andiesenji

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.

Hello andiesenji, Because I will have more time and 'mind' space than usual when we are in Utah, I thought it might be a good time to delve into all those things which often get left behind for the ease of the familiar, including now the candying of ginger. However there are no Asian markets where I am going and the ginger will be only what is available in a Kroger's. Would you say that I should forget the idea for the time being? Thanks. ← The stuff from Kroger should work just fine. My recipe/method is specifically for the mature type ginger found in regular markets. It does have to be plump and smooth on the surface, no evidence of drying or wrinkling. It is the steaming until the slices are tender (and you must cut across the grain) that is important. You can steam it for 30 to 40 minutes, take a couple of pieces out of the steam and allow to cook and see how tender it is. The easiest way to do this is to bite on it. If your teeth go right through it with only a little resistance, it is ready to go into the syrup. At this stage it will be opaque. After cooking in the syrup for sufficient time for it to be candied all the way through, it will be translucent and ready to drain and dry until just tacky on the surface (may take a few days if you are in a humid climate - a fan helps if you don't have a dehydrator.) Don't be afraid to try it. Prepare a very small batch to see how it works as it is much easier to "tweak" the small batches if necessary. I make large batches in a big electric roaster, usually 10 to 15 pounds at a time, but have made batches as small as two cups (approximately). Other people who have tried it are always amazed at how easy it is, even if you have to cook it on a stove. I recommend a crock pot because then it does not have to be watched but one friend prepares it in an old electric skillet on the lowest setting and gets good results. She even uses the same skillet to steam it in a bamboo steamer - the skillet has a high domed lid that just fits over the steamer.

If glass jars rest directly on the bottom of the pot, they can develop hot spots and if the jars are not heated evenly, as they are when suspended in water, they can break, sometimes violently. I use only the racks that hold the jars securely and can be lifted out of the water without spilling the jars - mine has the handles that hook on the sides of the pot, suspending the jars out of the water so they can drip dry and avoid scalding me. The same racks fit in my pressure canner. I prefer to do things as safely as possibly. I have used my big electric roaster for canning the smaller, pint, half-pint and 4-oz jars, using the rack that holds them about 1/2 an inch from the bottom and transfer them out of the water with jar tongs. However I have the roaster on a cart that is a foot lower than my cooktop so it's much easier for me to do this. Working with a much deeper pot, on the countertop cooktop is rather awkward for me.