alanamoana

hey randy! nice doggie... it was a bit vague regarding using a whisk or a spatula. i get the feeling that ganaches which used more liquid ingredients (ratio of liquid to chocolate with liquid being greater), that a whisk was a better tool to maintain emulsion. of course, he made sure to mention after making each ganache that "we must not mix more than necessary". so regardless of which tool you choose, don't overmix and definitely, when using a whisk, don't aerate your ganache or you will reduce shelf life. glad to see you posting!

or even cheaper, while you're practicing your technique, you can use disposable piping bags.

There is also Swiss meringue buttercream which doesn't require a thermometer and which is very easy to produce. First, in your mixing bowl, whisk whites with sugar over a simmering water bath until the mixture is hot to the touch (you're heating to pasteurize the whites and to dissolve the sugar). Place on mixer with whisk and whisk until cool. Add butter and whisk until silky smooth looking (make sure butter is softened, but not melted). If your room is cook and the butter isn't soft enough, just use a torch on the outside of the bowl to warm up a bit (or a hot towel, or a hairdryer..you get the idea). Add your flavoring and whisk in until combined and you're ready to go! Remember that with any kind of buttercream, after it has had a chance to sit (either in or out of the fridge), it is necessary to reconstitute it on the mixer (usually using the paddle attachment) often with the torch as well. Good luck.

these recipes are sort of like very lightly baked ganaches. the omission of whites is probably a textural consideration. while the yolks offer toughening (setting up of the batter), they are mostly fat and emulsifiers which would give a very nice mouthfeel to the finished product. egg whites are nonfat and mostly protein which helps set baked goods as well, but gives a different texture to the final product.

for $2 you can't lose, but i have an aerolatte and it doesn't work nearly as well as the french press. it barely foams at all...but maybe it is because i'm not trying with cold milk first.

Has anyone successfully baked cheesecake in a convection oven with a very strong fan that can't be turned off? Any suggestions? ← could you tent the cakes with foil or a lid or something until they set up? ← Monday was my first time using this oven. I covered the cheesecakes with foil and placed them in a waterbath in the oven at 300 degrees. I had to refill the water twice during a 1 1/2 hour cooking time. At the very end of the cooking time a couple of them ran out of water again and souffled up to stick to the foil and were completely ruined. Out of 12 cheesecakes, only 4 came out usable. I think I caught them at exactly the right moment. Another 4 were underdone in the center, even after chilling overnight. ← did you put the foil just over the cheesecakes or over the entire waterbath with the cheesecakes inside of it (like you'd do for creme brulee)? if you follow the latter method, the water can't evaporate and your cheesecakes are less likely to overbake. don't know how it affects the texture as you're partially steaming, but it probably works okay in convection. remember that convection ovens tend to run hotter/cook faster because of the fan circulating the heat. i usually turn mine down by 25 degrees compared to a still oven. so i'd bake cheesecake at 275 in a convection.

can i ask who supplies you with the beeswax? is there someone in sf who carries it? oh and congrats on your promotion!

sugarseattle, this sounds like a really great alternative. you then will have time to make some money and find a location which really suits your needs better. good luck with your business!

i too, took a look at the demo list, and it looks like you might get more out of the hands-off demos than the hands-on demos. i just feel like the more people you come in contact with, the better off you are. especially since you attended last year as well. i'd love to go...just have to invest in more lottery tickets

with all the labor expended making these, i wonder if it ends up being cheaper to just buy the already made ones? i know they're pretty expensive and you can't control the type of chocolate used to make them, but which method ends up being more cost effective? purchased, already made truffle shells with unknown chocolate? or handmade truffle shells with your high end chocolate? i'm not questioning anyone's desire to know how to make these...this is more asking the opinion of the members of the board.

The Team U.S.A. finals are being held in Chicago at the FPS The world finals are in Paris click around on the website that gap linked to in the opening post to get more information

If you have Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", he recommends the following: 1) Use a French press 2) Very cold skim milk 3) Vigorous pumping for about 20 seconds 4) Heat for about 30 seconds to set the protein in the milk and keep the foam stable So, if you already have a French press, I would recommend not buying another gadget. My husband has been doing this for the past two weeks and LOVES it. You end up with a really dense and creamy microfoam that is perfectly stable. Read the science on it, it is so interesting.

