chefpeon

Do you have a website Miaomee? If you do, I'd like to see it too......and by the way.... no offense taken.

Gosh, I just add extract or a clear alcohol like Cherry Brandy to powdered color and mix to the consistency I want. I do this with gold powder quite a bit.

Beautiful beautiful Galette des Rois jgarner! Just wondering......it seems that the little lima bean inside is the only difference between that and a Pithiviers.....true?

Yeah, man.....I have had so many weird ass hours as a baker/PC it ain't even funny. I also gravitate to the Noon-4am thing naturally.......if I have time off, I always revert to that schedule eventually. But UN-naturally, my job calls for me to get up at 3:30 am and I'm done by about 1 pm or 2 if I'm lucky. I'm STILL not used to getting up that early and never will be. But I do, and I'm pretty good at getting to bed by 8pm........actually, I usually fall asleep by then whether I mean to or not! Good thing I don't need to worry about my social life.....it's already over......I'm married.

Major Kudos Keithy! Very nice bottle! What does the label say? I can only make out "Concert". Was the cake made for someone's musical debut? I'm glad my mod choc recipe helped you out! Real nice job on the fondant covering....bet that was the fun part, huh?

Ummm.....ahem....yeah.....if you can afford to! The shop I work in is so small and so tightly budgeted it is not yet cost efficient for us to hire a full time dish dog. We're all our own dish dogs....which means, I mess muffin pans......I clean muffin pans.......sighhhhhhh I worked in a kitchen once where our muffin baker used a surgical mask when she sprayed down her pans! At first we teased her, but then realized she was probably smarter than the lot of us! I just spray my pans flat on the table and aim the spray right into each muffin cup. I rarely have much or any overspray to clean up. True, sprays can gum up your pans, but only if they're not cleaned thoroughly after each use.

My dear.....I most certainly know this. I'm a professional cake artist. Most of the time I have no control over temperature change....especially when I have up to 6 wedding cakes in a weekend, with fillings that need to be refrigerated, and I have to work on all of them the week prior. Into the walk in they go, and out they come. The temperature changes. They sweat. The Health Dept. would most certainly have my head if I kept my walk-in close to room temperature. This is the reality for most cake artists and I was speaking to that. Just so you know and stuff.

Gosharooney! Break out that pan spray! If I were greasin' all my muffin tins like that, my carpal tunnel problem would have been 10 times worse than it is now! Spray spray spray! Besides the hard part ain't the greasin'! It's the CLEANIN'!!!

Yeah, a lot of lids have re-inforced edges and/or ridges so I always cut them off, because of course I need the stencil to sit flush on the surface I'm working with. I'll bet if I cruised Home Depot or whatever, I could find some killer stuff to work with, but then you never know really if it's food grade. That's why I like that Chef Rubber place!

I'll agree with you there. Even though food coloring is supposed to have no taste, it certainly does in that kind of concentration, and it's not a good taste. But the good thing about fondant is that it peels off easily, so you don't have to eat it if you don't want to. I always tell my clients who want deeply colored cakes that fondant is a better option because you can't peel buttercream off. I don't like to airbrush color on because when the cake sweats (and it will) it starts to sweat the color off and the drips can ruin other decorations you may have on the cake. It's also harder to get an even looking color with an airbrush. In certain light, a cake that you may have thought you airbrushed evenly in the shop looks all splotchy when you get it to the event. Not that I've ever experienced that or anything.....

I like the link Wendy included to Chef Rubber......it's about time someone started supplying this stuff for chefs! I've always used coffee-can type plastic lids to make my own stencils. They're free, and super easy to cut with an exacto knife. They're pretty flexible too....I don't like my stencils to be TOO rigid.

Hi Kids..... FWED just alerted me to this li'l shindig......hope you have a blast! I don't think I'll be able to make it.....just had my left hand operated on to correct my carpal tunnel problems and I won't be able to cook for a while. I'm sure everything will be deeeeee-lish! Cheers......Annie

You're certainly right about that. About this time of year I get requests for King Cakes too, and I don't take them on because they're overrated, ugly, and don't taste that good. Yeah, you want a big-ass cinnamon roll with a plastic baby and yellow, green and purple icing? Go here!

