chefpeon

First thing you gotta tell is what this year's theme was. Bugs? Hard to tell from the photos....but I saw the spider and.....thought maybe.... Although all those showpieces are spectacular and I'll probably never achieve something like that in my lifetime, I see a "sameness" in all of them.....at least the ones you've posted photos of. It's almost like it's a height competition too. Must they all be so tall? I've really never quite understood the whole pastry/tall dessert thing. I dunno....maybe it's because height is difficult to achieve, and height+difficulty=skill. I sort of compare pastry competitions to figure skating. The person who usually wins the figure skating competition is usually the one who completes the most difficult triple jumps without falling, but they aren't necessarily the most lovely or graceful. Number of jumps completed is more measurable and not left to a judges opinion like grace and artistry is. I suspect that's how pastry competitions are judged also......there's certain elements you must have and how well you keep to the theme, and how much time you have, how difficult the project is, and how many flaws there are....etc. Many times what I have considered the most elegant and well presented showpiece is never the winner.....like figure skating it makes me nuts! Anyway. I never have understood the super tall paper toque thing either. About the last thing I'd want to be wearing when I'm working on something so fragile and temperamental is a huge thing on my head that would most likely knock off whatever I have just placed on my big showpiece. I'd be wearing a bandana and a sports bra to keep it all outta the way.....

Hence, the crumb coat! Put a thin coat of icing on your cake and let the crumbs get into the icing. Then refrigerate for about 30 minutes. This coat adheres the crumbs to the cake, so when you put your second coat on, you have no troubles. I always trim the tops of my cakes..... A) to make them perfectly level, and B) to expose the crumb in case I want to brush it with syrup

There's pictures of Wendy's cakes? Where? I wanna see! My husband tells me to bake less too......because he feels like he's gotta eat it. It just sits there and calls out to him. Poor man. Just give stuff to your neighbors, they'll love you, and if you ever need a favor from them (like who'll feed your cat when you're on vacation) then they'll already owe you...... Oh yeah, one of the neat things about chiffon. If you bake them off one day, then refrigerate them overnight, you can literally peel off the skin from the cake and you're good to go.

Like Wendy said, parchment on the bottom, no grease on the sides. When it's time to unmold, run a knife around the side to loosen the cake, and invert the pan on a flat surface.

Well to answer your first question, yeah I do like making it. It's so.......dependable. It always works for me. And I've always baked them off in regular round pans because I use them for layers in my white chocolate mousse cake. Never used a tube pan actually....never had a use for it. I do invert my chiffons right out of the oven.....because uh.....well because.....um.....because I think it prevents the cake from sinking in the center as it cools. My God. I actually sort of forgot why I do something.....it's so automatic, you sort of forget why you do stuff after a while. Sounds like it's time for a screw-up.....you know, just to keep me real and and all that. I know what you're talking about regarding the "racks". I have a couple of those. They're good for cooling......and they leave little lines in the tops of your cake, but who cares, you'll be cutting them off anyway. I'm actually not a big sponge or genoise fan.....they need a good soaking of syrup or they're not much good......I prefer to stick with cakes that can stand alone....with or without syrup. So yeah, those are my thoughts. By the way, I like your thought provoking questions.

Ok! You're on. Shel can give me espresso lessons, and I'll give you....uh.....whatever lessons you'd like! I really would like to bring out the inner barista in me. I hate it when I make lousy coffee.

So have you tried overbaking some miniature croissants and filling them with Nutella? Heck, that's what I'd do. Sometimes people happen on new or signature items from a baker's mistake. Maybe this was the case with the "Appolinas". I can see it now..... Baker forgets about miniature croissants, and leaves them in the oven too long. Frugal owner refuses to throw them away, and he wants to squeeze any penny out of them he can. He splits 'em in half and fills them with whatever he's got on hand. He calls 'em "Appolinas" which possibly could be Italian for "bonehead bakery help". He showcases them right where customers will see and try them, and the rest is history. This is one of the many ways a "signature item" is born.

I did the military hat out of modeling chocolate.....started by placing a big ol' glob of white modeling chocolate on my table and forming a lopsided cone. Then I turned the cone upside down onto a band I had formed into a circle. Then I rolled out the bill of the cap. Made the insignia and there you go. Kinda hard to explain.......need pictures! When I was a kid, I was fascinated with handwriting. In third grade, when we learned cursive, I used to spend hours upon hours perfecting my lettering, swirls and embellishments. Of course my math homework always went by the wayside. So that explains why I'll be glad to write on a cake, but when you pay me, just don't give me cash and expect me to make change for it!

