chefpeon

Over years of experience trying to explain wedding servings to people (and having the same reaction as you did with your clients), I finally hit upon the notion that a lot of people have a hard time visualizing things. They just can't "see" what you're talking about, so I did this: My wedding servings are based on a 1 inch by 2 inch cut. My cakes are tall....about 4 inches all iced up....so the serving is 1 inch by 2 inches by 4 inches. I show my clients an actual serving slice on a plate. Then I made a stencil type thing, which is a grid of 1 inch by 2 inch cuts. I place the grid over the top of a cake pan, or wedding dummy or actual cake. Then they can actually see what I'm talking about. It's like showing them a picture......and they get it. It was such a great idea, I wished I'd thought of it earlier. You will be amazed how much easier this approach with people makes it for you. Here's a drawing from my brochure that illustrates what I'm talking about..... Hope that helps!!

And don't forget, if you dry roast the hazelnuts, de-skinning them while they are still warm is much easier than if they are completely cool.

You know, I couldn't honestly tell ya. I never bother to calculate anyway. I sorta know by "feel".....yeah, I know that's not real helpful. I just make a crapload of puffs and a crapload of pastry cream. If I have cream and puffs left over it's ok, because I can always use them for something else right away. I'm real fortunate that way. The best I can remember is that I filled up 5 full sheet pans with 1.5 inch puffs......but I can't remember how many rows I did........ edited to add: I usually figure my croques out at 3-4 puffs per person. So if I were feeding 50 people, it would be between 150-200 puffs.

I would venture to say the texture is probably ok. But, since you'll be covering it up anyway, take a bit of a taste and see what you think. If you don't like it, then just scrape it off and cover your cheesecake with one of the other toppings I mentioned.

Ooooh yes.....sour cream topping DOESN'T freeze well......yipes.....sorry you had to find that out the hard way! An easy fix...... whenever I have to cover something unattractive on a cheesecake (like a crack or cracks), I just put another topping on it........something that pairs well with the cheesecake.....for instance, fresh fruit or berries, jams, lemon curd, ganache (dark chocolate or white chocolate), or even a thin coat of buttercream. That'll fix ya!

It just depends on how rich (and yellow) you want the end result to be, actually. Some applications are great for richer creams and some aren't.

You didn't expect that all the ingredients were going to magically expand and give you a lot of pastry cream, did you? What you put into it is what you get out of it. If you put in 2 cups of milk (16 ounces), 1/2 cup sugar (about 3.5 ounces), and 3 eggs (which I think is about a 3/4 of a cup, or about 6 ounces), you'll get about 25.5 ounces of Pastry Cream or 1 lb 9.5 ounces.

Amen!!!!! I have always considered pastry cream to be one of the most simple things to make. I use a crapload of the stuff. Curdle? Grainy? Heck I've never had a problem. Sometimes I think people can make things much more complicated than they need to be. Here's the simple foolproof way to make pastry cream: Put your cream (or whatever combination of dairy products you use) in a pot with your butter and put it on the fire. Whisk occasionally. Meanwhile, toss your sugar and starch together, then whisk your eggs into it. Add your vanilla if you want.....some people toss this in at the end, as they do their butter also. I also like to add a coupla pinches of salt. Wait for your cream to just come to a boil (or you can do like I do and be on the other side of the kitchen, and then when you see cream boiling over on to the stove, you know it's ready ) Dip a little pitcher or ladle into your barely boiling cream, and while whisking your egg/starch/sugar mixture, stream your hot cream in. Once you've tempered your egg/starch/sugar mixture with the hot cream, pour all that back into your barely-boiling cream pot. On low fire, whisk your pastry cream til it's thickened....then cook for a couple minutes more to cook the starchiness out. Add your vanilla and/or butter if you haven't already done so. Pour your pastry cream in to a shallow pan (sheet pan, hotel pan, 9x13 pyrex...whatever suits) and cover the surface directly with plastic wrap. Put in fridge to cool. When ready to use, put some in a bowl and stir, or stick on mixer on low speed to smooth out. Easy. On the occasions where I've been privy to using a vanilla bean, I split the pod (or pods) and scrape the insides into the dairy product I'm intending on heating. I don't strain, because I like the little specks in my final product. It says "hey, look at me! I used a real vanilla bean!" Or sometimes it says, "hey, look at me! I spaced out and burnt the pastry cream!"

Grainy pastry cream?

Gee, same here.....a sieve? The only time I've ever used a sieve with pastry cream was when I screwed up once and let it sit too long on the fire and the bottom got a little toasty. I ran it through the sieve to get the little burned bits out. Didn't have time to make a new batch or I would have. Fill us in on the recipe and the method of preparation it calls for.

After I originally started this thread, I did a LOT of experimenting, and came up with what I believe to be the perfect recipe for Pate a Choux. It works great for me.....every time. I'm really glad I took the time to play around with this.

An image and a description of a guitar cutter here. I've never seen one used, actually. What are they most commonly used for? If you have one, how do you use it in your daily work? I also don't quite see what warrants it's high cost. I mean.....it's just strung wire on a frame......

When you say "plain chocolate", do you mean chopped chocolate or some such? I second chefcyn's suggestion to use chocolate chips. They have additives in them to prevent them from losing their shape when melted. Because of this, they WON'T spread and leak out of your croissant. I've always used chocolate chips in my chocolate croissants. Works great!

