jgarner53

Strange. I just googled Hershey's and Scharffen Berger and didn't find any information about the buyout. Odd that google didn't pick up on the Yahoo News story. It's a sad day.

Here's a scary thought (heard from someone at work, so I'm skeptical of its truthfulness). Those little stickers were not put on for the packers, or the supermarkets, or the farmers. They were put on as a way of making the fruit/veg look more "manufactured," and thus entice more dumb, gullible Americans to eat more of it. Yeah, dimwit, that peach you're eating came out of the "peach factory." Somehow, I can't quite believe this is true because I can't believe anybody would be so thick as to believe that a piece of fruit or a vegetable had been made in a factory. Said co-worker also mentioned that they would be phasing these stickers out, for which I would be eternally grateful - nothing's worse than peeling those things off.

Almost at two months now. Yesterday my boss says to me, as I'm nearly done with the day's fruit tarts (11 of them, plus tartlets), "So, I don't know if anybody told you this [uh, no, why would they have?], but we try to shoot for about 15 minutes per tart, and 45 minutes total for all the tartlets. Just to give you a goal to aim for." Immediately, my head went into a spin. She could only have been telling me this because I'm too slow, or else why would she tell me when I was finishing the last two tarts? Why not tell me first thing in the morning when I could do something about it? I started calculating. The 11 tarts plus 45 minutes would have had me finishing by 8:30 to be done on time. I finished at 8:35. Not bad considering I'd had no idea I was supposed to be timing myself. When I'd finished, I mentioned to her that I had just gone 5 minutes over, figuring that she should know that without her prompting, I was pretty much already at that goal. Today I pushed myself and finished half an hour early (8:15 vs. 8:45), only by doing a few tasks just a bit faster (slicing fruit, spreading pastry cream in the shells). I'm glad to know that I'm pretty much already at this goal, but it did throw me to have it handed to me so late in the game yesterday. I know that speed is a big part of this career, but I hated feeling like there was a time clock over my head all day, timing every task I did. Gadzooks, tell me this will go away!

Only the chocolate glazed ones do. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Wow! Very cool! I'd always wondered how these are put together, and after Anne's post, I'm doubly curious as to how she does it!

You forgot "death by chocolate." My personal favorite, a chocolate bombe I learned to make in college, was what we called "chocolate orgasm." Haven't thought of that (or made it) in years. Though, Sam, how would you alternately name these desserts? Let's say it's a molten chocolate cake, or a flourless chocolate cake? If you're writing a menu, simply saying "Flourless chocolate cake," while perhaps, accurate, isn't going to elicit the same ooohing and aaaahing (esp. by chocoholics) as "Chocolate Decadence" or "Chocolate Heart Attack," now is it? So, rewrite the menu for us.

Oooh, black and white cookies, one of my favorites! I'd like two, please.

If you have leftover goat cheese, try the goat cheese tart with figs. It's not very sweet at all, and if you can't get figs yet, just about any other fruit will do (berries, pears, plums, apricots). It's one of my favorites. The macarons de paris recipe is a very reliable one, producing great macarons. If the flourless chocolate cake (I think it's called chocolate fondant? or gateau au chocolat) is in there, and I'm 99% sure it is, it's really good, too. The pictures of the kids in the book are Pascal's kids. My very favorite picture in there is the one of Oscar with his face covered in pot de crème. He's about to turn 4 now, and is about the cutest kid there is. (The pot de crème and crème brulée are great, too) Most of the people pictured in the book (staff) are there still, and reading the acknowledgements and looking at the pictures made me feel like I was reading someone else's yearbook, probably because I know these people and work with them every day. (I do not have the cookbook, but was perusing it the other day).

Oh what a treat! I love Manhattan, too, and always wondered what normal people ate.

Oooh, I should walk up to the 7-11 for one! I haven't had one in ages, but they've always been one of my favorite brain freeze treats! At one point, my favorite was a "smurf" slurpee - pina colada on the bottom, blue raspberry in the middle, pina colada on top.