Thanks for the report, these reviews of Alexander's intrigue me. I like the non-typical (for a steakhouse) appetizers and side dishes on offer and it sounds like they have some interesting desserts, despite the hit and miss experience of alanamoana in this regard. Any more details on the rootbeer dessert, ghost? We were just discussing some root beer desserts on this thread started by gfron1. Not ultra original perhaps, but I was thinking I would like a parfait-type dessert with layers of rootbeer granita and vanilla ice cream... ← not to hijack the thread, but about ten years ago, aqua in sf used to do a rootbeer float that was very hip and new back then. probably still on the menu as it was sort of a signature item...even though george morrone is long gone and michael mina is all too concerned with vegas and new ventures!

Has anyone successfully baked cheesecake in a convection oven with a very strong fan that can't be turned off? Any suggestions? ← could you tent the cakes with foil or a lid or something until they set up?

keep posting tammy! we're reading!

In restaurants, whenever we use vanilla beans in recipes like creme brulee or ice cream, we split and scrape the seeds out of the pods and throw everything into the liquid to infuse. After infusion, we save the pods, rinse them off and dry them out. Then we put the pods in sugar. After the sugar has infused for a while and there's a nice collection of pods inside, we put the whole shebang in the food processor and then sift out big chunks (if any are left) of pods. Voila! Vanilla sugar. Other uses for used, dried pods: vanilla extract (still makes a great, very vanilla-y extract) put into syrup when candying citrus zest to impart some vanilla flavor put into alcohol and rehydrated dried fruit for soaking (damned good fruit cake) etc. etc. So, not to hijack your thread, but you don't even necessarily need spankin' new pods to make vanilla extract. Of course, it will speed up the process if you have full strength beans which are split and scraped but vanilla is pretty powerful stuff. Also, vanilla, like other commodities fluctuates greatly in price based not only on quality but on where and how it is grown as well as what the harvest was like (affected by weather, etc.). We used to buy Tahitian vanilla beans which cost the restaurant +/- $250/lb. But from what I understand, the price has come down quite a bit as of the past year or so. Great topic! I hope to see some great results from everyone.

David, As this is the first stop on a bachelorette 'crawl', I would really make an effort to find out how much they want to learn and how much they want to play. We do team building events at my job all the time and most of the participants spend their time drinking wine and NOT cooking! I like what JFLinLa said about doing a tasting. I might not even bother demonstrating tempering. You can just have them scoop ganache to make truffles (gananche that you've already made) and they can coat them in untempered chocolate which will be tossed directly into cocoa, croquant or jimmies. That way, they get messy, play with chocolate and get to eat some. Then you can send them off with a gift of your handmade chocolates, nicely packaged with a business card! All the while, you can talk about tempering or whatever and give them pointers. But as you said, not only should you show them things that they would be able to do at home (simple equipment) but you should show them things they can do without having to know how to temper. But it all does depend on what they want to learn and how skilled they are.

just as a quick aside, it would seem that crushed red pepper would make a dish hotter than the whole dried peppers because the seeds are exposed...which is where the capsaicin is in higher concentration, right? i've just noticed that when i get chinese takeout which uses the whole dried peppers, there can be more pepper than meat in the dish and it isn't hot at all...of course, my mom is from szechuan so maybe my genetics make me immune

I hope you meant 'Swiss Confiseur!' ← agggghhh! i mean, some of the recipes ARE crap...

rather expensive (but what good book isn't?) Richemont Craft School: 'Swiss Confiseur' -a bit old school and assumes quite a bit of knowledge as it is mostly just formulas with a tiny bit of theory. the good thing is, with each formula, there's a photograph of each candy showing how it should look when completed. i like pictures. edited to change: Swill to Swiss!!!

