chefpeon
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Posts posted by chefpeon
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I must say, after using fresh cake yeast for the past 7 months, my opinion is......
I hate it!
I "inherited" a full case of 1 lb bricks of the stuff from the baker that preceded me in my current
job. Actually, he wasn't a baker really....he was a guy....who baked. If you know the difference.
Anyway, I didn't want this case of yeast to go to waste, and I knew there was no way I was going to use it up fast enough, so I wrapped it all really well and put it in the freezer. I figured I'd pull out a brick when I needed one. As it is, I use just one third of a brick per week to make up a week's worth of cinnamon rolls. So I pull a brick from the freezer, let it thaw enough so I can cut it up into thirds, then wrap the thirds and put them in my reach-in fridge.
Well, you know how fresh cake yeast will just crumble in your hands? Once it's been frozen, it no longer does that "crumble thing". It becomes a creamy brick of goo. The consistency is totally different. At first, I thought the yeast might be toast, but I got a good rise out of it. I still don't like it because:
A) the creamy brick 'o goo is really hard to handle...actually, make that "creamy brick of glue".
That's more like it.
B) my remaining two thirds of the brick start to mold in my reach-in after about three days (what's up with that?)
C) fresh cake yeast doesn't work well with product that you need to make up and freeze. It loses
it's "oomph" way too fast. When I use SAF (my favorite) yeast, it holds up to freezing my product really well.
I'm stickin' with SAF.
Fiftydollars, here's a question for you.....
when you tested your yeast by placing it in the warm water, you DID put some sugar in
there, didn't you? Yeast needs a little sugar to react......if you just used water, the yeast
would just sit there and look dead. So maybe your yeast WASN'T dead........maybe you
just forgot the sugar.......
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The moral of the story is that you should take the time to find out what the bride is looking for and prepare a tasting based on that. You can certainly coax her toward items that you feel you make well (can can put together without much trouble), but she will be much more interested in doing business with you after showing that you've invested time and energy specifically into her.
That's works well when you do stuff on a small scale, like one or two weddings a month. But when you're faced with busy wedding seasons that entail 100 wedding cakes in a single month, you have to approach things a bit differently.
One thing I have found is that there's no way to please everyone. No matter what you do. All you can do is try to please the majority in the most efficient way possible. Some people won't like your methods even if you stand on your head and smile. I used to take a lot more things personally.....I don't so much anymore, otherwise I'd be insane. Wait.....oh crap. Too late.
I used to prepare cakes that were already split and filled, and I'd freeze them up. I would prepare the most popular flavors together, and guests could see how the cake looked. But two
things made me stop doing this.
1) People always wanted to taste a cake flavor combo that I DIDN'T have made up, and I'd tell
them to come back later and I would make it up specially for them. After all, I wanted the sale,
and I would always bend over backwards. Eventually, I discovered this extra work for just ONE
couple was a money loser for me. Especially since the flavor asked for generally was unusual,
and didn't make any other sales for me. By deciding to make all the cake flavors and filling
flavors separately and letting guests play around for themselves, it saved me this extra work.
2) I found that if you are going to showcase your cakes and have their texture and flavor be a
major selling point, then having it as freshy-fresh as possible is the best idea. The Friday before
every open house, we would bake off one eight inch round of every flavor we did, and make up all the fillings. On Saturday, we would bring out all the cakes, cut them up, and let them come to room temperature. Cakes always taste their very best at room temp. Can't stress that enough.
Truly.
Something I didn't mention in an earlier post solved my problem of guests having trouble visualizing what the inside of a finished cake looked like. Sounds funny, but a lot of people do have trouble with visualization. I made a two tier stacked wedding cake dummy. It was covered with fondant that was was the same exact shade as my buttercream. It was decorated in a swiss dot design. On the Friday before open house, I would split, fill, ice and decorate a little 6 incher, and place it on top of the dummy. Now it looked like a complete three tier cake. Then I'd cut a slice out of it, so the guests could see the inside.
My open house set-up was as follows......
A long table covered with beautiful linens and beautiful china holding all my cake samples. Nice china bowls with all my fillings. Plenty of toothpicks and little tasting spoons. My cake dummy with the "live" tier on top, displayed at one end of the table, and fresh bouquets of flowers. Hot coffee and tea. Another table filled with all my books of cake designs. Flyers and brochures detailing price structures, packages, delivery details, and flavors available. KNOWLEDGEABLE sales staff to answer questions (which is the hardest part......KNOWLEDGEABLE sales staff....yipes).