Here are a few hat cakes. This one is a zoot suit hat for 150 people. Covered in black modeling chocolate. Blue band and feather were made out of blue modeling chocolate and brushed with lustre mixed with cherry brandy. This is a 3-D Fedora type hat done in modeling chocolate and set on top of an art deco themed round cake. Yep, it's black buttercream. I WARNED them they'd get black tongues, but they wanted it anyway. Another 3-D hat on top of an appropriately themed quarter sheet cake. Rope is modeling chocolate. For an Alice in Wonderland wedding theme....a Mad Hatter Wedding Cake. The top 6 inch cake is the hat. Used red fondant to cover the hat, but the brim is modeling chocolate.

This is a question best answered by you and the client. Which is easier for you to do? Or which one do you feel would take you less time? Find out how much the client wants to spend. Tell them which one will cost more and why (time, difficulty). What you are comfortable doing and what the client is willing to spend will give you an answer to that. For pricing art cakes it can be tricky, and it's up to you determine a pricing system. When I do sculpted cakes I have a minimum of 20 servings. It's just not worth it to do tiny sculpted cakes (that's when I suggest doing 3-D art on the top of a regular cake). Then I have "difficulty levels". The easiest is level A and the most difficult being level C. For a Level A sculpted cake it's $5.50 per serving with a 20 serving minimum, so that comes to $110. An example of a Level A cake would be something like a snare drum......or......a hat. A simple hat. I will post some hats later on today.......!

Mel..... when I've had trouble finding who carries what ingredient, I've always called a food broker, and they've saved the day for me. I checked out Dex online in Portland, and there's quite a few listings in the yellow pages for food brokers there. You might try it. I also went to the MEC3 website, and there is contact info there....at the very least you can email them.

Yee Gods! You're right......for that price the mixer OUGHT to be included.....or at least the instruction manual!!!!

Um, yes. You take your favorite punkin' pie recipe and substitute butternut squash for the punkin'. Easy! And a good question was raised in this thread.....why DON'T they can butternut squash? I totally agree with the butternut squash thing. WAY better than punkin'....hands down.

Ok you all. I've had requests on other threads about what I consider to be the PERFECT pate a choux recipe. A few months back I started a thread on achieving the perfect choux because it was something I always had a problem with. I took everyone's suggestions and tried a lot of things.....different recipes, methods etc......and here's what I came up with. This works like a dream for me.......please do try it, because I swear by it....it's awesome! 2 cups water 2 cups milk 8 oz. butter (2 sticks) 16 Tbsp. oil 2 tsp. salt 2 oz sugar Combine all these in big saucepan or pot and bring to a ROLLING boil. THEN ADD: 1 lb 8 oz all purpose flour Add this all at once to above boiling mixture. Stir with big spoon or heatproof spatula. It will form a big ball and clean the sides of the pot. Squish out the lumps with your spat or back of your spoon. Stir and cook it for about 5 minutes. It's a bit of a chore, but consider it your workout for the day. The reason you want to cook it that long is to get a lot of the moisture to evaporate off. The more moisture that evaporates off, the more eggs you can add. The more eggs you can add, the puffier your puffs get. Now dump your big ol' dough ball into your mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix it around a bit on 1st speed for about a minute or so to let it cool a bit. NOW YOU'LL NEED APPROXIMATELY: 4 cups of eggs (this will vary) Add the eggs gradually, letting it absorb into the dough before you add more. Scrape bowl often. Before you add your last amount of eggs, look closely at your dough....it's at this point that you decide whether you need less or more. I have always found I need more. The dough should be smooth and glossy and thick, but not TOO thick. It should hold it's shape when piped out. If it starts to flatten and spread when you pipe it out, you have too many eggs. If it's too thick and seems kinda dryish and is hard to pipe, then you don't have enough eggs. Personally, I think the trickiest part to pate a choux is the judgement factor on how many eggs to add. I've done it enough now to know exactly the look and feel of it. It's one of those familiarity things. Have your oven ready at 375 degrees. Pipe out your choux on parchment lined sheet pans. I like to double-pan my choux so I don't get burned bottoms. Bake until puffy and dark brown. At that point I like to take my puffs out, slit the bottoms with a paring knife and stick them back in a turned off oven to completely dry out. The slits allow the steam to escape from the inside and also give you a nice filling hole when you're ready to fill them. Hope you like this recipe as much as I do!

Woo hoo!!!! Did someone say Swedish/Irish?!? <waving hands frantically> Me too! I'm a crazy Swede with a lot of red hair......quarter Irish! The rest of me is Scottish and Dutch....whatta combo!!!

When I do hats.....and I've done a LOT of hats......I either use rolled fondant that is colored the appropriate color, or I use modeling chocolate. Most of the time I use fondant because when you use modeling chocolate, you have something working against you.......cold. The neat thing about fondant is that coldness doesn't affect it that much and it's nice and stretchy for smoothing over tough spots, like corners, edges, indentations and creases. When you cover a cake with modeling chocolate, you have to work fast, because the cold cake sets up the chocolate and it quickly loses pliability. If you've never covered a cake with modeling chocolate before, it can be extremely frustrating. As I've said on other threads, whenever a client wants a cake that is a deep color, I use the fondant, since that is easily peeled off the cake and doesn't have to be eaten...whereas with buttercream, that is not so easily done. Airbrushing the color on can work, but you risk uneven spots, and when the cake sweats, you risk big color droplets coming off the cake and making a mess of things, so I'm not a big airbrush fan. The chocolate/cocoa butter thing in the paint sprayer is a great idea for a hat, since it does give a wonderful (and tasty) velvety finish, but that might be quite an investment for just one cake. However, you may want to consider it, since that probably won't be the last thing you could use a chocolate paint sprayer for.

