jgarner53
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Posts posted by jgarner53
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It must have been something in my EZ-Bake oven. I can't remember cooking anything before that (about age 7). I liked to "help" my mom make pie crust and probably could make toast, but I don't think I did anything like scrambled eggs until later. If the EZ-Bake doesn't count, it would have to have been a cake.
I do remember being exceptionally good at licking bowls and beaters, though!
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who can NOT sample a cookie straight out of the oven?
That's what we professionals call "quality control." It's highly recommended.
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Congratulations! It's really a remarkable achievement, especially considering how much press/attention you've gotten. You seem poised on the verge of being really big, and you can be proud that it's mainly due to your hard work and determination.
Maybe to celebrate, you can take an hour or so off? Get a full night's sleep? Eat a meal sitting down?
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Not a born foodie, me, but probably early signs of my new career (pastry) showed up early on. For regular food, I was always quite picky, and happy lived on things like Spaghettios, frozen chicken pot pies, and McDonald's.
That said, I did take an interest in baking pretty early. I remember getting fed up with my EZ-Bake Oven pretty quickly because everything was so darned small! (And it didn't taste very good). I also remember having a toy fondue pot, where you dunked miniature marshmallows into various sauces (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry). I remember being consumed by chocolate cake and digging through my mom's cookbooks for recipes that used cocoa powder instead of squares of chocolate, either because I wasn't allowed to use the stove, or was afraid of something as ominously named as a "double boiler."
I think that I also didn't like the fact that unsweetened chocolate looked like chocolate and smelled like chocolate, but you couldn't eat it!I did, for a while, use canned frosting, mainly, I think, because I liked to snack on it (chocolate frosting spread on graham crackers? heaven), but eventually learned how to make the basic powdered sugar buttercream.
Angel food cakes? Not a problem for me. I loved making things that other people thought were difficult (still do). In college I became fascinated with bread and made all kinds of loaves. For a German class in college, I made a Schwarzwaldkirschtorte (Black Forest Cake), and wanting it to be authentic, I managed to procure some kirsch (though underage, and apparently unconcerned with the school's ban on alcohol) and put the whole thing together in the underequipped dorm kitchen.
My favorite part when my mom made a pie was the scraps she'd let me press into a 6-inch pie plate she had, then sprinkle butter and cinnamon sugar on before baking. That was our treat to eat while the pie baked.
When we had pancakes, she would give me a small cup of batter for myself, which I would color with food coloring (I think my favorite was green), and then pour out into shapes. Why eat round pancakes when you can have green snowmen, or bunny rabbits?
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Our prep knives never go in the dishwasher (except when my brother-in-law, trying to be helpful, by doing the dishes, put one in by mistake; fortunately, I rescued it in time). But butter knives, sure. My husband and I have a system whereby I usually put in all my silverware business end down, and he puts his in business end up. I think we read the same info when we got our dishwasher about mixing things up and down to reduce nesting.
I'd probably be inclined to wash steak knives (if we had any) by hand for that reason - wouldn't want to impale myself on the pointy end of a steak knife!
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My personal favorite is Alton Brown's chewy variation on the basic Toll House recipe.
It's very easy to put together. Just follow the instructions. Make sure your ingredients are all room temperature (about 68ºF). In this recipe, you melt the butter, so you don't have to worry about it being too hard or too soft.
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The crust looks pretty soft, not really crispy or crunchy
I'm not sure how old those cannelés were; the crust wasn't soft at all, though. There was an element of crispness on the very outside, followed by chewy. If they had been a bit fresher, I'm sure they'd have been crunchier.
I don't think ours have ever been washed. The only way you know they're copper is to see the humps on the bottom (which don't accumulate the crud for some reason). Waxing them is a dirty job. I can't imagine the fortune we have invested in those molds. We easily have several hundred.
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100 grams of butter per liter of milk (does mental math for 12L batch which uses 1200g of butter....yeah, that's right, isn't it?)