Another thing that I discovered was a selling point was the fact that my open houses were right in my production kitchen. Guests could see how well set up we were to do what we professed to do.
They were always interested in seeing the mixers, the ovens, the walk-in, cakes that were in process, etc. I was kind of amazed that the kitchen was a great backdrop, because I feared it would be the opposite.
Ok, here's the REALLY important point. I discovered in my fifteen plus years in the wedding and custom cake business, that the NUMBER ONE way to assure a cake sale is to PAY ATTENTION to your client, listen, smile, and act as though THEIR cake is the only one you are concerned about, and that you are 100% concerned about it. People are anxious when they buy things that they don't know much about. They don't know what questions to ask. They don't know if they should trust you because they really don't know how to tell the difference between a good cake person and a bad cake person. I have found that when you anticipate their questions and answer them before they are even out of their mouth, they are very reassured. Reassuring anxious couples
almost clinches the sale right there. Can you tell I've done this a lot? I could write a book called
"The Psychology of the Wedding Client".....it's funny after a while, you know EXACTLY what to say to people.
So really, to sum it up, it isn't about the cake sample, or the portfolios you show them, or the referrals you have from other customers. It's how you TREAT them. When they feel special,
they're your customers. Truly.
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Here's a valuable hint, kids.
Mix your butter and powdered sugar to a smooth paste first. Add your vanilla or whatever, THEN add your cream cheese. You won't have any powdered sugar lumps this way. Also, whenever you are making anything with cream cheese, scrape down your bowl OFTEN. You will end up with a smooth wonderful icing.
I must agree on the maple syrup thing. It's like "Hey! How can I make a difficult icing even more difficult? I know! Maple syrup!"
Also, if you increase your butter to cream cheese ratio, you will have an icing that sets up better.
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At my wedding cake shop, we had an open house and cake tasting every Saturday.
Rather than actually ice up cakes, what we did is bake an 8 inch cake of every flavor we
did, and cut them up into little cubes. Alongside each cake were toothpicks, so the guests
could spear a cube with it. Then we made up little dishes of every filling we made, and
we had little plastic tasting spoons next to the dishes. That way, our guests could spear
a cake, then go to the fillings and smear a desired filling on it and taste away. That
really worked great for us. Rather than guessing the infinite flavor combinations that
customers may choose, we let them play around and choose for themselves.
I'd suggest doing the same thing, since you're doing it on a much smaller scale...you
won't have to worry about icing up any cakes....and....you may just get some sleep.
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An easy way to do foil around the neck of the bottle is to apply a sheet of gold leaf.
It's edible.
I get mine at the art store in packets of 25. Each sheet is about 4 inches by 4 inches.
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Hey.....
I make Morning Glory muffins too......
a LOT of Morning Glory muffins. I hate making the batter, because I have to core so many apples and shred a lot of freakin' carrots. Nope, I don't peel either one of 'em. I wash the carrots and shred in the Cuisinart (wish we had a Robot Coupe, but it bit the dust), and then core my apples and "cuiz" them too....with the slicer attachment thingy.
Man.....if I had to peel the apples, I surely would freak out.
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Annie, this is going to sound pretty weird, but I've gotten brown sugar in the past that wouldn't melt in a pan with butter, period. At the time I was making bananas foster and I was so frustrated I couldn't get it to melt, I had everyone in the kitchen attempt to melt that brown sugar and no one could. Changed the brown sugar and everything worked fine as usual. So before you search too much further you might want to experiment with your br. sugar and check it out compared to another brand.
Wow, Wendy, that's interesting to hear. I was pretty frustrated waiting for that sugar to melt.
It just wouldn't....I thought I was going crazy. I wonder if there's some additive in certain brands?
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When I was in school, we learned little bit about dough enhancer/conditioners when we made bread. We had some formulas that used a product called Reddi-Sponge just so we could see the difference in the loaves we made with it. It seems it has a similar effect on doughs that sodium stearoyl lactate does.....here's some technical data. A lot of bakery suppliers carry it.
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I am not looking forward to this, chocolate glaze always dulls a little on a cold cake and this mom is high maintenance and expects the glaze to be shiny bright the entire night.
Oh my, I have BEEN there!!! I'm sure you have all these little red flags up about this woman. Oh, the stories I have about high maintenance people. My cake shop in Redmond was just down the street from the biggest Jewish synagogue in the area. What does that tell you? I had a LOT of high maintenance nervous overbearing Bar Mitzvah Moms. Yep.
