andiesenji

Leila was soaking cake layers with thick, coconut syrup, not something that can be sprayed and it takes a while to soak down into the cake. She is working mostly alone and doesn't have time to keep going back and pouring small amounts onto the tops of the cakes so it won't drip off the sides. I simply thought it was a brilliant idea and figured I would pass it along for anyone who might be in a similar situation.

The perforated pans are placed on TOP of the cake layer in which the syrup is to go. The cakes are on trays or sheet pans to catch the drips. The perforated pan keeps the syrup confined while it slowly drains into the cake itself.

Earlier today I visited a baker friend and was fascinated by the method she used to infuse syrup into cake layers. I thought I would pass it along. She did both a sheet cake and a 14 inch round that had been baked and chilled overnight. She has perforated pans, both round and rectangular, which she placed on the cakes, pierced the cakes with a skewer through the holes, then poured the syrup into the pans and stuck the cakes back into the fridge. The round one was slightly smaller than the cake, like the one pictured here. I thought this was a great idea as whenever I try to do this, I have syrup running down the sides of the cake and puddling around it. She said she has been using this technique for a year or so when someone gave her a perforated pizza pan for which she had no use in her home kitchen so took to to work.

Rob, your castagnaccio looks about twice as thick as the way I make it but that should not have much effect on the flavor. It also looks wetter than mine. How does the raw flour taste? If I can get a bit of time between now and when I leave next week, I will try to bake a batch. I think I have some chestnut flour in the freezer with my other "exotic" baking ingredients that tend to go rancid rapidly. I know I bought some last December and don't recall using it all. Will see you sometime after the 12th as I am stopping in Phoenix for a couple of days to see friends in the area before driving on to Deming.

You should try Banana Ketchup, a product I buy at my local Fillipino market

Oooooooooh. Sounds horrid. I can't imagine why, just having roasted chestnuts ground into flour should make that much difference in the flavor. The stuff I have made had a subtle flavor of chestnuts with the raisins (I used Sultanas), pinenuts and walnuts with just a hint of rosemary. The texture was close to that of somewhat crisp brownies.

I too love ketchup, so much that I often make my own.

Odd that you should mention this. Today I am preparing pecan rice. A medley of brown, red and black rice with a cup of pecans stirred after the rice has cooked and now it will be held with the "KeepWarm" function until this evening. This allows the pecan flavor to infuse into the rices without them turning to mush.

How about chestnut flour goncchi? and in my "links" file under "Nuts & Stuff" I found this interesting site Which seems to have a plethora of interesting things about chestnuts and etc. Still haven't found the recipe for the Catherine d'Medici cake/confection.

There are several wonderful Italian desserts that are based on chestnut flour. Castagnaccio is one Another is chestnut fritters. and you can substitute chestnut flour for a good portion of the flour in most biscotti recipes and substitute it for almond or hazelnut flour in any pastry that includes those nut flours. These should give your some ideas. There is also the interesting dessert that includes lots of eggs, combined with al dente angel-hair pasta and a shell made of chestnut flour, egg whites and sugar - sort of like a meringue. I have the recipe somewhere and if I can find it, will post it. I can't recall the exact name and it doesn't seem to be filed under my usual "special ingredients" category.

I have posted in other threads about how much I use and enjoy brown rices. I think the other threads all were about the rice cooking appliances. I actually prefer a blend of brown, "Wehani," mahogany, black Japonica, red and other "whole-grain" rices, often with wild rice and other grains added. I now buy the individual types and prepare my own blend but started out with the blends packaged by Lundberg.. The flavors of these blended mixtures are complex, nutty and can have an almost "meaty" flavor even without the addition of meat or poultry stocks. I now have an IH rice cooker but got similar results with the "fuzzy-logic" cookers and even with my older cookers. I have owned rice cookers ever since the first Panasonic ones appeared on the market thirty years ago. I have lost count of how many I have owned and still own several. Cooking whole grain rices takes longer than white rice. In fact, I find it tastes much better if I prepare it early in the day and leave it in the cooker with the "Keep Warm" function until dinner. The texture stays perfect and the flavor is enhanced, at least to my taste and to those to whom I serve it.

