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chefpeon

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Everything posted by chefpeon

  1. Wow, I think you really hit the reality nail on the head, jmahl!!! It just goes to show you that people are more affected by what they can detect in their food, vs. what they can't. You can't taste an e coli, but it sure squicks somebody out when they have to pull human dental floss from between their teeth! But, as jmahl says, "which is worse?" I'm sure a food establishment would much rather comp a meal to a customer about a hair complaint rather than to suffer the damage of a lethal food lawsuit......
  2. Well, if too much liquid isn't the problem then, perhaps before one goes and blames the recipe for being faulty, you might want to give the recipe another go, just to make sure you didn't scale something out incorrectly. I really don't believe the recipe has too much sugar to be honest. Besides the cake feeling sticky, how was the texture of it? Did it seem ok, or was it unacceptable?
  3. Actually I think the problem is too much liquid..... you're putting 1 cup of Coco Lopez in AND buttermilk? I would think it would be one or the other. It sounds like your cake recipe was written to be made just with the buttermilk and perhaps someone forgot to write that to make coconut cake, you SUB the Coco Lopez for the buttermilk, instead of ADDING it in addition to the buttermilk.
  4. "They" did.....it's right here. Sub the cake flour in using the formula above. The worst case scenario is that you will get a cake that is too crumbly, but I doubt that will happen. Give it a shot.
  5. I'm sure you'll get a suitable brownie without the corn syrup. But I can't guarantee it will be quite the same. You might like it better, I don't know. I haven't tried omitting the corn syrup myself because the recipe, to me, is perfect for a cakey brownie. My philosophy is, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it." So I make it as is. It's such a small amount, I would think that even people who have a "thing" about corn syrup wouldn't mind it all that much.
  6. Here's a link to a recipe. I must admit though, the instructions on how to make the nest are sort of confusing. It's like I need a visual.
  7. Having been in the biz so long, one learns early not to have just ONE version on hand, but many. Especially in the brownie dept. I have a fudgy recipe, a chewy recipe and cakey one. Here's Mr. Cakey: 2 oz room temp butter 3/4 cup granulated sugar 1 T. plus 1 t. light corn syrup Cream til smooth. 2 large eggs Add one at a time, beat thoroughly 2 t. vanilla 1/4 cup lukewarm milk Beat til incorporated. Batter may look broken. This is OK. 4 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled Beat in chocolate til smooth and slightly thickened. 1/2 cup AP flour 1/2 t. baking powder pinch salt Combine and add to above mixture. Don't overmix. Grease and flour an 8 inch square pan (or use baker's grease-equal parts oil, shortening and flour beaten together) or line the bottom with parchment and grease, whichever you like. Scrape batter into pan, bake at 350 til done, around 20 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted off center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool, cut into squares.
  8. Actually, no. Clean shaven all his life and mostly bald.
  9. If you go to Costco, it's beard-moustache net-city there! They'll probably introduce the eyebrow-arm hair nets next, followed by the ear hair and nose hair nets...... I don't wear a hat because it makes my head itch and my head hot. I tie my hair up in a scarf. I have too much hair to tuck up in a hat or a toque anyway. Regarding beards and such.......I have an interesting observation about that. My first husband had a beard. My current husband has a beard......almost all men I have dated in the past had a beard. Ok, yeah, I have a thing about beards!!! Love them! So I have a lot of experience with beards, although I myself, have never had one. I have seen my hairs on the kitchen counter at home every once in a while....I've seen a few strands of my husband's also. Not to mention a lot of cat hair. But I've NEVER ONCE seen a stray beard hair. EVER. The only time I see beard-mustache hairs is when they are in the bathroom sink after my husband has finished trimming. I really don't think facial hair falls out the same way head hair does. Am I wrong? I've never seen any beard hairs laying around from ANY husband/boyfriend I've ever had. Guys, do beard hairs fall out like head hair and I just don't see it? I never see it. Personally, when I'm a customer in a food establishment, I would worry more about the long haired folks with their hair untied than I would be about the guy with the well groomed facial hair. Regarding the original post, if I made my crew wear headgear then I would also. One of my philosophies of good management is that I never make my crew do something I wouldn't do. Crews respect not only a manager that will get in the trenches with them, but also follows the rules they lay down. If you make yourself an exception to one of your own rules, you're a hypocrite.
  10. Well, that's good to know. I've been buying cake flour from my bakery supplier for so long, I haven't bought a box of Softasilk in years. Luckily my cake flour doesn't have egg traces since it comes directly from a flour mill instead of an "everything mill". I feel sorry for folks who can't buy ingredients from a supplier like I can. When it comes to specific baking ingredients, your typical grocery store usually falls pretty short. It seems like Softasilk is the ONLY brand of cake flour you can find in the grocery store, and it's INCREDIBLY overpriced. After buying bulk wholesale for so long, I just shudder at the tiny amounts sold for inflated prices in the retail world.......
  11. I would like to know how in the world cake flour may contain traces of egg??? I don't have a box of Softasilk to look at, but it really says it may have egg in it????
