chefpeon
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Posts posted by chefpeon
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This year Santa brought me a really nice instant-read digital thermometer,
a wonderful heavy duty tartlette pan (it makes twelve mini tartlettes) and a book called
"Chef's Secrets" with an appearance by Mr. Laiskonis who tells how to spray-paint with
chocolate......
What'd you get?
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Thanks for all the replies so far, everybody!
Wendy, your detailed specifics on spinning were exactly what I needed. I need all the help I can get. I sort of remembered it was a bit of a messy job.....I'll be putting down some plastic on the floor for sure. Also, since I face carpal tunnel surgery in about two weeks, I certainly don't need to toast my arm anymore than it's already toasted. It'll be a cut-off whisk for me!
This time I don't have access to a croquembouche mold, but I do know some people in the city transportation dept. who will let me use a traffic cone. I know they're gonna say, "You want it for WHAT?" Hee hee.
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Perhaps some of you spun sugar folks would be so kind as to offer me suggestions on this thread....
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Ok, we all have our weaknesses. Mine is sugar work.
A) Because molten sugar is hot and scary
1) I'm a klutz
2) When I was first learning sugar work I burned myself too many times, creating unusual
phobia (see (1))
B) Never had much of an opportunity to do it either. When I did, I was scared (see A) and ran away.
My New Year's resolution is to conquer my fears. Fear number one, sugar work.
I have decided to do a Croquembouche for our New Year's Party at work. I have only made
one Croquembouche before......and that was an all-night nightmare that I tried to do on
3 hours of sleep and after a 12 hour bread shift. One of the worst nights of my life.
Not only that, but it was probably the worlds WORST Croquembouche. Too ashamed to take a picture, but I probably should have, just to document how much I can suck at something!
Wanna know how much it sucked?
*Ok, first, I had only 3 hours of sleep and just finished a 12 hour bread shift. Shows you my state of mind. Or lack of it.
*Only had one small cooking pot and had no idea that I was gonna need a LOT of caramel for this thing.
*Croquembouche was supposed to feed 300 people. I figured 3 puffs per person....times 300...um, equals, yes, 900 puffs. You see where I'm going here?
*Had no idea there was such a thing as a Croquembouche mold. Or that the shop I worked in actually had one.....in plain sight. I was REALLY green (this was about 12 years ago) and I'd always wondered what that huge metallic pastry tip was on top of the walk-in.
Never thought to actually question the customer's request and make several smaller Croqs instead of one large one. In my mind, the customer gets what the customer wants. They
wanted one large Croq to feed 300 people. How hard could that be? Ha-ha.
*I did have the presence of mind to bake all the puffs in advance, and make the pastry cream.
I figured all I'd have to do is finish the bread shift, boil up a pot o' caramel, fill the puffs, dip 'em, stick 'em together, and spin a little sugar, and I'm done. HA!
You do the math. I've got one little pot of sugar going. I'm filling 900 puffs. Take my first pot of sugar too far. Have to start over. Wait for sugar to caramelize again. Start dipping. Sugar cools off really fast.....and I've only dipped about 20 puffs. At this point I realize I'm in big trouble when I realize how many pots of sugar I'm going to have to boil up to finish this puppy. And how long it's going to take. And how freakin' huge this thing is going to be, and that it just might collapse under it's own weight. I start to cry and freak out, but I try to remain calm and stick to the original plan. It was too late for plan B....especially since I didn't have a plan B, and I was too panicked to think of one.
So I frantically work as fast as my newbie greenhorn little hands can, and end up with the biggest, most lopsided, clumsy cone of puffs, one has ever seen. My fingers were burned to a crisp from touching too much hot caramel and I was beyond tired. At that point I decided to
bag the spun sugar because I wasn't up to boiling up my millionth pot of caramel, and besides,
it would be like putting lipstick on Quasimodo. NOTHING would make that monster look any better. I have taken to referring to it as Jabba the Puff. Horrid. Absolutely horrid.
I was certain my customers would want their money back once they saw it. But you know, I never heard back from them. They paid the money....they ate it......talk about miracles.
If I were them, I would have taken one look at it and said, "What the HELL is THIS????"
But they didn't.......whew!
Horrible experience.....but a damn funny and humbling story.
