K8memphis

I like pictures. I have very few in my formula book where there's mostly just ingredients listed & a few steps of do this & that. But if I'm learning something which let's hope there's something I can learn in a new cook book I want a picture. Doesn't everybody?

Yes has sold jillions. And of course her content ultimately is excellent. Above and beyond. But interestingly enough I think this book is a classic example of wrecipe writing wrun amuck. Until you become really familiar with her recipes and make them many times you have to look too many places to get all the info. Some important stuff like oven temp and pan size is in a random margin. Some important stuff is in the text. And of course the ingredients in choice a, b, c or none of the above. You really have to pick your way through. The little that I make from her book, I re-write for sanity's sake. She has all the goods but you need to drop bread crumbs to stay on track.

When I write a recipe for myself it write out all the ingredients needed for that step one per line and then make a big bracket that envelopes that list and I write the directions for that group on the other side of the bracket. And so on. So the list of ingredients is fairly intact down the left hand side of the page and the directions are concise and easy to follow down the right of the page. My pet peeve is that you have to read fifty different places as has been alluded to with the salt debacle up thread by djyee100. Or you have to read a ginormous paragraph to affirm one teensy little fact. Do you do this step before or after this step or whatever. If it's written cleanly there's no issue. So it's the ingredient list on the left and the directions directly across on the right. Like two columns. Easy peasy. I really hate to diddle and hunt for the information.

Umm, that's fine. Yeah, just put this on hold till you can stop by for some tea-ring. There's a reason I only make it once a year. Hey I'll toss in some schsstrooodel too. December, Memphis lemme know... Carry a big spoon & a hefty oven mitt in the meantime. or Wok softly and carry a big spoon.

I only use rolled oats, no quick oats. I just get an unmeasured amount of water boiling and dump in my measured amount of oats and turn the flame all the way down to it's tiniest flicker. Time it five minutes then just strain off the water, pour it into a strainer. I use butter and salt on mine. My husband uses raspberries and blueblerries and sugar and butter in his. Oh and we both put walnuts too. So so good.

For example, I make a certain tea ring dough with shortening. There's so much butter in the filling I have to hold it in with flour. It makes a caramel like thing inside there. It's like to die for good. Butter in the dough would eff it up. It just wouldn't do the same. It would be that silly little millimeter different. I want the bread part clear so the filling can sing the robust solo. The bread part needs to be able to be sturdy enough to hold this all together too. It's not greasy, it's not toxic waste, it's not unpleasant, it doesn't coat your mouth. I don't have to find paletteless people to foist it on. I bake it for gift giving at the holidays. Because it is so fucking good, honestly, I can't stop eating it. No one can. It's irrisitable. My husband has a cycling buddy who weighs all his food. He reads food labels like yah read the paper or something. He has like zero fat in his body. Zero. He is still talking about the dang tea-ring I gave him & his family and how it should be registerd as a deadly substance (in a good way). He went to look for another piece and the family had eaten it and he's still lamenting it. It was a don't ask don't tell on the exact ingredients thing. Now struedel? only butter. Baklava would be gross w/shortening. Most cookies, most baked things. Obviously, shortening is not for most applications. But butter does not cut it for everything. Wonder why Brian is trying to figure out the difference in the trans fatless stuff. It's an ingredient. No of course not, shortening croissants would so suck. Butter is a beautiful thing. And shortening in the hands of those who know how to use it like jgm and BriPastry is equally beautiful. There's no water in shortening. It's an exclusive club apparently. Members only. But stop by this Christmas time and I'll have some tea-ring for yah's and dehr sschstruedel too.

The people who know how to use shortening use it for reasons other than it's butter like qualities. That's the point of using other ingredients, they're different. Y'ain't never had an Oreo, man? Flavorless is good when you want to use some other dominant flavor. There's a time & place for shortening. For example, molasses crinkles. Why waste the butter, you'll never taste it under all that gooey rich molasses. Shortening acts different and holds some cookies better thatn butter does. Well it used to before the government started diddling with it. Patrick O'Connel, the pope of American cuisine, uses butter and shortening in his pie crust. Published the recipe in his book. What was he think ing?! And besides what would we season our black skillets with? So... Who yah 'spose was that masked man with the spoon in one hand and the potholder in the other...hmmm?

Kayakado makes an excellent recommendation. In fact beside the year book Wilton puts out ever year, they have a set of enyclopedia's you could probably find on ebay. I only have volume two but it's a great set of cake deco books. I'm self-taught for what it's worth. In the past few years I've attended many demos and you always learn something at a demo. When you have time for it that is. But Wilton is a great resource. Rob is awesome with all that P&B organization for us all.