I gotta say....sometimes because of all the experience I have as a PC and all the "rules" I learned in pastry school, I somehow forget that in a way I can be so rigid when it comes to new ideas. I like to be a rebel and a rule breaker. At first I'm thinkin'..... THIS PERSON USED BARLEY FLOUR??? What kind of insanity is that? Then I thought......sheesh....why not? But I do admit I laughed at the blue corn meal thing. But you got guts and imagination. That'll take you far. Truly. If I weren't so afraid to waste ingredients, I'd probably experiment more freely. My inner frugalness prevents me from buying ingredients I'm not sure of...especially expensive ingredients. Plus I never have enough time in the day to screw around....wish I did! Thanks for posting the results of your experiments! By the way, have you tried that recipe using bread flour? White bread flour. I use that recipe myself except I use bread flour. It makes the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie as far as I'm concerned. And in the grocery store, you can find cake flour in the baking section.....it's in a relatively small box, and it's called "Softasilk". Edited to add: Have you tried combining flours also? In the instance of your oat cookies, you could use a little wheat flour in there.....it would aid in the cookies holding together better while still getting the flavor you like from your oat flour.

Pastry Chef Burnout? Yep. Been there twice. Not only is it hard on oneself, but it's harder on those around you. I learned the hard way that one must have balance in their lives. For me, it was a matter of learning to say "no" and not feel horribly guilty about it......

Looky here dear. No preservatives....just pumpkin.

Here is something I found on the internet explaining the properties of Plugra..... More fat.....less water.

Ok, but my question would then be: are the salted and unsalted butters inherently different to the common palate when used in a baked good? Would someone be able to tell the difference between a cookie made with unsalted butter with salt added to the recipe vs. using salted butter with no additional salt? Here in Tinytown, USA, if I make something with salted butter or if I use unsalted butter and add salt.....I cannot detect a difference. They both seem to behave the same as well. They cream the same, they melt the same....they bake the same. I'm only adamant about using unsalted butter if I want to closely control the amount of salt in a recipe.....when delicate flavors can be destroyed by too much salt. Otherwise, it doesn't matter to me.....I use what's on hand. When moisture content is an issue, I use Plugra almost exclusively....for roll-ins, or pie doughs. To me, moisture/fat content is more important than the salt issue, because you can make adjustments for the salt, where it's harder to adjust regarding moisture/fat.

Ha ha! Why does this thread already remind me of a Saturday Night Live character? And why do I have this urge to compare Barbra Streisand to "butta"??? And in reference to another thread, I wonder if she's more like salted or unsalted????? Ok, I'll start the discussion. I did the whole fresh pumpkin thing last year.....we were growing a ton of the things in our garden out behind the deli. I had sheet pans upon sheet pans of pumpkin cooking and cooling. I mashed and pureed like a madwoman.....and then set it in big colanders to drain off. I have found that if you do use fresh pumpkin, you should drain it a bit, or it's just too watery and weak tasting when you go to make pies or what-have-you. I thought for sure after all that FUN work, I should have the most superior freshy fresh tasting punkin' pie ever.....since I used garden grown punkin' and everything. I'll tell you what. I didn't taste a darn bit o'difference and neither did anybody else. Too much work for not enough improvement, if at all. For commercial purposes, stick with canned pumpkin. If ya wanna give it a go at home for the fun and experience, go for it! But not for work....I'm back to Libby's Libby's Libby's this year!

Yep, like I said, I only use the expensive euro-butters when I'm using it in something that IS all about the butter, like in danishes, puff pastry, croissants, shortbread and the like. It's pretty much a waste in any item that doesn't have butter as it's main attraction. We sell Kerrygold at our little deli, and no, it doesn't say "creme de la creme" on it. But the wrapper is gold......

This may be Pastry Chef Blasphemy, but when I bake with unsalted butter and add or adjust salt in the recipe vs. baking with salted butter and adding/or subtracting salt in the recipe, I really see no difference. As long as you know what you're using, (salted or unsalted), and you make adjustments with the salt, it's kind of a push as far as I'm concerned. The only time I get fussy about butter is when I do roll-in doughs, like croissant or danish, or I'm making something that relies mostly on the butter for taste, like shortbread for instance. In those cases I like to use the high butterfat butters like Plugra, or Kerrygold (my current favorite.)

Wow....Shel can do Latte art? He could charge for classes!