1) If you use a ganache that has some corn syrup in it, it stays glossier than the kind that doesn't . I just recently discovered this.
2) Be UPFRONT about stuff to her. Make sure she understands that the cold of the walk-in can dull it a bit. She'll appreciate your honesty, and you won't have to worry about her coming back later ranting and raving. Maybe.
Chefpeon, will any kind of non-toxic spray paint work? Is clear coat the same stuff? (can you tell I've never done this?!) Any words of wisdom (one coat vs two of paint and or clear coat)? I'm definitely doing the plastic pillars, my lucite ones cost a bundle to have made years ago and while no one seems interested in using them any time soon, you can bet that as soon as I paint them, someone will want them... in clear!This is what I've done. I take whatever style pillar the customer has chosen, and use Krylon spray paint from the hardware store and spray it. Sometimes the pillar will need a second coat, it depends on the color of the paint, and whether you are painting a white pillar or a clear pillar. If I need a second coat I do so. When that is dry, I use Krylon Clear Coat to give it an extra gloss. Usually just one coat of that. I paint the pillars as far ahead in advance as I can, so they can dry COMPLETELY. The finish is hard and solid, and unless your cake has solvent in it
none of the spray paint is going to "contaminate" your cake. But like I said, if you're in any way leery about it, the simple solution is to wrap the bottom part of your pillar in saran wrap and it will ease your mind.Also, did you know that Wilton carries clear spiked pillars? That's what I use most of the time. When my customers want white pillars they have to special request them....otherwise my default pillar is the Wilton clear spiked, which comes in 5 inch, 7 inch and 9 inch. They are meant to be disposable, but I manage to eke more uses out of them.
You shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for custom lucites when you can get 'em cheap from Wilton......
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Pecan Pie
3/4 cup butter
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups pecan pieces
9 inch unbaked pie shell
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large skillet, toast pecans. Remove from skillet.
Add butter to skillet and heat over medium until browned. Reduce heat and stir in brown sugar. Let brown sugar melt a bit and turn off heat. Let cool for about 5 minutes.
In a separate bowl, mix eggs, salt and vanilla. Stir in butter/sugar mixture and pecans. Pour into unbaked pie shell Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
Help. I love this recipe, but I'm having some problems.
When I first made it, I made the small batch and although I had some difficulties, I stuck it out and it worked wonderfully.
I had to quadruple the batch size yesterday, and the difficulties I had the first time 'round were greatly magnified. The pies came out all right taste wise, but they weren't as perfect as the first time.
Here's the part I'm fuzzy on. After the butter is browned and you add the brown sugar, the mixture is extremely stiff. The recipe says to "let the brown sugar melt a bit". I'm ASSUMING
this means you need to let the sugar melt to the point where the mixture becomes a smooth stirrable consistency? By the time the sugar melts down to that point, the butter separates out, and it's nearly impossible to remix it. Yesterday the batch was so large that I couldn't stir it by hand, and thought I might be able to re-emulsify it by sticking it on the mixer. The mixer didn't re-emulsify it either....rather, I got hard brown sugar lumps in a brown butter sauce. I went ahead and added the egg mixture and pecans anyway, hoping the oven heat would remelt it all into the gooey filling I had the day before.
The pies came out ok, but the tops were dull and cloudy (not gooey-glossy and shiny), and the texture of the pie was stiff and quite grainy.
So, what I want to know is:
A) am I NOT supposed to wait until the sugar melts completely, but just gets a little warm?
B) is the browned butter/brown sugar mixture not supposed to be that stiff in the first place? Is there too much brown sugar? The recipe says "packed" brown sugar....maybe it shouldn't be
packed?
C) Claire797, have you made this before? Am I doin' it wrong?
D) Help me, I gotta work out the bugs before Turkey Day.
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I had ya' both covered
Why, yer absolutely right K8!
Please pardon the oversight!!!!
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That is adorable, Deborah!! The feathers are perfect - but better still the wormy little legs & feet steal the show - Great stuff!!!
That's what I told her too. Sometimes the tiniest little details really set something off. Those legs are freakin' brilliant in my opinion. I get my inspiration from this!
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Gosh.......
I've always assumed that if I use spray paint and then clear coat on top of that, then let it
dry thoroughly, there's no problems with "food safe" issues. I've painted pillars plenty of
times......spray paint....clear coat....let dry....no problemo.
I've done gold and silver pillars too.
I suppose if you're squeamish about it all, you could wrap the bottom part of your pillar in saran before you inserted it in the cake.