Yep.....that's the ticket.......black! I remember when I was first struggling to get a true navy.....I had to match a swatch of material the bride gave me. I had a gel paste that was SUPPOSED to be navy, but the more I added, it just seemed more purplish and the shade never really deepened. So I added a crapload of black, and wouldn't you know it...I had a perfect navy. BUT. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's two kinds of black out there. Some blacks have green undertones and some have purple undertones. I only buy the black with purple undertones. The green undertones produce some pretty icky results a lot of times. It's easy to test for undertones....just squeeze a drop or smear a bit on a white piece of paper. You'll immediately see whether it's green or black. I've never had a good use for the green undertoned black, so I don't buy it. Another thing. I always keep a good amount of powdered color on hand. When you are coloring fondant (or marzipan, or sugarpaste or chocolate) with a large amount of color it messes with the consistency of whatever you're coloring. Enough to make it a bitch to work with. I use powdered colors to deepen whatever I'm coloring so I can maintain consistency. I use it in addition to the gel paste. I keep kneading and adding color til I'm at the correct shade. I'll add a bit of gel, then powder, then gel......alternating it lets me darken the color while maintaining the workability of the fondant. That's the only time I use powdered color for fondant though....for the deep shades. Powdered color is relatively expensive, so I reserve it mostly for chocolate use. You know what I think are the hardest color groups to duplicate? Certain purples, burgundys, fuschias and magentas.....those are TOUGH. If anyone has any good recommendations on colors I can buy regarding those shades.....let me know!

Allrighty kids......as I explained in this thread on spun sugar I had some issues with Croquembouche and was determined to conquer them. After many years and many therapy sessions to help me deal with the trauma of Jabba the Puff, I decided to give it another go. In a situation with less pressure.....my employee Xmas party, which was actually a New Year's Eve party, as we were too damn tired at Christmas. I actually almost chickened out.....but I made the decision to do it at the last minute on New Year's Eve day. Of course, Croqs need to be a last minute type of thing so it all worked out. Firstly I must tell you all that I work at the most awesome place. My co-workers are my friends and it's a very small town.......all the "foodies" here know each other, and though we "compete" with each other, we help each other as well. Just the other day, the artisan bread guy down the road spaced out when ordering flour and got caught short....he asked me for a "loan" and I was glad to oblige. The next morning he brings me the flour he owed me plus a loaf of ciabatta right out of the oven. This is truly foodie paradise.....! Anyway, we all thought that the best way to celebrate Xmas/New Year's would be to cook together, for ourselves, for fun. My co-workers plus others from restaurants in town prepared the main courses and I, well, you guessed it, did the desserts. I told everyone I was ATTEMPTING Croquembouche, because I didn't want to make any guarantees it would turn out. This time, I even had a Plan B......a couple of chocolate blood orange tarts a la Alice Medrich just in case. No pressure. I started with the choux paste, which I have perfected thanks to the help of all my eG'ers here on the P&B forum! I have what I think is the most perfect choux paste recipe ever. I mixed that up and baked off all my puffs. They would have been perfect except for the fact that I forgot to take into account that loading up 5 pans of double panned puffs in one convection oven would lower the temperature enough to reduce the puffing power of the steam coming from the eggs. So five pans of puffs were kinda puny, and the one pan I baked off by itself was perfect. After I got done kicking myself, I started on the pastry cream which I can do in my sleep. Finished the pastry cream and set it in the fridge to cool. Then it was off to help the hot siders in their endeavours and sip a few glasses of wine while doing so. Heck of a cooking party. We had a ball wrapping up beef tenderloins in puff pastry with pate and duxelle to make Beef Wellingtons. They made me pipe out the Duchesse Potatoes. More wine....more fun....so great! Make salad......get a cooking demo from one of our chef friends....we're all showing off for each other and gossiping about who's who and what's what......a foodie party extravaganza for sure. Finally pastry cream is cool enough so that I can fill all my li'l puffs. Once filled, I started three pots of sugar 15 minutes apart so that I would have all the caramel I needed just when I needed it. Wendy/Sinclair provided me her recipe for sugar that included cream of tartar and I used it.......loved it! I had none of the recrystallizing problems that I've had in the past......thanks Wendy! I dipped my puffs with the help of my co-workers using the first two pots of sugar. The last pot was for adhering all my puffs together and doing the sugar spinning. I freehanded the Croquembouche since I didn't have a mold and it was fairly small anyway. Spinning the sugar was fun, but I think I could have done it better.....my threads were fairly straw-like instead of hair-like, but good enough. I think I needed to stand a but further away from my dowels, but I'll know better next time. Anyway, enough suspense. Here's a picture of the thing. I had just enough caramel at the end to cast a star in an oiled up cookie cutter.....hard to see in the pic, but it's there. My final critique of myself? It's ok. I can do better, and will next time. At least this time I got past my fear of the almighty Croq. That's the big hurdle for me. I wanted spun sugar to make a perfect swirl around the Croq and I kept trying to "adjust" it....I found that the more you handle it, the more it compacts, so I realized I better just leave well enough alone. I also truly realized how quickly spun sugar deteriorates. I was lucky to have a relatively dry day, but even then, I could see it break down before my eyes. So after all day cooking with my friends, I went home to change into my party duds, grab my husband, get into our van, stop at the kitchen, pick up the Croq and the Wellingtons and take them out to the New Year's Party Location.......our chef friends' beautiful house overlooking Admiralty Inlet. I hadn't eaten all day (just sipped on wine) and immediately had a martini upon arriving. Then another. Ooops. Before I knew it, I was in La-La land and talking up a storm. Not sure what I said, but everyone talked to me the day after, so I knew it wasn't anything bad! I didn't do any table dancing either, thank god. I didn't make it til midnight.....I fell asleep on the daybed on the sun porch and the next thing I know I'm being handed a glass of champagne with the announcement, it's midnight! I immediately rushed into the main room thinking perhaps, like Cinderella, my Croquembouche might have turned into a pumpkin. Not so. Instead, a better sight.....most of it gone....devoured by the hungry hordes. Which leads me to my last thought of the night......Croquembouche puffs are DAMN TASTY! The crunch of the caramel, and the lightness of the pastry cream......luscious! It was the perfect dessert to cap off the perfect meal at the perfect party. And that, is Annie's Croquembouche Adventure.

