chefpeon

Me too. But sometimes, at work, when I'm making a crapload of something, it takes longer for it to get in the oven than if I'm making it at home. And sometimes I have brain farts and forget that I've got cheesecakes baking in the oven at 250 and that it will be close to two hours before anything else can go in there.........heh

So I thought I'd share a recent learning experience I had regarding awful tasting scones and baking powder. I've never had trouble making scones until just a few weeks ago, when I attempted to make cream scones at the request of my employer. I've made many a scone in my career, as well as biscuits, but most of them were buttermilk recipes where the leavening was baking soda. In the case of making scones with heavy cream, I needed to use baking powder in the recipe, since there was no acidic ingredient such as buttermilk or sour cream to react with the baking soda. No matter what recipe I used (I tried about three), the scones, although lovely looking, tasted like an aluminum pan; not just slightly, but horribly so, and in my opinion, downright inedible. It didn't take much for me to figure that it was because of the baking powder, so I decided to use less than the recipe called for....but I just ended up with flat ugly pucks that tasted a little less metallic but not by much. I have general knowledge about baking powder and how it works and what is in it, but I decided to do a little research, because I refused to believe that I couldn't make a cream scone. I mean, the pastry chef at the Empress Hotel makes a killer cream scone......I even purchased the recipe for it printed on a tea towel in the gift shop! Why can't I? It all has to do with sodium aluminum sulfate, the primary acidic ingredient in most baking powders. The advantage to sodium aluminum sulfate is that it works great as a double acting agent, meaning that it's activated once by moisture in the batter, and again by the heat in the oven. Sodium aluminum sulfate also is slower acting, which means it reduces the reaction to a minimum between moisture and the powder until it goes into the oven. That means if your batter sits a while before going in the oven, it's not going to make a whole lot of difference in the quality of your final product. I decided that sodium aluminum sulfate was my whole problem, and so I made my own baking powder with 1/2 cup cream of tartar, 4 Tbsp. baking soda, and 2 Tbsp cornstarch. I proceeded to make the cream scones, and they came out not only lovely looking but tasty too.....no metallic taste at all. Problem solved, right? Well sort of. I knew that my "homemade baking powder" was only single acting, meaning that once moisture was added the reaction started, and the more time it took me to get it into the oven, the less leavening power I'd have to work with. So my question was, can I get a double acting baking powder that doesn't contain sodium aluminum sulfate? The answer is yes, and that answer is Rumford Baking Powder. It contains cornstarch, baking soda and calcium acid phosphate....nothing else. The only downfall with calcium acid phosphate in relation to sodium aluminum sulfate, is that 2/3's of the reaction time is when moisture is added and just 1/3 happens in the heat of the oven, so you really need to make sure you get your dough or batter into the oven immediately when you use Rumford. It's a no brainer for me actually, since I don't mind movin' my ass a little faster to get the scones in the oven if they're going to taste great. An additional observation I had is that I just noticed the metallic taste of the sodium aluminum sulfate in the scones. I used the same baking powder in my cakes and cookies and never experienced any metallic aftertaste with them....just the scones. I am wondering if it's because there are so many more ingredients in my cakes and cookies and it masks the aftertaste, or if it's because the percentage of baking powder in those recipes is lower or both. Anyway, as it stands now, I'll be using two types of baking powders; or, if the Rumford performs just as well for my cakes and cookies, I will be using 100% Rumford from now on. Just thought I'd share the info. Cheers! Annie

I think my assistant at work is channeling your mother, gfron! My assistant is helping me out on a temporary basis until I can get a full time qualified assistant with some kitchen experience. Please, God, a little kitchen experience.....please. My current helper has no kitchen experience, but as my employers said cheerfully, "she sometimes bakes at home", which means absolutely nothing when you work in a professional kitchen. She normally works the counter at our Cafe, so she's being "loaned" to me two days a week. She follows directions on recipe cards fairly well, but I'm busy too and I keep forgetting to watch her every second, and stuff that comes naturally to me is the stuff I forget to tell her. Like whenever you use cocoa, you have to sift it, otherwise the lumps never come out. I ended up with two sheet pans of brownies with big cocoa lumps in them. Argh. She was mixing a batch of cookie dough, and after she added the eggs, she realized she forgot the butter, so she just threw blocks of cold butter in there thinking "no problem". Yeah, well, big problem.....the butter, of course, never creamed in because the dough was so slack.....it was like overmixed sugar soup with butter chunks. Double argh. It also doesn't help that the mixer is in another room, so I can't see over her shoulder most of the time. Who knows what today will bring....I just know that I'll be watching her more carefully (and therefore reducing my productivity), and praying for some experienced help that I so desperately need. /end rant.