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Hate to be a rube here but 50/50 by volume or by weight?
I've done both. I've weighed 5 lbs sugar and 5 lbs water, and I've measured 5 cups sugar and 5 cups water. Either one works the same for me.
I also concur on the 50/50 thing. That's what I was taught, and that's what seems to work.
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After I sent my post, I realized I forgot to address the importance of having a support
up through the middle.
Thankfully bkeith jumped right in with that! Thanks dude!
I would definitely prepare a round plywood or particle board for the base, drill a hole and stick a good sized dowel in it. Then use the same diameter dowel to punch a hole in each of your cakes before you slide 'em on.
As Keith says, placing fondant on a shape like that is a bitch. It stretches on you, and you can't do it in large pieces, which leaves you to trying to make the seams invisible, which is also a bitch.
I definitely would use modeling chocolate for a final finish (if I didn't choose buttercream). It doesn't stretch on you, and melding the seams together is much easier.
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That truly is a beautiful cake.....I just LOVE the leaves.
Are they handpainted or thinly rolled cut outs that are applied to the fondant?
But I will say, that if you had used a pure buttercream for your outside finish, and let it set up firm before you covered it with fondant, you wouldn't have had so many bulges showing through.
I had to say that.
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Cakes 'n Stuff
Incredulous look at the screen, sputtering, but how? I thought Heliotrope would be a completely original name!I know, that's why I was going, "Whoa!" Who'd in a million years also think of that for a bakery sort of name???
Like I said, "what does it all mean, man???"
Hee hee. Good luck with choosing your name!
You sure opened Pandora's box!
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From my experience, using sponge cake isn't that much harder to use for this task than any other cake....as long as you use your cardboard circles every few layers or so. It's a bit harder
to carve because it seems a bit "rubberier", but it's still suitable. The advantage to sponge is that it's lighter, so the issues of "weight" aren't as bad.
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Oooooohhhh....
kinda funny, because
A) the most popular muffin I bake here in Port Townsend is the "Morning Glory" muffin,
and one of my competitors in town is called.......
B)"Heliotrope Mirthful Baking"
What could this all mean????
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Ok.....I'm assuming that when you say, "wine bottle shaped" you mean a completely three dimensional wine bottle standing upright....rather than, say, a flat cake laying down cut into the shape of a wine bottle.
How I'd do it: (and I've done it, by the way)
Simply stack round cakes with your ganache to form the body of the bottle. About every four layers or so, stick straws (or other supports of your choice) into the cakes and place a cardboard circle (which is the same diameter of the cakes) on top. Stack four more layers, more cardboard, etc, until it's about as tall as you want it. At this point, you can either start putting smaller diameter layers of cakes on (to start simulating the narrowing of the neck), or just carve it out from your original diameter cakes. For the narrow neck I carve out styrofoam (and it has to be the right kind of styrofoam-it's the kind of styrofoam that makes a huge snowy mess when you cut it-that's my best description). I place the carved out styrofoam neck (secured with skewers) on top of a cardboard on top of the cakes. I sculpt the whole thing to flow into the neck so there's a smooth uninterrupted look to the shape of the whole thing.
Then you pipe buttercream over the whole thing, smooth it out as much as you can with your spatula, and refrigerate til set very firm.
Now, once you take it out of the fridge, you can do one of two things:
A) put a final coat of wine-bottle green buttercream on it, smooth it out with your spatula and re-refrigerate, once firm, pull it out of the fridge, and with gloved or very very clean hands, smooth out your buttercream. I find this is the best way to smooth out buttercream with no knife marks.
B) smooth out your crumb coat with your hands, and then apply fondant or marzipan or modeling chocolate as your final finish. This is harder, and you have to do it in pieces, and have a lot of patience smoothing out your seams with hot water and a knife (how I do it).
The details......the fun part. A cork would be easy.....made out of marzipan, fondant, gumpaste or modeling chocolate. The labels made out of one of those same things. I like to roll out modeling chocolate (thinly) and hand paint the label with powdered food color mixed with lemon extract. Once dry, apply it to your bottle. Extra fun effect, use gold luster dust mixed with lemon extract for a lot of the lettering and trim on the labels.
If ya wanna go the extra mile....you could model a corkscrew lying at the base of the bottle out of chocolate or whatever.
Hope this helps and gets you started.
Cheers! And pass the wine!
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Ok. So I kitchen tested the recipe submitted above by claire797.
Wow. Wait, maybe I'm not being clear enough.....