ANYWAY......this probably should have been on the Croq thread, but here's the point of my topic.....I have learned enough from reading the Croq thread, and from watching other Croqs
being done, and from having a heck of a lot more experience under my belt to try this again.
Of course, it's only 30 people this time, and I know what a Croq mold is
. I want all your tips on how to spin sugar. I've only seen it done once. Can you believe it?
I'm not sure I remember exactly how to do it. I know you all have plenty to offer on the
subject, so I'm all ears!
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I have also found that the average candy/fry thermometer gets out of calibration pretty quickly, and there is no way I know of to recalibrate them.
I noticed that same problem when I used a "dial type" candy/fry thermometer. Mine was 25 degrees off. I tossed it and got the kind of candy thermometer that has the bulb on the bottom
and the liquid inside. I've found it to be dead-on accurate, and not only that, cheap!
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On the topic of covering with fondant don't you have to cover the styrofoam with something so the fondant will adhere.
I just dip my hand in water and coat one side of the fondant with it just enough to make it sticky
and tacky. That side goes against the styrofoam. Works like a charm and makes the fondant quite easy to remove when you decide to re-do it.
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No way around it, royal does turn yellow in time.
How weird. It's never done that to me. I make my royal for cake dummies with meringue powder, water and powdered sugar. I wonder if the meringue powder prevents yellowing?
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I've always used fondant. The kind you roll out...not the pourable stuff. Smooth...easy to use.....no discoloration. If I want my fondant to resemble "buttercream" I just color it to match the off-white shade of my buttercream.
Another bonus is that I can remove the fondant from the styrofoam "cake" and reuse the
styrofoam when it's time to make a new one. You can't do that when you use royal icing
or "spackle" or whatever.
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I live in Port Townsend......the Nifty Fifties is a cute little place. Clean, diner-themed kind of joint. The people who own it also run the mexican place, El Sarape across the street.
My favorite fifties diner though, is the place that's off of Steven's Pass. I think it's Steven's
Pass.......can't remember the exact name of it, but it's great. I love to order the tower
of onion rings!
Anyone remember the "Dog House?" It's now the Hurricane I think. In downtown Seattle.
I loved the "Dog House". Same guy playing a cheesy keyboard in the bar every night.
Pull tabs at the cash register. Surly but kind waitresses. A menu that warned in small
print that the ribeye's "tenderness not guaranteed". Talk about atmosphere! God I loved
that place.
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My husband, stepson and I live in Port Townsend. Whenever we make the trip into Seattle (and especially our Christmas trip to Archie McPhee's for stocking stuffers), we go to Dick's in Wallingford. No trip to Seattle goes without a stop at Dick's. It's our favorite....bar none.
It certainly doesn't surprise me that they don't do special orders. I am always amazed that for as long as the lines are sometimes, things still move pretty damn quickly. No special orders is probably one of the good reasons for this. Also, the employees add the totals up in their heads, which saves time. They really rock'n roll in there....and I think Dick's is a prime example of a really well run business. Prompt and consistent service to customers, and great treatment of their employees. I'm sure the number of customers who get pissed off because they don't do special orders are insignificant enough that the lost business isn't much of a concern.
Dick's never professed to be a "Nordstroms" of the burger business. You get what you get.
That's the beauty and simplicity of it.
There's lots of gourmet burger places in Seattle that will be happy to kiss your ass for the business. But ass-kissing is costly.....another reason for the reasonable prices at Dick's.
I also have an insider's view of the whole "special order" thing. I worked at McDonald's when
I was in high school. When you're on the burger grill, your job is to crank those puppies out.
It was very "production line" oriented, just like at Dick's. Watch them. It's very methodical,
repetitive and choreographed. No wasted moves. Once you figure out the rhythm of it all,
you can master the dance quite well. Well imagine, that you're doin' your dance and some
guy decides to stick his foot out and trip you. That's what a special order is like. We grilled
up burgers in "runs". When I got a special order slip, I had to remember on the next run,
that I had to leave off the pickles, or mustard, or ketchup or something. I'd have this in my
head for about 5 seconds, and I'd start the next run. Still in my rhythm, before I knew it
I'd cranked out the run and forgot to leave the pickles off the special order. So I'd have to
wait until the NEXT run to make the special order. By this time the customer is pissed off
because he's had to wait so long. We worked fast....at least I did. Special orders slowed
me up.....as they do for most production oriented places.