Milk is scalded with vanilla, and butter added to milk and allowed to cool somewhat before being mixed in with the rest of the ingredients.
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Tapping down on the pan hasn't helped my problem at all.
I know for a fact that our macaroon baker does not tap his pans. Then again, he makes pans and pans of these every day, and for who knows how many years. He could probably do it in his sleep.
The best luck I had with macaroons was with a batter that was stiff enough to hold its shape, more or less, when piped, and I let the pans sit out for a good half hour or more.
Keep trying, and know that they're not an easy thing.
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OK. Since it had been a couple of weeks since tasting one, I brought a couple home today.
These were baked this morning and are probably no more than 8 hours old (no way to know exactly when they came out).
The exterior is crisp and somewhat chewy. The interior is moist, custardy, but with an airiness or sort of crumb structure to it (meaning it isn't solid, as you can see from the pic). Taste? Divine, though I tend to find them very sweet. The beeswax adds a very, very subtle flavor; you have to know what it is in order to identify it, really. The rum is a deep backnote, barely perceptible. If I didn't know there was rum in the batter, I probably wouldn't identify it.
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You could also frost the cake with ice cream. You freeze the cake and then frost it with ice cream that has been softened to the consistency of frosting.
My first job was also in an ice cream shop, and I made an ice cream cake for my brother after the '84 Olympics. I did the whole thing inside our walk-in freezer because I was too worried the ice cream would get too soft for the icing! I even decorated it in there! (I did a replica of the icon for his sport - rowing - in piping gel)
I think that Baskin-Robbins ices their ice cream cakes in the shortening-based buttercream; at least that what it seems like from the few times I've been at parties where they're served.
As for your decoration, I'd find a daschund that you like and trace it onto the surface of your icing (with a toothpick punched through the paper) before trying to fill it in. You could also use royal icing.
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The center of our cannelés is more like a moist, airy cake than a crème brulée. It's custardy, but with more structure.
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Here's a good one from this past weekend. I'd gone out to Sacramento for a friend's birthday party. She'd picked the place, but had never been, but picked it based on the criteria of having food and live music.
First off, the bar we were supposed to meet at first didn't open until 7pm (on a Friday!) That should have been a sign that the evening was cursed, but we bravely soldiered on, and after everyone had gathered, we went into a divier bar next door to the restaurant for a drink before dinner.
So we get into the restaurant - we are the first customers, as it also opened at 7pm. This place has only been open a couple of months. Waitresses are dressed as "saloon girls" in black corsets and short black skirts. Fishnets are, apparently, optional.
Our waitress, a young woman, probably no more than in her early 20's, and probably in her first waitressing job, explains the menu:For a fixed $19.95 price, we got a three-course meal, with salad (with "house-made" Thousand Island vinaigrette
), a choice of BBQ baby back ribs, served with cornbread and coleslaw, chicken pasta with fresh vegetables (which that night were canned artichoke hearts and mushrooms), or shrimp scampi. Our table ordered the variety of stuff, so some of everything appeared at the table. I ordered the ribs.Salad was a sad display of iceberg lettuce slathered with a mayo-based dressing, two or three kidney beans, and one beet slice. Not especially great, but considering how hungry I was, edible.
Dinner arrived, and they brought me the shrimp by mistake. Shrimp skimpy might have been a more accurate description, since there were only 5 average-sized shrimp on the plate, along with a pile of what turned out to be INSTANT mashed potatoes, and sauteed mushrooms, which, by the looks of them, were what went into the pasta. My neighbor ordered the ribs, as well, which came with a slice of toasted French bread (no corn bread), and seemingly dry, with no sauce). The pasta looked OK, though bland. My ribs arrived about 10 minutes later, as everybody was finishing up their entrees.
No slaw. No cornbread. What I'm guessing they did was to remove the shrimp from my plate and stick on the ribs because I had the instant mash and mushrooms that the shrimp people had had. My ribs? They had sauce. And were raw. Not rare, which would have been odd enough. But raw.