Oh yeah, cookie drops are not good for modeling chocolate or anything you need to melt white chocolate for. Those damn chips have additives to help them maintain their shape in cookies and are a bitch to melt!!!!! It's better to chop up a white chocolate bar. Yeah, I hate chopping chocolate, but sometimes you have no choice! Another thing.....you can buy in modeling chocolate too. Out here, my specialty supplier, Peterson's, carried it in white and dark. It's been so long since I ordered it....I'm not sure what the brand was....maybe Cocoa Barry. I'm SO GLAD I was able to help! I'm home for nearly two weeks recovering from carpal tunnel surgery and I need to feel useful somehow! Y'all will probably see me post a lot here for a while. Try not to throw any rotten tomatoes.

You can use anything to color modeling chocolate, because when you add the corn syrup to the chocolate to make it in the first place, the chocolate in essence has already seized, so adding liquid color to it won't make it seize any more. However, the more liquid or gel color you add to it (especially when you want deeper tones), the more slack it gets, so I usually use a combination of gel/powder color to maintain consistency. I get most of my powdered colors from Country Kitchens SweetArt. My modeling chocolate recipe is as follows, and it's based on using Guittard White Satin Ribbon. Other brands of white chocolate behave differently, so adjustments may be needed (such as using a little more or less corn syrup). In micro, melt 6 lbs white chocolate. Stir often! Remember WC burns easily! When melted and perfectly smooth, heat 2 2/3 cup corn syrup for about a minute in micro. In a large plastic bowl, add your corn syrup to your melted chocolate and stir rather quickly, making sure you scrape the sides of the bowl often. I use a big rubber spatula. The mixture will seize and clean the sides of the bowl. When completely mixed, press mixture into a flat pan that has been lined with plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap up over the top. Put in fridge to set up, then bring out to room temp, break off pieces and knead it smooth. If it's cold out, I put it in the micro for about ten seconds so it doesn't kill my arm off to knead it. Hope that helps!