What about if Dick's just fried up the burgers, and put 'em on buns, and let the customers
dress them up as they pleased by offering a condiment bar? That just means more health
hazards caused by people that have no concept of hygiene, and a couple of employees to
maintain the bar...one to clean and one to stock....it also means long lines of people waiting
to dress their burger which isn't good for business; no one wants to wait in two lines. Plus they'd
have to add space inside for this all to happen, which is costly. One of the appeals of Dick's is
the reasonable cost. The other is the consistency. You know exactly what you're going to get.
I've eaten zillions of Dick's burgers, and they've always tasted EXACTLY the same. I like that.
I like knowing that I'm going to get exactly what I'm expecting.
Anyone who's worked in the restaurant business as I have, knows that it's IMPOSSIBLE to
please everyone. When you open an establishment, you have to decide what you're going to
do, and who you're going to cater to, and not deviate from that vision. Once you do, you
set yourself up for trouble. Listening to suggestions from well meaning people can be good,
but once you start trying to please everyone your costs go up and before you know it, you're
out of business.
Dick's is still in business, because they've stuck to their vision and their business goals.
I admire that.
And I love their fries.
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I tried going to the puratos web site, but can't find any US locations - maybe I'm looking in the wrong place? I know they advertise in Modern Baking, there has to be something in New England.
I know, it's weird....I visited the Puratos website too, and if you go by that, you would think they don't have a presence here. Here's what I know. In Seattle, there was a supplier that I used for a long time, called "Sam Wylde Flour Company". Turns out Sam got bought by Puratos. I don't know how many other local suppliers that Puratos bought into, and maybe they don't have a presence in New England yet. Regardless, Skor is a Hershey product.....curiously, when I checked Hershey's website, the Skor brand isn't even mentioned. But Heath is. Maybe Hershey's DID discontinue the Skor bar, and Puratos hasn't informed me yet. Just like them.
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I order the chopped Skor bits in cases from my supplier, which is Puratos. They aren't real
good about keeping them in stock, but since I know that, I always place my order way ahead,
so I can get 'em when I need 'em. Have you checked with your supplier about buying by the
case? Can they special order them? If you get them from a commercial supplier, you'll probably
save a little money too.
Also, have you asked the store manager about why they stopped carrying the Skor bits? Usually if you ask them to start carrying something again, they will.
Regarding the peppermint candy bits, I'm guessing that they stay more solid in the ice cream because they are added at the end of the process, so there's no time for them to soften and bleed. When added to a cheesecake batter they have time to soften because they're in the
liquid batter for quite a while before it sets in the oven. Personally, I like the fact that they
soften and bleed in a cheesecake as it will flavor the whole thing quite nicely.
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In the 'good old days' (read When Mom was doing the cooking<G>), I remember an occasional pie where the filling was neither custard like, nor runny. It was as if the filling had undergone a 'brown' change that resulted in a very gummy sticky quality where the pecans ended up embedded in the filling and pretty much one had to chisel the pie out of the pan.
Like Wendy mentioned, I think all you have to do is make a stove top caramel and pour it over your toasted pecans in a blind baked pie shell. You'll definitely have a "stick to your teeth" caramely pecan fest!
This might best be done in a shallow tart shell rather than a deep pie shell. Just a thought.
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There is one good thing about the fact that my hands are washed about 200 zillion times a day.
I never get sick. Seriously.
My husband is a teacher and brings home the sniffles from all the disease-vectors in his classroom. He's always coming down with something. My stepson too. But I just cruise
merrily along, sniffle and sneeze-free. I'm convinced it's because of the hand washing.
My hands are cracked and dry most all the time. If it gets bothersome, I do the cotton
gloves and vaseline thing, but usually only if they've gotten to the point where they're bleeding.
I've been doing this so long that I'm USED to dry hands. Never have time to apply lotion, and I'd never do it at work, so I just don't. I've got large ugly weathered hands.....but I'm proud of 'em.
