chefpeon

I've always rolled my gumpaste by hand....and here's why. Gumpaste dries out FAST. Even when you keep it covered. I only want to roll out a little at a time so that it doesn't dry as I'm working my flowers. When it starts to crust even slightly, you end up getting rough looking edges on petals and leaves. I've always considered machines for when I'm doing stuff in volume. Certainly makes the job easier. If I'm only doing a little bit, then the machine isn't worth the expense. But then, as everybody on here knows by now, I'm cheap. I've got a KA with the pasta maker attachment. The drawback to that is that none of the plates extrude anything very wide. Great for ribbons and bows I guess. But not good for certain flowers.....like orchids for instance. Also, in the KA manual (and from experience), when you make pasta with it, the pasta dough has to be a lot on the dry side. If it's just a tad gummy, it doesn't extrude very well. So I wonder about gumpaste.....it may be too gummy for the KA. But I've never tried it......it's just a guess on my part. I actually think a little hand crank pasta machine would be great for a lot of gumpaste work. I know Colette Peters recommends it. Cheaper than electric too. Just remember.....roll out a little at a time.

Can you clarify a bit? I've made edible pills out of modeling chocolate, fondant, gumpaste, and marzipan..... but from powder? I guess I don't get it.

Yeah, I used to get those too, but I didn't like all the shortening in those pesky creamy centers, and I didn't like the extra step of grinding it all myself, so on a whim I asked my supplier if I could get pre-ground Oreo crumbs without the creamy centers. I half expected a look from him like, "Are you crazy?", but he looked up Oreo on his computer and found out that yes, he did stock "Oreo crumbs". So I got my delivery a few days later, and there it was, a large box of finely ground Oreo cookie crumbs (about 50 lbs?).....with the brand name on the box and everything. All I had to do was scoop some crumbs into my bowl, add a bit 'o butter and I was good to go. I have definitely found that it can be hard to get your supplier to do any legwork for you. Suppliers that want to keep your business will go to great lengths to find stuff for you.....like order the stuff you want from another supplier to keep you from going to that supplier. Every time I make the threat that I'm going to "call around", they sort of "wake up" and wow, all of a sudden they can find what you're looking for.......hmmmmmm

Same here. I was thinking that perhaps using a removable bottom cheesecake pan in a waterbath might contribute to a soggy crust, but then if that were the case, all her cheesecake crusts would be soggy. I'm sort of stumped on this question to be honest. Oh by the way, I've been able to buy in straight Oreo crumbs from my suppliers in the past. It's just the cookie part, ground into crumbs without the creamy centers. A real time saver in that I didn't have to grind my crumbs in the food processor.

I will certainly say that the term "bakers flour" is pretty vague. This is the first I've heard of it. I refer to my flours as bread flours, cake flours, pastry flours, all-purpose flours, high gluten flours, whole wheat flours, rice flours, and so forth. Sheesh.....bakers flour sounds like it could be anything. I did a quick Google search and found that bakers flour refers a lot to high protein flours, but found a couple of sites that referred to their bakers flour as being a general all-purpose flour. So who knows. Generally cake flours are for just that.....cakes. Cake flour has a relatively low protein content so that it can't form long gluten strands resulting in a rubbery cake. Cake flour has some other applications too.....but mostly it's cakes. As to your question, is there a difference between bakers flour and cake flour......probably. It all depends on exactly what "bakers flour" means. I suspect it's all purpose, but I couldn't say for certain. Maybe someone else is more familiar with the term than I.