I wasn't going to jump into this thread since I model almost exclusively with modeling chocolate. I find it easier in a lot of ways, and the best thing is I don't have to worry about drying time, which allows me to do a lot of types of cakes with shorter notice.....although I STILL hate short notice. Why can't people plan ahead better? Argh. Anyway. Whenever I have to model something that is going to be thick or bulky, I use styrofoam as my core. It's lightweight and the porousness of it allows gumpaste and fondant to dry nicely. Even better, it's great for sticking skewers and dowels into, so you can position your figures on your cakes securely. A lot of times with modeled figures, weight is a big issue and styrofoam solves this. Jeanne, whenever I have to do a model or a figure that I'm not sure of (I don't ski either!), I do a Google Image Search and find pictures and work from that. If you type in "skier" you will get a ton of pics showing skiers in their skiing glory. I did a ski mountain cake once. I chose to do my skier in the classic "slalom" pose...knees bent, both poles at sides for balance, etc. Here's a pic... I'm not the best photographer, plus I always take my pics when I'm tired and just wanna go home, so I never bother to get a nice backdrop, etc, then I always regret it later. But maybe this will help. As per usual, except for the fondant covering the cake to give me my "snow", everything else is done with modeling chocolate. Oh yeah, another advantage to modeling chocolate is that you can build your cake first, and then model your figures to fit it. I built my skier right on the cake. Body first, then head, arms and legs. To be fair, the big disadvantage to modeling chocolate is of course, heat. If you work and live in warmer climates, making figures with modeling chocolate probably isn't the best idea since they'd all end up looking like the Wicked Witch of the West (I'm melting!!!!). But, since it IS Winter here in North America, I'll bet most of you could experiment with it now, if you wanted. Alligande........ I have done some things in fondant and sugarpaste, but never experienced any wrinkling problems......that stumps me, but I'm guessing it certainly has something to do with an uneven drying process. Wish I knew how to help you better on that one!!!

Nope, it doesn't matter....or perhaps you would just want to do the "basting" after you remove the parchment and top pan.....that kinda makes more sense......... I wanna ID the pastry tool too!

I've baked off zillions of puff pastry sheets for Napoleons, and this is what works for me. Use a flat sheet pan (or the flattest one you can find!), line it with parchment, and place your puff sheets on it. Dock them with a fork or a docker. Place a second sheet of parchment on top of the puff sheets, then lay another (flat) sheet pan on top. The weight of the sheet pan is just enough to keep the puff even and under control. After about 20 minutes of baking, remove the top sheet pan and parchment, and let the puff brown, and voila! You're done. PS. Invest in a pastry docking tool. They are great for docking stuff quickly, and serve as a great back massager, provided you have a co-worker who is trustworthy enough to use it on you. Stressed out over those Napoleons? Out comes the docking tool! Ahhhhhhh!

This is too funny you guys! Keep it going!!

Ahh...yes....and I do believe part of his last will and testament reads: Regarding the casket, may I be blunt? Screw the coffin, and bake me in a bundt!

Forget PA! Sail over to Port Townsend and anchor up at the boat haven or Point Hudson! We're a friggin' culinary mecca over here, I tell ya! Choice eats: The Wild Coho T's (formerly Lonny's) Fins Sentosa The Silverwater Cafe Provisions (for gourmet European Deli takeout!) Sweet Laurette and Cyndee's Patisserie Bread and Roses Macadoo's BBQ! Port Townsend Brewery (choice brews!) The Public House Salal Cafe..... not to mention a lot of vegan and "live" food choices at the Food Co-op!

Whenever I've had to smooth or level something down inside of a baking pan, I've just used one of those freebie bowl scrapers that my suppliers shower me with when they're trying to get me to buy stuff. You know how one side is curved and the other side is flat? I just use the flat side and it works pretty darn well. Do you have some of those lovely scrapers? If not, ask your supplier next time they waltz in. If they don't have any, threaten to go to the competition. Then, you'll have more bowl scrapers than you know what to do with......

But seriously. I did a li'l search and found that Engedura is a brand name manufactured by a company called DSM. It is the brand name for this company's active dry yeast line. Their instant dry yeast line is something called "Fermipan" which I've used many times in the past. So Engedura isn't really "french yeast"......it's yeast that was sold in France.