrust pastry you would be able to transport yourself a few decades back to those days in school when you had no greater concern than working out some excuse for not doing the maths homework and/or worrying about your spots.

Worm Penetrates Football Star's Defenses Star footballer Park Ji-sung suffered an unpleasant surprise on Monday, days before he is due to join the English Premiership club Manchester United, when a worm in the toffee he was chewing caught the usually well prepared midfielder on the wrong foot. Visiting the Korea Football Association, Park was chewing on a Crown Confectionery Peanut Caramel when he spat out a live worm measuring about 1.3 cm. Revolted, Park stormed out of the building. The association’s PR people said the toffee was not past its sell-by date “and since it was delivered just this...