Oh, parts of them were cooked, but of the 4 ribs on my plate, only one was even close to edible. I made do with the mashed potatoes and mushrooms.When the waitress came to clear my plate, she asked me how everything was. I said, very nicely, that my ribs were raw. She took them back into the kitchen and came back out about 5 minutes later and asked if I wanted them cooked more.
Huh? No, thank you. Just bring me dessert, and let's get this over with. (the live music was awful as well).Dessert? Well, wouldn't you know that it was just as special as the rest of the meal: two rock-hard oatmeal raisin cookies with a scoop of ice cream in between. The kind of vanilla ice cream that won't melt after 25 minutes on the plate. Can't eat it with a knife and fork. If you pick it up with your fingers, and bite down on the cookies, ice cream squishes out the other side.
The only saving grace of the whole evening was that they did remove the cost of my meal from the tab, and all of us had such a horrific time that we could laugh about it once we'd left.
I'm sure this place is doomed, and I did feel bad for the servers and what was passing for kitchen staff. They seemed to have a rather busy bar crowd that accumulated while we endured dinner, and I thought that if they just did bar food (buffalo wings, onion rings, nachos, that sort of thing), they'd be far better off because actually trying to cook anything was a huge bust.
And my friend is never, ever allowed to pick her birthday spot again.
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soggy toast bad
crispy warm toast good
which probably explains why I gobble up my toast so quickly and order an English muffin or something besides toast if we're out at breakfast.
cold, soggy toast really bad
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Pics are just fine by me, as well. I'm on DSL.
I'm so excited to see you doing another blog! What a grand, romantic notion of punting on the river and singing madrigals! Here we get drunk people riding jet skis. :sigh: Save me some of that bacon and a big hunk of your wonderful bread.
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Here's how we do it at work, where we make a boatload (a batch that starts with 12L of milk) of cannelé every single day. The molds (copper), never cleaned, are coated with the beeswax/butter with a dedicated brush that's just barely narrow enough to swipe all the way to the bottom of the mold, then they're set on a sheetpan open side down so that any excess drains out. Seems to work fine for us.
OK. Just read through (skimmed) the thread. Here's how we do it at work. Molds are not refrigerated or frozen, and the batter is usually at least 30-48 hours old. As for making the batter, milk and vanilla beans are brought to a simmer (no temp check, though), then butter is added and allowed to sit until it's cool enough to handle (exact temp isn't critical, but it should still be warm). Flour & sugar are whisked together (yes, we make these by hand, and since I started, I'm usually the one making the batter), then egg yolks, whole eggs, and rum are whisked in gradually. Lastly, the milk/butter mixture is whisked together and gradually whisked in, and the whole mess is poured through a strainer into containers and refrigerated.
As for the baking, it's done usually by the exec PC or assistant PC who come in at 3:30 to start the bake-off, but I think they only pour to about 3/4 full and baked (not sure of the temp) in our convection ovens for at least an hour.
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Congratulations on your upcoming reno! Our dream (or at least workable) kitchen is still at least a couple of years out. It's great that you're thinking about these things now. You have plenty of time to refine your plans and figure out the details that you want/need.
what are you thinking of for countertop surface?
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his is the legendary Sunbeam Model GC Waffle Baker & Grill, widely held to be the best waffle baker of them all. It has separate removable waffle and pancake/sandwich plates, commercial quality components, a very accurate temperature controller and heavy duty 1250 watt heating elements. They were made in the late 1950s, and this one has been in my family for around 50 years. What I like about it most is that it has very deep pockets without going over to being a "Belgian waffle" style. It makes 4 waffles at a time.
Just what my mom used to have (and may still have in her garage somewhere). She now uses a Mickey Mouse waffle iron for the grandkids. wonder if I can get that waffle iron from her? It really does make outstanding waffles.
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A purse with handles made from wooden salad servers (the fabric was also food-related, in a kind of 50's vintage way).