Ok, so like yeah, if you look at the actual mold like Deborah suggested, you can definitely see how the turkey and the tailfeathers are all one piece. You can tell by the mold that the tailfeather section looks much more substantial than the actual decorated cake. The cake sort of looks like the tailfeather section is a disk that's been added on and one wonders how the disk actually stays put. But the mold explains it and you can see that as a one piece cake, the feathers would stand on their own....even with ganache piped on in the leaf tip pattern that it is. So, easy solution number one is......buy the mold. Hey, it's on sale! But sheesh, even on sale I still think it's a pricey thing for a once-a-year use. If you don't want to buy the mold, and hey, I understand, since I'm the Queen o'Cheap, then this is how I would do it. Maybe not how anyone else would, but it's how I'd approach it. Actually, I'd do it one of two ways. First, I might build up a big block of cake and filling and sculpt the whole turkey out with a knife. That's how I do cars. The only problem with that is you have a LOT of cake scrap, and even I wince at the waste....oh sure, you can save it for rum balls, but I never seem to have time to make rum balls anymore. My cake scrap usually ends up molding in the fridge....but anyway..... The other way would be to bake off the roundish body of the turkey in either one of those dome shaped Wilton pans, or small bundt pans. You then put the two halves together to make a ball, and cut off the bottom of the ball so that it has a flat surface to stand on. Then cut a slice off the back of the ball so you have a flat surface for your tailfeathers. Then you apply buttercream to your ball with a leaf tip to simulate feathers. Then refrigerate. When the buttercream is set up really firm (you could put it in the freezer if you wanted), bring it out and cover it with brownish fondant. Press the fondant lightly to the buttercream so the fondant shows the pattern of the leaf tip buttercream. Refrigerate again. Make a turkey head out of marzipan, or modeling chocolate. Pour a puddle of tempered chocolate onto a piece of parchment on a sheet pan and it will naturally flow into a disk. Let that set. Bring your turkey body out of the fridge, place a skewer into the body where you want the head to go, then stick your head on the skewer. No, not your head....the turkey head. (Alternately, you can model the head right on the skewer and then insert it). Pipe a good amount of tempered chocolate onto the flat part of the turkey butt. Stick your disk on, and hold it there a few seconds. It will adhere strongly to the fondant. Then just add your details.......you can airbrush your turkey, pipe more stuff on it.....make detailed feathers out of tempered chocolate, or modeling chocolate....or pipe ganache on the disk like in the Martha Stewart picture. Whatever you're comfortable with. The only thing you don't want to do is add too much more weight to your disk. Anyway, that's my approach. Hope that helps.

Um.....errrrr.....this is going to sound, like really unprofessional and non-scientific....but....it's what I do. I used to have a recipe that I went by.....so many pounds of chocolate to cream, blah blah blah. But I've made so much ganache in my life, and have always had to make it in a hurry and on the fly, I developed my own little method. I'm pretty good at just eyeballing stuff. I do it all the time....it's quicker for me. I put whatever amount of chocolate in a bowl (or whatever container), and heat up some cream. Usually in the micro. I pour the hot cream over the chocolate to the point where the cream just obscures any view of the chocolate. And that's my ratio for pouring. If I'm going to make a ganache that I want to whip as for a filling, then I usually pour in enough cream so that it's two inches above the level of the chocolate. If I want a thick ganache, like for truffles, then I pour in cream so that it's below the level of the chocolate. It always works for me.....no measuring....weighing......sigh....I'm always in a hurry........always wingin' it.....always usin' the shortcuts! Anyway, that's my "ratio" thingy......yipes....I know it's not real clear......

Great work Dexy! I know what you mean about feeling relieved. Whenever I take on something I'm not sure I can pull off.....talk about sweating it out. I can totally relate. As far as the ganache question......I don't do anything special to make a "harder to the touch set" since no one should touch it anyway.... I just do my regular pouring ganache which I judge this way......barely warm, still fairly liquid. If it fits those criteria, then I'm good to go.

Ok. For those who actually want to know, if your curiosity has been piqued, as mine has. Especially since I have the whole Godfather trilogy on DVD, I was obsessed with seeing what the cake looked like. I asked my husband, who is a cinematographer and video and photography teacher, if I could possibly do a video capture from my computer and post the still here......but not so easy, and probably against eGullet copyright rules.....so here is my description..... It's a very short three tier round cake with each tier directly stacked on the other. Each tier is only about two to three inches high. The top surface of the bottom tier is covered with blueberries and the outer rim is fresh raspberries, then there is ivory buttercream piping done with a star tip on the outside of the raspberries. On the side of the bottom tier is gold ribbon done in kind of a scallop pattern. The middle tier has gold ribbon on the side, and star tip piping along the top edge. The top tier also has gold ribbon on the side, star tip piped top edge and the top has some sort of insignia that could be either religious or mafia related. Here's an example of the shape and in the middle of the insignia was some sort of pope looking guy. And that's it........it wasn't a sheet cake, that's for darn sure. Oh yeah, and I'd guess the bottom tier was probably an 18 inch round, the middle a 14, and the top a 12 inch......just guessin' though. So that's probably the end of this thread, huh?