WOW!!!
I am MAD about this recipe!
This pecan pie is so good....how good is it, you ask?
It's so good, that.....
A)Even though I hate pecan pie, I can actually eat this....not only that, but I actually enjoy it.
B) My co-worker, who is a chef from Georgia (who better than a Southerner to judge a pecan pie?), decided to bag making her own pies this Thanksgiving and ordered 12 from me!
I'd say that's pretty good.
Other than that, here's my observations about the recipe.
*Browning the butter....fun and easy. I love burning stuff on purpose.
*When I added the brown sugar, I thought perhaps I had mismeasured, because it was
very stiff. The recipe said to heat it some more til the brown sugar melted a bit....this took a
little while....I didn't want to turn up my flame too high. It helps to stir it, rather than to walk
away from it. Using a whisk is helpful because the butter tends to separate out.
*Even when my brown sugar melted to the point where my mixture was smooth, it was still pretty darn thick, and it was blazingly hot (duh, hot sugar). The recipe said to cool it for about
5 minutes before adding the eggs, but I also feared that if I waited that long it might be TOO cool and thick for me to even incorporate the eggs. At this point I was wondering if:
A) I screwed up somewhere, or
B) this recipe may not work
I feared that adding eggs to something so darn hot might curdle them immediately. I decided
to add the pecans to the mixture first, figuring they would cool down the mixture enough as not
to curdle the eggs.
Well, yeah. That worked....but the thick mixture became even thicker. I truly didn't think the eggs would incorporate at that point, but I figured I should try it anyway....what the heck.
So I added part of the egg mixture to try to thin it down gradually. Then I added the rest, and
stirred furiously......I had some lumps of almost solidified sugar, and tried to work them out the best I could, but I also knew they'd re-melt in the heat of the oven.
I then spooned the mixture into my mini 5 inch pie shells, stuck 'em in the oven and hoped for the best. 35 minutes later I removed from the oven the yummiest pecan pies ever!
Deep dark, caramely, buttery, pecan-y, and sweet, but not overy corn syrup sweet.
My co-workers raved all day, and when I delivered them to the local Co-op where they sell my
little pies, the sales staff tried my samples and three of them bought a pie immediately. Only
9 left for the customers!
I'll find out tomorrow if they sold out......I'm hoping to make a lot more tomorrow!!
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Katie's Creative Cuisine
This tells clients that:
A) Your name is Katie
B) You're creative
C) You do cuisine....and that pretty much covers it all.....appetizers, pastries, cakes, general catering....etc.
One comment about "Kakes".
When I look at that word it looks like "kah-kess" to me. Like a Greek surname or something.
I bet a lot of people might look at it the same way.
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Aside from the fact that they are more expensive, is there any reason to avoid pasteurized egg whites?
I have heard from SO many people that pasteurized egg whites don't whip well, so rather than actually finding out for myself, I believed them and used fresh. I still wonder about that. Anyone have anything to say on the "whippability" of pasteurized whites?
Thanks for the info. The link you provided states that while the Italian meringue method won't eliminate Salmonella, it can be eliminated by cooking the whites (with sugar and some water) in a double-boiler to 160F.Then that would be swiss meringue.......
As I understand it, technically speaking (and I think perhaps this is splitting hairs), but a mousse should not contain any gelating, being held together by the amazing power of eggs and whatever your flavoring ingredients are (like chocolate). When you add gelatin to hold it together, it becomes a bavarian.Holy crap! Then I've been making a hell of a lot more bavarians than I thought!!!!
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I think I'm going to whimp out and use more of a Winbeckler approach.....and build a support system, then place cake on it and sculpt. I want to do a turkey about 4x the size of the one in the photo.
So what's your plan for the support system?
Inquiring minds wanna know.
Chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
What I want to know is,
if you're going to cream the butter anyway, why does the recipe say to cut it into 1/2 inch pieces?
I also believe the act of creaming the butter BEFORE you add your sugars, and THEN creaming it even more AFTER you add your sugars is most certainly adding to your thin and crispy problem.
A little too much creaming going on there.
My suggestion:
try your recipe again, but just cream your butter and sugars together til smooth, not fluffy. Don't bother creaming the butter first. Just throw 'em all in there, and cream on medium til smooth.
And you really don't need to cut your butter into 1/2 inch pieces.....that's just an unnecessary extra step.
My chocolate chip cookie recipe, which I think is the BEST EVER (really), uses melted butter also.
It also has bread flour and milk in it. How do ya like them apples?