Thanks for the info about the shortening and the fact that it won't interfere with the royal drying! It's good to know that without having to experiment for myself. It's nice to have others do the work sometimes!

Well said. In my case, wax paper has always been a no-no nightmare, and parchment has always been a dream. The parchment I use is treated (I believe with silicone) and royal icing NEVER sticks to it. I would personally never use acetate for royal, although I use it a lot for run-in chocolate work....acetate is great for that. I have never tried using any type of shortening to rub on the surface of something I was going to pipe royal icing onto, because I was afraid the shortening would prevent the piece from drying properly. Never tried it, so I can't say whether that's true or not. I only advise based on personal experience, and I know that acetate and royal, for me, is too risky. I tried it once, thinking that since I had such great results with the chocolate, the same would be true with royal....not so in my case. Even though I carefully ran a thin offset spatula under the fully dried piece, I ended up with a lot of breakage, and I was really careful. I don't wish to spend a lot of time piping out a piece and then worrying about lifting it from the surface later...with my schedule, I don't have time to re-do much of anything. Who knows why I had trouble, and Sugarella swears by it. Maybe the difference was using royal icing made with meringue powder as opposed to pasteurized liquid whites. Or maybe it was the the consistency of the royal icing, or the way it was mixed. Or relative humidity in the air, or the type of acetate. That said, I rarely do any royal pieces anymore, because even if you are able to get the piece off of your chosen piping surface, they still are quite fragile.......too fragile even. I prefer to use mediums that aren't quite so nerve wracking, like chocolate and Sugarveil. Or even frozen buttercream transfers.

Onetoughcookie said what I was going to say. Parchment. End of problem. It's thin enough to see through so you can trace your design, and no sticking problems either.

I've always used craft styrofoam.....you can find rounds of all sizes at craft stores like Michael's. You can make the fondant stick to it by lightly wetting the back of the fondant before you lay it on. But I never do that. Once the fondant is formed to the styrofoam, it doesn't slip, and by not actually sticking the fondant to the styrofoam, you can easily remove the fondant to re-use the styrofoam again and again.

We got an envelope in the mail from Pinnacle Foods, parent company of Swanson. Oh boy! Inside was a form letter saying thank you for your contact, and a coupon for $4.00 off future Hungry Man entrees! That should shut us up! Enough to compensate for the fried dough ball I guess.

I always start my puff off at about 425 for the first 10-15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 for the rest of the bake. I would agree with Carrot Top that your oven wasn't quite hot enough....hee hee.....one would think with the thinner air your puff would puff better than at sea level!

Next time you make one Rob, bake it longer. As someone said before, with puff, bake it a long time, then bake it some more. In your close-up of the cut up piece, you can see the doughy part where the layers haven't baked up all the way. Especially in the case where puff has fillings, and the fillings weigh the dough down, not baking it long enough is a common problem.

Love your experiment Patrick! When I wrap my warm cakes, I stick them in the freezer immediately. (Ok, yes, I know this taxes the freezer). One would assume that a wrapped cake in the freezer would cool down much faster than an unwrapped cake at room temperature. Based on what I know about food safety and the importance of rapid cooling, wouldn't the wrapped cake in the freezer be "technically" safer than the unwrapped cake at room temp? I mean, the unwrapped cake spends more time in the temperature "danger zone" (45-140 degrees F) than the wrapped cake in the freezer, so I must ask, how can the wrapped cake in the freezer be unsafe?

If my paring knife happens to be sharp that day, I'll use it......if not, an X-acto knife works well. Cold puff pastry is very friendly for scoring.

All I know is whenever I have accidentally left my cakes in the oven a tad too long, I bang them out of the pans and wrap them as hot as possible, hoping that that will undo my mistake. It probably helps somewhat (I hope), but an overbaked cake is still an overbaked cake.......sigh. One thing though......if you wrap them warm and freeze them, it does not affect them negatively.