The sheet pans on that site are layered aluminum....not stainless steel. Andie Man, your 50's steel pans sounded like a complete unabated nightmare! If I had to deal with all that cleaning, oiling and seasoning.....I probably would have quit the baking biz! It's a chore enough just to clean my aluminum ones when they need it! Yeah, I take those "studies" with huge grain of kosher salt (wait, isn't sodium bad for me too???). Remember the oat bran craze? Now all you have to do to lower cholesterol is get your doctor to prescribe some Zocor. The way I see it, life is hazardous to your health......something's gonna get you. You can worry all you want about aluminum, lead, free radicals, ozone, trans-fats......subscribe to the "panic du jour" and buy all-organic, or become a vegan to add extra years, days or minutes onto your life. Or not. I choose the latter. I'd rather live an enjoyable stress free, butter loaded life. If it's a few years shorter......fine. At least I was happy. Seems Julia Child lived a long life......and I bet she NEVER used margarine! I always have this vision in my mind whenever some health food freak decides to get in my face about all the "bad stuff" I'm producing for the public (and here in Hippie-town, those self righteous people are numerous.) I imagine them eating their organic food and drinkin' their carrot juice and taking their vitamins and then they are taking their morning run, and a piano falls on their head and they die. Pianos will choose anyone to fall on......not just us doughnut eating hedonists. My health routine involves a multivitamin in the morning and a lot of looking up...... I at least want to try to avoid the piano.

Check this out. Apparently there have been studies recently published about aluminum and it's link to Alzheimers. So people are reacting to this. Where I work, we used to serve Creme Brulee, Pots de Creme and Panna Cotta in little four ounce aluminum tins....we had enough complaints from paranoid customers regarding the above mentioned studies, that we had to find a different container.....which is now a little plastic container that is very flat and shallow. Now it's a pain in the ass for me to torch my brulees without melting plastic. Fun. Not. I sure hope these customers aren't drinking beverages out of cans. Did you see the news report last night that they have now determined that too much Vitamin E is harmful to the heart? Contradicts an earlier study that encourages people to take Vitamin E. If I based my lifestyle on studies, I'd surely be a lot more stressed out. If I remember right, there was a study that determined stress was bad for you........um, duh.

I always line my sheet pans with parchment liners.......even if you do that, you can't use aluminum?

Yes, do tell! Maybe you don't actually need stainless steel, but think you do. What do you want to use it for? I'm not sure they exist either......and for good reason..... I know *I* wouldn't buy one.......

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!! Good point! Honey......for Christmas I want a Wagner Power Sprayer.......

Spray booth?! Spray booth?!!!! Oooooooooh.....I get so JEALOUS when someone has more tools than I do!!! If FWED has a Pastry Chef's Wonderland in his basement......damn.....I'm so THERE! I'd love to try spraying chocolate. Problem is, if hubby found out what I was doing, he'd get "ideas". He'd want to spray ME. Then of course, I'd have to spray him. Then we'd never get anything done. Heck, we've only been married a year.....we're still newlyweds.....haven't gotten it out of our system yet.

What part was molded on those two cakes, FWED?

So what's your recipe? I'd like to know actually. Is the modeling chocolate made with this recipe fairly soft? My recipe produces a modeling chocolate that is quite stiff....I like it that way....I can do more things with it. The heat of my hands softens it up enough as it is anyway, so if I started out with something soft, it would just turn to goo on me. BTW, I was told to stir "hard and fast" so that I wouldn't get any unincorporated chocolate flakes to cause grains in it. I do end up with that oily stuff though, so the next time I make it, I'm going to stir thoroughly, but be a bit more gentle and see what happens. It's funny how you do stuff 'cause you were told to, and you don't think to question it. For dark modeling chocolate, my recipe is still 2-2/3 cup corn syrup....the chocolate is reduced to 5 lbs instead of 6.

We have the whole trilogy on DVD......although it's in my husband's classroom at the moment. I'll have him bring it home tomorrow and I'll scan through it. BTW.....whenever clients pull that stuff on me, I tell them to either bring me the "thing" (whether it's a picture, or a movie or whatever it is they want me to copy) or I charge them extra if I have to do the research myself, at $25 an hour. That price usually gets them to comply with my wishes.....

Sigh.....regarding kids.....I have found trying to get them to appreciate really good food is somewhat pointless. I have a 15 year old stepson that is into typical teenage things....soda, pizza, french fries, sub sandwiches, nachos.....kid food. He has three parents who are gourmands and really good cooks....me, his father, and his mother (who used to own and operate a coffee house here in town). He doesn't want a thing to do with anything "exotic". He just wants a slice of cheese pizza. So instead of beating my head against the wall, I just try to make him the best cheese pizza possible. Even though I think I make a pretty mean pizza, he still would rather have the pizza from Dominos. I've stopped being offended. It's just a kid thing. I remember when I was a kid, I didn't want anything really exotic either. If my parents took me to any kind of restaurant, all I wanted to order was the burger and fries. My favorite foods to this day actually. It was only when I got older....in my late 20's and 30's, did I realize that there had to be more to good food than burgers and fries, so I branched out....opened my mind to other flavors. Grew to appreciate them. My tastes matured......and I think that's how it works.....kids like kid food, and gradually their tastes mature....at their own rate. Of course, I will say that if a child is exposed and is open to, a large variety of foods at a young age, his tastes will be a little more on an adult level. My chef co-worker has two sons, 16 and 17, and they have been to Australia, Bali, Fiji, and Italy. She has cooked fresh wholesome food for them from day one, and now both of them are conscious vegetarians (although she isn't...they came up with that on their own.) They are NOT your typical teenage eaters. I think a lot of it has to do with how you are raised.