sounds to me like what you are attempting is probably a bit too intense, especially for lemon. if candying is too sweet/involved/cloying, i have to agree with miladyinsanity and would opt for something like a pate de fruit. another option is taking the peel, pureeing it and sweetening it a touch with some sugar and creating a gelee or agar with the juice and adding the pureed peel back in for texture. if you use the right amount of agar or gelatin, you should be able to cube it up very nicely. you can control the sweetness better in this manner than with a pate de fruit which would require too much sugar to set the pectin. you can also control the flavor by using different sugars, remember to use a pinch of salt to balance things out and probably some vanilla bean would be nice to round out the flavor too. of course, you can go all molecular as well

Hi Serj! Welcome to Baking and Pastry (the forum and the life )! I have advice and assumptions...take them both with a grain, at least, of salt: This woman is only an acquaintance, correct? It seems to me she has approached you because she thinks she will be getting a deal, price wise, on your work. She figures, "Well, he's still in school, so he'd jump at the chance to make my daughter's wedding cake for practice...and I won't have to pay too much because he's a novice! He's going to FPS, which is very reputable, so I won't look too cheap." That's the assumption, albeit a bit negative, I'm making. Now here's the advice: Ask her to wait, at least until you get through school, to see if you'll feel comfortable with your skill level at that time to attempt a wedding cake. I don't think people really realize how difficult it can be to properly plan and assemble a wedding cake. There's a play-by-play here on eGullet by K8Memphis showing just how time consuming it can be (she's a professional and the cake was for her daughter...it is truly beautiful, but you can get a good idea for how much work went into it). or, Say yes! The FPS should prepare you pretty well to be able to do a cake that far in the future. You'll have plenty of time to practice if you feel uncomfortable. And besides, you don't have to make a difficult cake. You can always say that you are only able to do one type of cake (whatever you feel good about, fondant, buttercream, etc) and if this isn't what she's looking for, then you're off the hook anyway. then again, I could be totally off base about this and you can correct me if I'm wrong...I feel like the FPS curriculum is VERY structured. They don't want to see you fail (as any school should avoid) and it looks to me like you are very focused on doing their technique and finished products in their aesthetic as opposed to doing something more in your style (whatever that may be in the fledgeling state you are in). So when you are off on your own, you'll have to relearn certain things. I guess that's the case in any school, I just know that I had more freedom when I went to school. Again, I could be very wrong here. and finally, It is a long way off, even with time flying as it does, so you have some time to think about it. As you said, you are already working in the business...so hopefully you are pretty realistic about the work that will go into it. Remember that it can be pretty touchy (BRIDEZILLA...OR MORE LIKE MOMZILLA) so think about how well you know this person and your ability to deal with people. I always undervalue my time when it comes to charging people for my work. I've been in the industry for over ten years now and I still can't bring myself to charge enough...just make sure you charge enough to make it worth your while. The price can still be low, but you should feel good about what you've done and what you've earned! There will be a lot more advice coming...I guarantee it... Keep us posted on what your decision is!

I'm totally ignorant when it comes to Jewish holidays and observances, so please enlighten me a little bit. The main thing you're avoiding is leavening, right? And secondary would be dairy if people are observant or keep kosher at home, correct? JeanneCake: $20/pound for gelatin isn't too far fetched if you think about the fact that I paid (in NYC) $1.45US for a 1 oz box (four envelopes) of Knox unflavored gelatin. So that works out to $23.20/pound...NOT kosher This link is sort of on topic, but completely politically incorrect, so click at your own risk.

It looks like Stephane Glacier teaches several of the 'continuing education' courses at the French Pastry School in Chicago. nightscotsman attended school there and I really feel that he got a great education. I (and a couple of other eG-ers) are attending a chocolate class at FPS in a week. We'll ask some questions there and maybe be of better help to you.

FWED, I've definitely heard of Stephane Glacier but not Stephan Itan (what's with all the Stephans and Sebastiens in pastry anyway?!). Where is the class taking place and who is it sponsored by? Is there a website that might give more information? This will help us to give you more information if we have it.