A recipe card file with little holder for the recipe cards (which, since I don't use recipe cards anymore, is completely useless to me)
A chip/dip set in ceramic that looks like a pool (chip) and hot tub (dip), complete with people lounging in said hot tub.
Dean & Deluca suede potholders - these I use all the time and love.
A selection of wines as a wedding present - great gift since the female half of the couple worked at a wine shop and knew what she was doing
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Fish, definitely. As a kid, it had to be breaded and fried before I'd touch it.
Mayo - hated sandwiches generally, except for BLT (hold the L please) or an open faced toasted sandwich. I went to school for nearly 8 years with a thermos of something or other (bless my mother's heart
)I'm still not a fan of broccoli, but have learned to love spinach, cauliflower, beets, and red peppers. I have distinct recollections of feeding my long cold cooked spinach to my friend's dog when at their cabin once (her parents were tremendous sticklers for eating everything on your plate, and you didn't leave the table until you did - on this particular occasion, it was frozen spinach, just reheated).
Coleslaw (see friend's mean parents above for another similar episode that had long-lasting psychological repercussions).
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Count me in on the anti-coffee crowd. I don't mind a touch of coffee added to a chocolate dessert to deepen the flavor, but if I get any real hint of coffee in it, forget it. No to coffee ice cream, coffee shakes, iced coffee. Once in a great, great while, I will get a frappucino type drink, as long as it has plenty of chocolate in it. Somehow, I did manage to drink cappucinos on trips to Italy, but I'm not sure how.
Canned fish. About the only way I like tuna is raw or just seared. For some reason, once it's cooked, it loses all appeal for me.
Eggs other than scrambled or omelettized. Something about the yolk that just makes me gag. I will eat the white off a hard-boiled egg and leave the yolk. Fried eggs or soft-boiled, no way.
Liver, especially pate. I've tried. I really have, but I just think it tastes the way my cat's food smells.
Soft white American style sandwich bread. I love good French bread. I love nice white dinner rolls. But that white sandwich bread? Bleah. Growing up with whole wheat and other multi-grained varieties, plus not liking sandwiches as a kid anyway, I somehow missed the appeal of the soft white bread.
Add me to the mustard camp, too. Always thought it tasted off somehow, and whenever it's been anywhere near a sandwich, I can taste it straight away, and I'll usually take off that piece of bread and eat the sandwich open-faced.
But bring on the cheesecake, fresh tomatoes, olives, asparagus, chocolate and ice cream, and top it all off with papaya!
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Doh. Now why didn't I remember that from the Jan/Feb issue? Probably because I didn't read the article, since I don't like GC cake.
I'll just go ahead and use my E. Guittard. Then at least I can scrape off the frosting and eat the cake by itself.
The cake does also have cocoa powder in it (the recipe I'm using is from Cooking Light, since she's on WW and wants it lighter), and I use good, rich cocoa, so it will definitely be a chocolate cake. -
A good friend requested German chocolate cake for her birthday. Since I can't stand it, I never make it, and thus have never even looked for a good quality subsitute to the "sweet baking chocolate" called for in the recipe. I know that typically, one uses Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate (which is what's found in the supermarket).
Can I use my 62% E. Guittard instead? Or is this chocolate sweeter, with a lower percentage of cocoa solids?
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have you ever noticed the french fry machine (by idaho potatoes) at the train station just across the freeway from old sac? i always look at it longingly, but its never working when i have the time....the idea of a vending maching that fries potatoes is quite exciting.
Now where was that last time I was in the train station in Sac? I guess I'm always trying to soak up as much sunshine as I can before I get on the train back to the fog in SF and not thinking about french fries.
Bagel Recipes & Tips
in Pastry & Baking
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Like lancastermike, I've had good success with the Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice recipe, as well as the recipe in Baking Illustrated (from the Cook's Illustrated people). Boiling really is the key - longer boil = chewier bagel. Per Reinhart's suggestion, last time I made them (see here for pics), I added baking soda to the water