I've been making lots of Pithiviers for the bakery I work for. Unfortunately, since most people are not familiar with them, they are not selling well, and I will probably discontinue making them. I'm willing to bet that if I take my remaining almond filling (a modified frangipane) and puff pastry, and make mini pithiviers and call them "Almond Turnovers", they would sell much better.

Since I specialize in custom cakes, this has been my "battle" for years. It never ceases to amaze me that people seem to think I can just pull a custom cake out of my ass on a moment's notice. I used to feel bad about turning customers away.....now I don't. If they don't plan ahead, it's their problem, not mine. By turning them away, I feel that I'm educating them. Maybe they'll be more on the ball next time Mom's birthday rolls around. The above advice and wording is sound, and similar to what I say. In this world of instant gratification, there are just some things you can't get in an instant.

I had heard about the flower nail technique, and intrigued, I decided to test it out. I baked several sizes of cakes, some with flower nails, and some without. The results of my experiment told me that the flower nail doesn't make a darn bit of difference. The most important thing to remember when baking a larger cake than the recipe calls for, is to turn the oven heat down. If your recipe is written to bake two 9 inch layers at 350, then bake a larger one at about 325. If your cake domes in the middle, that's a sure sign your oven is too hot. One other comment......in my 16 years as a pastry chef, I have multiplied cake recipes many times. I have taken recipes written for the home baker and multiplied them to bake 20 cakes or more. I've never "adjusted" the leavening for the differing sizes. I have always multiplied the leavening proportionately as I do the flour, sugar, eggs, etc. Think about it. I've used 20 qt, 30 qt and 60 qt mixers to make a large amount of batter to bake off cakes ranging from 6 inches to 18 inches in diameter. They all baked off fine. If I had to adjust leavening for each size, I never would have gotten anything done. There is some advice out there that doesn't make much sense to me, and the advice about adjusting leavening is one of those things. To me, it's confusing and just plain unnecessary.

My husband is predicting that's what he'll get too, but he'd actually be happy with a coupon for more fried chicken dinners..... There's a show on the Science Channel called "How it's Made"......I'd really like to see how the frozen TV dinners get put together.

One would think being married to a pastry chef meant a ticket to culinary heaven......but in my husband's case, it is sadly not true. By the time I get home from work, about the LAST thing I wanna do is set foot in the kitchen. Truth be told, both me and my family eat like crap. I just grab any food item that can be microwaved in under three minutes, and my husband and stepson are mostly on their own. Stepson lives on tortilla chips and lentils, while my husband will fry a steak, or eat a Swanson's Hungry Man Fried Chicken dinner, which he actually loves. But the poor dear finally came across a fried chicken dinner that somehow got by quality control at the ol' factory. So disappointed was he, that he wrote this letter to the Swanson people, which I found rather amusing:

You know what? Same here. I've always been so religious about keeping my whites "pure" too. Now of course I'm curious. How much yolk or fat must be present to really screw with the whites whipping ability? Is keeping your bowl and utensils grease-free a myth also? If I had the time and a bunch of extra eggs on hand, I'd certainly be trying to find out the answers to these questions. Anybody wanna give it a shot?

Same here. That's what I use. When I have to make them. Which I try to do as infrequently as possible. They're such a hugh pain in the a$$!

For those of us who don't own Wybauw's book, or know what the heck a Black Devil is, it sure would be nice if y'all could share with the class.

Perhaps if you provided a list of ingredients, we could figure it out............

Here is a link to Baker's Chocolate, which lists it's percentages: Baker's Chocolate I would think your solution would be fairly simple. By doing as suggested above, and figuring out whether the Baker's chocolate has more or less cocoa butter than, say, the Valrhona or the Callebaut, you can make the proper adjustments. You know you like the texture of the ones made with Baker's, so assuming you are using a 54-55% product, look for a similar percentage in the higher end chocolates....then look at the total fat content on the nutritional label to see if there is more or less cocoa butter than the Baker's.

I would probably be the last person you'd expect to say this, but I find that the more that food is handled or fiddled with, the less appetizing it becomes. Too many hands, too many people....bleah. It's "edible" sure.....but would I want to eat it? Not really. To me, this is where food crosses "the line" and ceases to be food.

If the baker's chocolate you use is 55%, are you substituting straight across? For instance, when you use the Callebaut, or Valrhona, are they in the 55% category also?