If you want to make thin apple chips, try putting them on parchment paper on a sheet pan. Once dried, roll the parchment up, crimp each end and bang them on a counter to loosen the chips. Same thing works with bananas. I use an apple corer, slicer and set the slices to about 3/8 inch. This comes out with the apple spiral-sliced but one cut down through the stack of slices will separate them into rings (with one side cut) or into halves, which I usually do as it is easier to use them in fried pies, etc., in this shape. They dry to about 1/16 inch thick when finished. With apricots and peaches, I just cut them in half. Unfortunately, I don't have a great deal of experience with drying fruit in the oven, though I have done a little. I have had my Excalibur dehydrators for more than 25 years and before that I used to use screens and dried them out in the sun. (I used screens on frames, like a box so the fruit was covered top and bottom, to keep insects away.) This worked great for me because I live in the desert and it is both very hot and very dry here. When I did use the oven, it was a long time ago and I still had a gas oven that had a standing pilot light which produced enough heat to dry small batches of fruits after the initial heating of the oven to get it started. Later, I had a small electric convection oven, the first countertop one available to consumers, in the early '80s, made by Farberware. It had a low setting 120 degrees F., which worked great for drying very small batches. As I was harvesting and drying huge batches, I got the large Excaliburs and I could have used bigger ones but until recently, there was nothing available and now I no longer do the huge batches. When I was a child, growing up in western Kentucky, fruits were dried on the galvanized roofs of two of the farm sheds, then covered with fine nylon netting to protect against birds and insects. There was always a scramble to get the fruit off the sheds when rain threatened, but the results were wonderful, which is why that I began drying my own many years ago.

For an added bit of crunch, after putting the fruit and nuts through the grinder, you can knead toasted sesame seeds into the mix - I also use toasted sunflower seeds and/or pepitas or pumpkin seeds. Needless to say, these will not keep quite as long because the seeds can become rancid if stored at room temp. However, the things I make never seem to last long enough to suffer this fate.

I have to confess that a couple of times when the turkey skin was not quite brown enough, I took my torch to it and very carefully "tinted" in so that it was nicely browned and crisp.

That's lovely, Anna. I am very impressed.

I use both chinois and tamis for straining soups, sauces and etc. The advantage to using a tamis, particularly when fine seeds are in the mix is that I can draw a plastic scraper across the tamis, shifting the seeds to the sides while forcing the pulp onto the screen. The very fine chinois I have has three layers of screen and very fine seeds often get forced between these layers - this is very difficult to clean so I now avoid using it for such things. I do use the chinois when I am forcing pulpy and fibrous fruit or vegetables through it using the cone-shaped roller.

I missed this when it was first posted. I was out of town for a couple of days. Be sure to put the sliced fruit into acidulated water as you prepare it, then pat dry with paper towels. For apples, pears and etc., after beginning them in the oven and after they begin to feel leathery, you can actually string them (with a heavy needle and dental floss) hang them where you can direct a fan blowing room temp air onto them. They will finish drying just fine this way, even with the ambient humidity. I have a friend who lives on her boat in a marina and this is her solution. The easiest way to "test" the sliced fruit is to bite into it. When it resists and is chewy, it should be done. You might find the following links helpful: drying fruit 1 drying fruit 2

Late question - do you use only non sulfured apricots? Twenty four hours in - I've got black apricots. ← Yes, I dry my own. I'm allergic to sulfites so avoid any fruits treated with sulfur.

When I don't make my own, I use this as the flavor is more pronounced than others I have tried. or this I have used both but generally buy the almond paste - maybe it is the 7-pound tin that I like. Personal preference, I guess.

You can get 8", 9", 10" 12" at fantes.com scroll down till you see them The fine mesh is very fine I have steel and wood - I use the wood for dry ingredients, the SS for wet.

Call this vendor to see if they will have it available soon. I haven't purchased from them for a couple of years but have purchased it in the past.

Clickety HERE for the recipe! Andie

Andie, Is your glace apricot method posted somewhere? ← No. It's just making up simple syrup in 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1 concentrations and cooking the dried fruits in each one, cooling and draining between sessions, for 24 hours over very low heat (in a crockpot on the lowest setting). It works with almost any dried fruit, I learned by trial and error.

Just to show how time can make a difference in candying dried fruits, the same as ginger. On the left is a batch of glacé apricots that were cooked off and on for 72 hours (in three increasingly concentrated batches of syrup). The batch on the right was cooked for 36 hours in two batches of syrup. I started with the same dried apricots (dried them myself) and as you can clearly see, the ones that were cooked longer are translucent all the way through. The second batch is a nice confection but still opaque. I can hold them at this point and finish them later as long as they are stored in syrup so the surface does not dry.

The following item was posted on another (non-food-related) forum and yet again I am reminded of how unfair it is that I cannot have chocolate. Mo's Bacon Bar I know there was some discussion of bacon mated with chocolate in one topic but I couldn't find it. The item is described as an "exotic candy bar" Has anyone tried it and if so, would it make a good gift for a person who is wild about bacon and chocolate? Inquiring minds would like to know.