Burns! I burn myself daily. Well almost daily. Why? Well, for one, I'm a klutz, and secondly, I have this really bizarre setup in my kitchen where my convection oven doors swing out and block
my cooling rack. It's hard to explain, but the doors always swing back and knock the sheet pan around in my hands, and the edge of the sheet pan always touches my inner arm. I don't wear long sleeves because I hate being hot, and short sleeves work better when you're scraping down 60 qt. mixing bowls. So my bare arms are exposed and it's hard to go through a day without those damn oven doors hitting my sheet pans. Burn city. My arms look like I'm a zebra.
I have so many going at any given time I don't have time for aloe or Mederma or whatever. I just tough it out, if that's what you want to call it. I don't even notice the burns anymore...I
guess you just get acclimated to it in a way.
You know what I find really annoying? Cuts. Bleeding is so inconvenient! I actually have to stop working to find a bandage. It slows me up. And Murphy's Law of Cuts is:
It's invariable that you will have to juice a lemon soon after you've sliced yourself.
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I will have to find a way to make a sauce out of rat piss and velvetta.
Gosh, I hate to tell you, but Denny's already beat you to it.......
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I may end up eating 20 pecan pies before I find what I'm looking for!
So, what ARE you looking for?
Epilogue to my above pecan pie soap opera.
Turns out I didn't get any pie orders for Thanksgiving (well, I did, but egos and politics
interfered-long story) so I stopped sweating the problem til I had time to tackle it again.
Today I made claire797's recipe again, and didn't try to melt the brown sugar this time.
Worked great, and it sure made the job easier! Not only that, but I added fresh cranberries
to it. 'Tis true, the tartness of the cranberries offsets the sweet pecan filling, and I think
it's superior to plain pecan pie.....not too sweet! The cranberries float on the top, so they
make the pie look prettier too.
I'm going to make a bunch of 3 inch pecan cranberry tarts for my husband's work
Xmas party next week!
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Yep, that's a mini version of the dough hooks that I've used a lot on Hobarts and other types of bread mixers. I loved that style of hook....you can see as it moves the dough around in the mixer, that it is a more thorough knead. I'm sure the mini version is just as good.
OF COURSE it won't fit on older models.....this is just a great new way to sell more KitchenAids!
Brilliant!
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The customers were raving about the bar. I do recall in a previous thread on the forum some comments about freezing cheesecake and the consistency not being so nice. So I wonder how are they doing this and coming out with an acceptable product.
On that same thread, a lot of us professed to have no problem freezing cheesecake. I was one of them. In my experience, being able to freeze cheesecakes is a lifesaver. You can make them in advance, freeze and pull out when needed. It's a great trick to have in your bag when someone needs a last minute dessert, and you don't have the time!
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But if you want to see my blood pressure go up, just mention the words "flat sheet pan". Grrr. What the hell do they do to those things, anyway?
What? Are you trying to say that all your sheet pans are warped at the Bellagio?
Most of mine are too. I hide my flat ones so the hot side doesn't put them in their
infamous 500 degree ovens.
Actually that's a good question......I've never personally warped a sheet pan myself.
How DOES one screw a pan up that bad anyway?
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I think you're right Wendy......
probably the WORST problem to have as a PC, is to have your kitchen too hot to produce.
I can see why you're going ballistic.
I hope your idea of working at night solves the problem for you!
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Yep, Wendy, I've been there, and I'm still there.
I work along with "hot side" people too. And although they are pretty darn considerate and great professionals in their own right, they make me nuts.
I've had them turn the oven to 500 without checking to see if I had something in there first.
I've had them put meat with fish sauce on an oven shelf above my cheesecakes (mmmmm! fish sauce cheesecake!!)
They take my personal tools (which of course are in MUCH better condition than theirs), and use them, and they never put them back. So when I need them, I can't find them, and that just MAKES ME CRAZY!
Their dishes pile up in the sink so bad I have no choice but to run them through before I can get to my own. I become their dishwasher.....rrrrrrrrrrr!
They use my tamis as a serving dish. I don't know how many times I've gone to look for it, and then find it in the deli case with little bags of salad in it. They think it looks pretty (it's wooden).
I told them "please don't use my pastry tools as serving dishes". I have to remind them of this about once a week. At least I know where to find it......in the deli case......sigh.
If my work table has as any empty space available, they immediately put it to good use. Whenever I clear it off and bleach it down to roll out cinnamon roll dough, there is immediately
bowls and raw meat sitting there. It's like magic!