Believe me, I was as surprised as anyone that we use Elsay considering that everything else in our bakery is true-blue - real butter in the puff and croissants, etc. Except for the cost of the vanilla (which we use plenty of in other applications), I can't imagine it would make much difference to the bottom line.

I actually kind of like that combination myself, and I don't even LIKE coconut. Citizen Cake, a high-end bakery here, does what they call the "retro shag" cake - cake filled with passionfruit mousse, iced with buttercream, and then coated with coconut flakes to look like shag carpeting.

As usual, Wendy, you're right on the money. Our mothers/grandmothers didn't have food processors, and many may not have had even a pastry cutter, yet how many of us have fond and/or idealized memories of what their pies were like?

We make all of our pastry cream at work with Elsay as well. But that's all we use it for.

Thanks, Anne, but since my husband and I are the only "guests" (they are eloping), I'm not too worried about encouraging her to think about pleasing us. Really, this cake is for them, but you do make a great point about not giving too many choices. I think I'll narrow it down to the hazelnut dacquoise/caramel option OR mango + raspberry (alternating layers). I think that passionfruit/raspberry would be too tart (since both are tart fruits). As for dinner, it hasn't been decided yet. I recommended a French restaurant, but I haven't heard back from them yet. Since it's just 4 of us, not too much pre-planning has to go into it.

I'd suggested lemon and raspberry to her, and since she didn't jump on it, I've kind of ruled that out (though it is one of my favorites) Would passion fruit go with the hazelnut dacquoise and caramel buttercream (or mousse)?

I'm doing a very good friend's wedding cake. It's just going to be them and my husband and me, so it's just one 6-inch cake. No tiers, only one chance at flavor combinations. I've asked her what kinds of flavors she likes, and here's her response: The cake's going to be a basic genoise. Since they don't drink, I can't use any alcohol either to flavor the fillings or the syrup for the cake layers. The outside will be a basic IM buttercream. Based on her suggestions, these are my thoughts: crème brulée is out (though we are having them to dinner the night before, and I will probably make that for dessert that night). Pomegranates and oranges/blood oranges seem more wintery to me, and plums and apricots strike me as being better suited to tarts. That leaves me with caramel, hazelnut, berries, mango, and passion fruit. The grapefruit thing throws me, as well. I could do a grapefruit curd, but can't possibly imagine it being very tasty as a cake filling. The cake will likely be six layers, so there are five layers of filling. I could swap out a couple of layers of cake for a hazelnut dacquoise and do a caramel mousse filling, or do a hazelnut praline mousse filling, or mix fruits: raspberry + mango, mango + passion fruit, raspberry + apricot. My friend is right. The possibilities are endless. Do you all have suggestions to help me clear my head?

We have rosemary potato chips at work that should carry a warning label they are so good. Made fresh every day.

Actually, I follow Alice Medrich's technique when melting chocolate these days. Nothing wrong with Canadian Bakin's method at all, but this is how I do it: skillet of simmering water (bubbles on the bottom of the pan, not breaking the surface), bowl (preferably stainless) with chocolate set in it. Her theory is that steam rises and is highly unlikely to settle back down on your melting chocolate. This method will accommodate most bowls, without having to worry about the fit over a pot of water, and you can easily see what temp the water's at. Haven't had a problem with it yet.