Online. Seriously. Sur La Table and Williams Sonoma.....fun, but way overpriced. City Kitchens has a lot of stuff, but it seems they never have what I need, baking-wise. Sometimes I'm able to get equipment through my commercial suppliers, like Peterson's, but that's usually "special order" and I have to wait a few weeks for it. I shop for a lot of chocolate molds and cake deco supplies up at Home Cake Decorating in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. Everyone's favorite cake decorating dive. Never liked her prices though.....she knows she's the only game in town and she can get away with it. Dawn's Craft place is fairly new, and maybe she might create enough competition to get Home Cake's prices to come down. I've never shopped at Bargreen's.....they MIGHT have what you need.....not sure. You know, this town really needs a comprehensive, full service pastry and baking supply store....any entrepreneurs out there?

Well, yeah, it is all about ratios. My theory stated above addressed the additional fat butter adds to the whole ratio of the ganache. I had thought more fat could add to one's cracking problem, but then, like I said, I could be wrong. Here's how I judge my ganache. I just use chocolate and cream, since it's always worked fine for me, however, I am going to try adding some glucose or corn syrup to it in the future and see how that works....I could always use more gloss. Anyway, if my ganache is barely warm and still quite liquid, then I know it's perfect for pouring. Won't crack. If it's barely warm and very thick, then I know I have a high ratio of chocolate to cream and if I heated it up and poured it, it would A) be too hot to apply to a buttercream covered cake, and B) will probably crack once it sets up. So here's my question.....for those of you who use butter in their ganache, why do you use butter? For flavor? Aid in pouring? Both? Does it set up better? Way back when, when I did use butter, I got a grayish bloom on my poured cakes after about a day or so. Does that happen to you or am I just a dork?

Wow! You should have told him to pay you the $27.....you could have had some nice side money just making his pies! Ok, first you make your praline.....cook your sugar til light amber, add toasted hazelnuts and toasted blanched almonds, swirl them into your amber sugar, then pour it all out onto greased parchment or a silpat (or a greased sheet pan) and let it cool til hard. Once hardened, break it into small pieces and run it in a food processor til it's ground to a fine powder. Then you add this powder to your favorite french buttercream. Yum!

Not only that, but cream cheese icing never totally sets up like buttercream. If you put fondant over it, you really risk having all the layers slide around on you.

Thanks a lot for the kudos everyone. It's always nice to hear good stuff from your peers. I really appreciate it.

You're talking about modeling chocolate, right? This is my recipe: 6 lbs white chocolate, chopped (I use Guittard White Satin Ribbon out of a 50 lb box-it's already in small pieces) 2-2/3 cup corn syrup Melt the white chocolate, either in the micro or over a water bath..... whatever your preferred method is. Make sure it is smooth, and lump free. Pour it into a nice plastic round bowl. (I like to use plastic rather than metal, because when the chocolate hits the metal it sets up where it touches metal, and that can make irritating little grains in your modeling chocolate). Heat up your corn syrup so that it is warm (I put mine in the micro for 1 minute) Pour the warm corn syrup into the white chocolate, and stir stir stir. Stir hard and fast. Use a rubber spatula so you can scrape the sides of the bowl. The chocolate will start to sieze and get kinda stretchy-rubbery like.....it will also look kinda oily. Soon the whole mass will clean the sides of the bowl, and become sort of a ball. You're done stirring. I line a half sheet pan with plastic wrap, pour my ball of chocolate into the pan, press it down with the spatula, so that it is flat and covers the whole pan. I then fold the plastic wrap up over the top, to enclose it, and then stick it in the fridge til hard. Then I pull out the pan, remove my wrapped "brick" of chocolate from it, and store it at room temp til I need it. When I need to use it, I break off a chunk and knead it til it's smooth. Sometimes (especially this time of year), the modeling chocolate is really hard to knead out because it's so cold. I just put it in the micro for a few seconds and that helps. Another thing I have discovered is that if I store the "bricks" for very long they have a tendency to sort of dry out and get crumbly, so if I have time, I try to knead them out right away and store the kneaded chocolate in ziploc bags. I don't always have time though. Luckily I go through so much of it sometimes I don't have to worry about the drying out thing. Hope that helps......