  12. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD! I suppose that saying it's horrible, gross and absolutely disgusting is actually a compliment to the talents of the decorator. But you'll never see me doing anything like that. I used to work with a couple of guys who are really talented cake artists. They loved doing stuff like that. One Halloween they made a severed head with a snake slithering through the mouth and coming out the eye sockets. They are all over themselves saying, "COOL! It looks so REAL!", and I'm like, "Ewww! It looks TOO real!" One time, I was given an order to do where the cake had to look like it was 100 years old. I had to make cracked icing and mold and bugs and anything I could think of to make it look bad. I really struggled with that order because it's really not in me to make things look bad on purpose. When I was done, the cake was acceptable, but not terribly gross, because I didn't want to make the cake look UNAPPETIZING. I mean, it's a cake for God's sake. When the customer came to pick it up, she wasn't happy, because the cracks looked "too perfect" and it just wasn't gross enough. Mike and John (my co-workers) came to my rescue. They actually smashed the cake. John made tiny little maggots from pieces of modeling chocolate. They airbrushed yellow spots and mold on it. Customer loved it. It looked absolutely horrible and that's what she wanted. Everybody laughed at me because I couldn't get a handle on "horrible". Hey I totally admit it. Those kinds of cakes are NO FUN for me anyway!
  13. I triple ditto everything alanamoana has said. I'm in the "Jaded Club" too. I've done ALMOST everything in the industry, and have worked every shift. Uber-early mornings, swing, days, graveyard, AND sometimes two shifts back to back (in my bakery managing days). And let's talk weekends, shall we? It's been the rare instance where I regularly got a weekend off. And depending where you are, holidays are quite the opposite. I've worked in some establishments where holidays were the busiest time of year. Let's see.....I've been an artisan bread baker, midnight scone maker, a management mover and shaker, and a lead cake decorator. Hey, it rhymes! I've worked wholesale and retail. I've done catering. Supplied desserts to high end restaurants. Fried donuts for skiers. Worked in a pie factory. Worked in bakery/cafes where I filled the entire dessert case and maintained it. Two places I haven't worked and probably never will: Hotels and grocery stores. Oh, I haven't worked at a resort or country club either. My favorite jobs were being head pastry chef/cake designer at a high end cake shop, and the two bakeries where I got to fill the dessert cases with anything I felt like making. When I have a job where I am allowed to be creative and no one is breathing down my neck, I'm a happy camper. The job I hated most was the management job, mostly because I got stuck doing office crap and I hate office crap! I've always been in this business because I like to interact with food....not paperwork! For sure, it's not in your best interest to be picky about your hours. If you are, then you reduce your job possibilities down quite a bit. Most restaurant jobs or food jobs offer hours that aren't real attractive to people who have other commitments, like family, or if they want to have any kind of regular social life. Luckily when I worked all those crazy hours and long hours I had no family OR social life!!! Now, I only work three days a week....Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from 4:30 am til about 1 pm or when I'm done. I was working full time, but gave that up, mostly due to a toxic work environment that stresses me out. I bake cookies, muffins, scones and assorted pastries for a bunch of wholesale accounts (mostly espresso places). I have two assistants and one boss who is a lot like the absentminded professor who happens to be married to Cruella DeVille. Did I say toxic work environment? Yeah. I do cakes, occasionally, when I feel like it, "on the side". Usually I'm too tuckered out from family duties and the gang at Cruella and Co. to pick up an offset spatula and ice a cake though.
  14. You're always right on, Patrick! I always say if you're going to make a caramel.....do it dry. It doesn't take nearly as long, and you don't have to mess with brushing down the sides of the pot in the early stages of the boil. It's so darn easy too. Really, the only time you want to start with a sugar/water solution is if you are going to cook the sugar BELOW the caramel stage, or if you want a very light caramel. But if you want caramel just start with dry sugar! It really saves time.
  15. edited to remove incorrect answer. By the way, yeah, if you beat yolks, sugar and your cream, you're gonna get more of a souffle than a creamy custard. What they said.
  16. This recipe is more "choux-ish" in the way it's prepared......
  17. This one looks good...has ricotta cheese in it....... You East Coasters keep throwing all this "new" stuff at me. Keeps me on my toes. I had to look up "zeppole".....had never heard of it out here!
  18. Well, for starters....there's a website called Eggless.com....
  19. Knowing that, then if you wanted to do a REAL cake with that kind of art (say someone was gonna pay you a million to do it), would it be possible? I know you could do a lot in advance, but realistically could you make a real cake that elaborate?
  20. Hey, I've exchanged several emails with Rebecca Sutterby who won first place....good on her! Of course, I sorta don't understand why "Stairway to Heaven" won the grand prize........ I think "Fertile Crescent" is awesome. Also, does anyone know......do the cakes have to be real cake underneath or can they decorate over styrofoam dummies?
  21. On a more serious note, I wonder about some other things. She obviously couldn't sit down all day. Bet he didn't fill the cream puffs! Wimp! Her crown, bouquet and necklace were made of caramelized sugar (hope she didn't sweat too much...sticky sticky sticky!) Since the dress weighed 20 pounds, did she feel fat in it? Did he attach the cream puffs to the wedding dress frame with caramelized sugar? If he put the puffs on while she was modeling it, wouldn't the caramelized sugar have burned her a little? What was her underwear made out of? Thats what I hate about articles like this.....you never get the full story!
  22. No, I think only the groom can fork the bride.
  23. For those brides on a budget, you can have your dress and eat it too! Cream puff wedding dress
  24. This is the best I can describe it. When your cheesecake is done, the middle will still jiggle. But it won't be a liquidy jiggle. More like a unified "Jello jiggle". It won't jiggle in "waves".....it'll jiggle as one unit. If you bake it to the point where it stops jiggling altogether, when it cools it is very likely to crack. Overbaking is the number one cause of cracking. Hope this helps.
  25. No worries about that! They live and die by "the book". They are totally lost without it. I even re-wrote every single recipe with my improvements, tweaks and exact methodology. It will stay with them. It's a small town and I may need their reference for a new job.
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