What a great topic! As I started reading, I started thinking about my own response to this. Honestly, in the last few years, my shopping habits have changed radically. Where once (and I mean back when my husband and I would go to the market with less than $20 to make it through the week) I'd buy generic with no qualms for just about anything, I quickly found that for many products, the difference in quality made the money saved not worth it. Now, I'm also considering how the animals I'm eating have been treated. I rarely shop in a supermarket anymore; most of my groceries come from Trader Joe's, where just about everything is store brand. I buy their toilet paper, paper towels, milk, juice, yogurt (though my husband would eat store brand cheap yogurt from the supermarket - ick), cheese, lunch meat, bread, butter, pasta (if they have the shape I want), canned tomatoes, canned beans, peanut butter, canned chicken broth, asceptic-packaged soups (mmm, tomato! ) They carry Niman Ranch meats and good-quality eggs, chicken, and turkey parts. Now, for things I can't get at TJ's, I almost always go for the brand name with the following exceptions: frozen vegetables, pasta (my produce market carries good Italian pasta), canned beans or tomatoes, ordinary vinegar, dried beans, popcorn. I buy steel cut oats, pastry flour, and cracked wheat in bulk. I do also buy the house brand of advil, allergy medicine, and eye drops. I'd put Double Rainbow (though not available nationally, I don't think) against your Haagen-Dazs any day. It's just as dense, and no extra junk in it either.

Mousse? You could put the mousse between layers of cake or just eat it on its own.

At the bakery where I work, we sell these huge baked meringues (they're bigger than a softball). They're flavored (lemon, lavender, whatever the pastry chef decides on) and swirled with a corresponding colored bit of meringue before baking. I personally haven't had one, but they always look so fascinating to me.

I'd say that when you're learning to bake, especially if you do a lot of off the cuff cooking where measuring isn't important, is to learn a couple of basics that will serve you well no matter what you bake. The first thing I'd say, no matter what, read the recipe thoroughly before you start and be careful to measure everything accurately. Use a knife to level off measuring cups (be sure to have both liquid and dry measures, as well as several sets of measuring spoons). The most accurate tool for measuring is a scale, but most American recipes don't offer ingredient lists in weight, just volume. The second thing is the temperature of your ingredients. What does the recipe say about the temperature of the butter? Room temp? Cold? "Room temperature" butter should still be firm enough that you can pick up a stick easily in your hands and almost bend it; it feels pliable and almost clay like. Warmer than that, and the temperature increase from mixing (due to the friction involved) may start to melt your butter and alter your results. I'd recommend Alton Brown's "I'm just here for more food," his baking book. He takes a more scientific approach, at least toward explaining the hows and whys, and groups his recipes by the method involved in mixing them together. I'd also recommend Nick Malgieri's "How To Bake," and the Cook's Illustrated "Baking Illustrated" book. There are lots of great pics in that book that show you what good and bad results of various techniques (pie crust, meringue, etc.) look like, to help you learn what to do to avoid them. (I'd have linked to amazon.com for these books, but I don't know how to do it so that eGullet can get a cut). Best yet, ask questions here. There are lots of pros and avid home bakers, as well as great demos (the one on whipping cream is excellent, and a good place to start). Don't be afraid to make mistakes. All of us here have made plenty ourselves, and most of the time, the results are still edible, even if they aren't cosmetically perfect. Your friends and family, coworkers, neighbors, even the dog will appreciate home-baked anything. A lot of the skills involved in baking, as with cooking, come with practice practice practice. Welcome!

I used to use a pastry blender when I started making crusts, but switched to the Cuisinart years ago and haven't looked back. I swear my crusts are better now than they were before, and not just by virtue of the experience of time.

Yes, she is! I work with her every day. She's the assistant PC and running the show while the exec is on vacation. She's really nice, and great to work with. Yes. He's been on prednisone/leukeran for about a year and a half, since his IBD was diagnosed (and we came close to losing him then). We scaled it back at the beginning of this year, but now stepped it back up again, and started vincristine yesterday. In two weeks, they'll recheck to see what change there's been in the tumor. He's doing pretty well right now, sleeping a lot, but has a great appetite, and no side effects so far. Today I upended a stack of sheet pans to work the tarts on, which seemed to help some, but I was leery of setting a cutting board up the same way (or on an upended hotel pan) because of all the damned juice (first day for peaches!). But regardless, it's Saturday, and it's gonna be 4 hours of fruit no matter which way you slice it (and that was with help on 4 of them). ha ha I guess it could be worse. I could be the one separating case after case of eggs, prepping apples, or sheeting dough all day.