Then one day, you're tired of being their dishwasher and you just want to use your tamis without having to take salad out of it first, so you have a little tantrum, and they think you've gone crazy.
Yep. I can relate.
What do you do? I sure wish I knew. The "sitting down in a relaxed environment" thing to hammer it all out does work......for about a week. Then it's back to the same old. It's like they forget.
It makes me crazy......crazy I say!
I'm sure a lot of "hot siders" think we PC's are a bunch of anal-retentive sniveling little perfectionists. Well, yeah we are, but, we wouldn't do so much sniveling if you could just
respect us a little more!
Wendy, do what I do......it's similar to imagining people in their underwear when you're in a public speaking situation. Have you ever had a "hot sider" try to do a pastry task and screw it up royally? Have you ever taken pleasure in their pain? I have and enjoyed every minute of it, especially when they come groveling to me to help them. Bwa-ha-ha! I try to remember those times, and know they will happen again and I milk it for all it's worth. As Ken says in the end of "A Fish Called Wanda", "Revenge! Revenge!"
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Nice work Annie!
................I have to admit I didn't understand how your reversed image helped when it came to the raised dimensions for the face and house. Doesn't you base cover over that? Can you explain more, please? Aren't you free handing at that step?
Ok, I reverse the image in Photoshop so that the whole nickel looks backwards. When I pipe all the chocolate on, and then flip it over to peel the paper off once it's set, it's all frontways again.
To achieve the raised images of the face and building, I just piped more white chocolate on top of what I already had, so in essence I piped the face and building twice: once to achieve the picture within the disk and twice to raise the image up. Hope that's clear enough.....easy to do but harder to explain!
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When I said "let the sugar melt a bit" I just meant let it sit there and kind of dissolve a little before adding the eggs.
Ok, I'm clear now....that's what I wanted to know.
I was trying to cook the sugar down to liquid.......yipes!
I'm glad I don't have to do that!
Thanks a lot!!
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I wanted to post this as sort of an example of how you could do your cake.
These double nickels were two chocolate panels on top of two round cakes. All the client had to
do was lift the panels off and cut the cake. Since I was so liberal with the silver luster dust, I wanted to keep it off the cake as much as possible. I'm pretty leery of the "non toxic but not suitable for consumption" thing. How vague is that? Well, it won't hurt you if you eat it, but you
shouldn't eat it......talk about confusing! So I just err on the side of caution.
With the help of my trusty Macintosh, I scanned the front and back of a nickel. Then I imported the image into Photoshop and ran it through a filter that made the picture look more like a "Paint-by-number" image. I then enlarged the images to the size I wanted, and printed them out in reverse. I used many shades of gray, black and white to painstakingly create the images in white chocolate on top of the printouts. I just piped all the colors of white chocolate directly on the paper on the images. Sort of like tracing. After the chocolate sets, the paper peels off, and voila!
I had my nickels. But I wasn't done yet. I wanted to recreate the raised effect of the letters, and
Jefferson, etc, so I re-piped all my shades of chocolate on top of the chocolate disk I had previously made to give it dimension. Then I scraped it smooth with the edge of a knife, and went crazy with the luster dust. And there you have it. Took me 6 hours. I was a bit cranky by the end of it all.
Anyway, I guess my suggestion is that you can do your Amex card in chocolate, like I did, and go nuts with the luster dust, or gold leaf or what have you, and not worry too much about your clients eating it and dropping dead or getting sick, if it's on a removable chocolate panel. Another bonus is that clients love decorations they can keep......they don't feel so bad about dropping a wad of money on a cake. Sort of like taking a doggie bag home from a restaurant. If there's stuff left over, they feel like they've gotten their money's worth.
Edited to add: Why double nickels? The Birthday Girl was 55 of course!
Naughty or Nice?
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by chefpeon (log)
Isn't that funny.....when I first got my microplane, my instinct was to hold the fruit and move the zester. I thought it was strange when I saw my co-workers holding the tool and moving the fruit.....so I said something......and they're like, "d'oh! Why didn't we think of that?" So they do
it the "wrong way" on TV too, huh?
The book I got, "Chef's Secrets-Insider Techniques from Today's Culinary Masters" is "written" all the different chefs contributing, but it was compiled by Francine Maroukian. It's published by
Quirk Books, and the book is right on the website.......