Ok.....did some Googling today......check out this site, ladies! Now THIS is what I'm talkin' 'bout! We got a little STYLE goin' on here! Hey, if they can custom make me the honeycomb style jacket in pink with short sleeves, I'll fork out $135 for it!

Ok! So tell me where you find your short sleeve jackets and I'll have a look!

I totally agree with the above reviews of the Orka Mitts. I have one.....it's more of a pain to use that than a regular potholder. Sure, you can touch hot objects with them on, but can you grab anything? Heck no. You put it on, try to grab a sheet pan or cookie sheet and you feel like a total retard!

Uniform, schmooniform! I have a lot of chef coats.....in my closet. And one chef coat that I keep in my truck with my name and title embroidered on it. I only wear it when I'm schmoozing in public or doing a consultation or whatever. In the kitchen, it's an old T-shirt, leggings, and a four way apron. Chef coats seem to be so impractical for PC's! I've always got my arm down in the mixer bowl, and even if you pull up the sleeve, it still gets all gooked up. Then the coat always billows out around my waist and gets into cakes I decorate close up. Plus the material is always thick so that it makes me hot.....I get crabby when I'm too hot. I have not yet found the perfect chef coat. However I have a great design in my head...... custom made for the fussy female PC, such as myself. Someday I'd like to have enough money to get a seamstress to make it for me, 'cause I know I'd love it.....and so would a lot of other female food folks.

I want the dude who measures everything out for the chefs on Food Network......so all they have to do is throw everything together. Yeah, that's it.....a "Mise Flunky"...... "Quasimodo! Half a cup of butter!" "Yes.....Master....."

Coincidentally, we just started selling little Ancho-Chocolate Bars in our deli. We also got some Chocolate Nibs from Scharffenberger and we're sprinkling them on our salads.......really kinda nutty with no bitterness!

I got a chocolate temperer and a self contained ice cream maker, both for CHEAP (and brand new in-the-box) off of eBay. It took a little patience, but after carefully watching auctions for about 6 months, I saw some good offers and jumped on 'em! I love eBay.

No need to worry about thick/thin with the white chocolate, which is another reason I like using it. You just make your outline, let it set, then make sure your chocolate is warm and fluid and fill your spaces in. This is why I like the Felchlin White Chocolate Rondo so much.....it's very fluid. Some white chocolate is not fluid at ALL. Some people might get frustrated with white chocolate for cookie decorating.....but I've done it that way for so long it's second nature to me. No, I don't add any glucose or corn syrup to the white chocolate....that would seize it. If I add anything, I add oil or cocoa butter to thin it down to the right consistency if I need to. If you did that, wouldn't the chocolate lump up? That's what I would think it would do....but maybe not. Haven't tried anything like that.

Looks like I'm gonna have myself a foaming party over at Abra's this weekend! I'll be a steamin' fool, for sure. Yesterday, I ALMOST ALMOST had a kind of a thing, art-wise in my cup. It was just barely there.....I knew that the milk was almost right, but not quite there. I thought maybe this morning I'd be able to pull it off, but no......I had a crappy foaming day I guess! I keep ending up with foam on top of hot milk! I can't seem to make the whole pitcher microfoamy! Argh! I did check my steam wand a little more closely......silly me! It's a 6 hole fan dispersion! I think it's six anyway.....I know it's more than four. So I've got the right equipment, the right kind of cup, the right ingredients.....it's all there.....just gotta work on the barista skills! I really should re-name this thread "In Pursuit of Latte Art-The Blog", but I don't know how to re-name a thread....if it's even possible......

Dang it! Why can't we have it all.....yummy icing, beautiful shine, reasonable cost, quick drying, easy to use......why why why? Sigh. I only put the cookies in the fridge for a bit to set them faster. Once they are set, they stay set at room temp....tempered or not.....that's what I love about the white chocolate. In regard to how I dip them....I just dip the front, shake off the excess, then put on parchment lined sheet pans to set. Then I decorate with different colors of white chocolate in piping bags. OR, I do the "runout" method like you do with royal icing.....except with the white chocolate. But, man, to tell you all the honest truth, I'm SO burned out on cookie decorating! That in itself is what made my carpal tunnel problem become downright unbearable. I think I have decorated thousands upon thousands of dozens of cookies in my PC career.........ugh. Valentines, Halloween, and Xmas are the hardest times of the year in that regard. The first couple dozen you decorate are fun.....after that, it's just a huge pain in the ass.

When I dip my cookies in white chocolate I don't bother to temper it......no time. I dip and decorate DOZENS at a time. I do all the decorating with white chocolate too....and I color it with powdered color. My favorite white chocolate for dipping and decorating is Felchlin White Chocolate Rondo.

You can do "flooding" or "runout" work with royal icing and it will dry REALLY fast. You use basically the same principles......use a thicker royal icing for the outlines, and then thin it down with more egg white for the flooding part. If you're squeamish about using real egg whites (referring to that other thread), then you can use meringue powder to make your royal icing, then thin it down with water for the flooding. Now the drawback with royal icing as we all know is that it just ain't that tasty. That's why I use white chocolate to decorate my cookies. It sets fast, it tastes good, and it's easy to work with. The drawback to white chocolate of course, is cost, but I think it's worth it. That's my personal preference, anyway. Also, you might just want to tweak the Glace Icing recipe you are already using. Try leaving the corn syrup out of it.......that's what is increasing your setting time. Anything with corn syrup in it is always going to stay somewhat soft.