Probably not, but there certainly are people who prefer the texture of baked goods (e.g. pie crusts) made with a combination of butter and shortening. ← Yes of course there are people who like baked goods made with shortening. I think people confuse shitty baked goods with random ingredients. If they are shitty baked goods it doesn't matter if they were made with fricken gold they're still shitty. It ain't the shortening it's the person holding the spoon in one hand & the potholder in the other that's guilty. Butter and oil don't work for everything. Butter isn't better in everything. Butter and shortening have different purposes in life. I am perfectly amazed that an ingredient as robustly benign as shortening can be so shunned. Little leftfooted bastard orphan ingredient. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people use shortening in their cookies and pastries. Don't even think about proposing the need 'to enlighten them' otherwise. I use shortening Shoot Me! One would have to live a very sheltered life to never experience fabulous baked goods made with shortening. I don't like the dry powdery mouthfeel and chalky lifeless taste of white flour either. These are ingredients though, colors we splash on our palettes to paint into a product. It's like an artist saying, I won't use the color blue. I'll stamp my foot and hold my breath till I turn... agh, well, sputter, agh, well just never mind what color I'll turn. Shortening is not a four letter word. Profiling cake mix and shortening and corn syrup and stuff like that is ignorant.

I can say that if anyone uses it in an icing, switching to milk/cream as the liquid is the only way to go. I don't have any knowlege of actually baking with it. I still have half a 6 pound can of the good stuff left that will probably last me a coupla years as often as I use it. I'll keep my ears open & update though. viva le government huh

Wow, Rob, those are so cool. Maybe it's just the picture but stick in a little stem* on top and spray them green with a soft red blush and you could make pears. *A clove would work or a chocolate stem & leaf would rock.

Y'know it did taste kinda raw come to think of it but it was late and I was mostly checking for the mixability for some reason. Just kinda figuring that it wasn't gonna be a super flavor. Ganache is the way to go says Margaret Braun. And you can make a ganashee substance out of cocoa. But anyway... But that's an interesting point about swiss meringue. It is such a clear flavor, apparently anything else added has to be very tasty on it's own because it totally shines through the original delicate ambiance of the buttercream. I once added some salt. hahahaha. Just once. Wonder how it would be if cocoa was added to melted butter... edited to say: yeah I just checked for the mixability factor because Alana thought it might be grainy and mine wasn't but that's why I only looked there. So all that to say I think you need freaking good chocolate to make it work huh. But I rarely diddle with it. Usually just do straight up vanilla. You just can't hide much behind egg whites.

Ok umm, I recommend that you sift your cocoa but I just added it straight up and it was fine. Ganache would be way better and you might wanna make a concoction out of butter and cocoa with a bit of cream. Maybe water is a good idea. So it's definitely do-able. You've probably already used it though. But there it is.

If I'm not too late...I got some day old swiss meringue and some cocoa...brb...but water??? Water doesn't sound right. I mean you can add ganache like crazy or so Margaret Braun says in her book. I can't remember ever doing it though. brb...

Ha yersef! Told yah so. But truly, I tell my brides that you can get 24 cupcakes out of one recipe or cakemix. The same amount of batter will produce a 9x13 that can be cut it in half by the average teenage boy (or Geefron) and made into two servings. The cake they are purchasing from moi is calibrated with the cupcake calculator. The cake is also torted plus the added fillings. These are not Great Wall of China cake servings these are traditional servings, 1x2x4. If they want to serve larger servings or have Aunt Louise's twelve year old twins doing the cutting & serving, then seriously consider ordering more cake. Dude, you can see the flowers painted on the plate through some of the slices these people can cut.

Brother Juniper's in the University of Memphis area is great for a charming local flair breakfast.

This may be boring but I check out the salmon and the meal size salads. How difficult is making a salad. Obviously pretty advanced culinary skills are needed. What happened to a few onions in there? In Chinese places I go for the phantom almond cookie because I don't think anyone can dulpicate the ones we used to get. 'Course I'm kinda stuck in the salmon & salad departments so I don't get to do as much almond cookie scavaging as I might like.

I used to work for a credit card processor. Talk about getting ripped off! It's the merchants who have to pay all those fees. Just try sitting down and deciphering one of those monthly statements. hahahahaha. It is absurd patently absurd. 'Cause it was my job to explain them to people. If you don't have pristine credit and you don't maintain a high enough flow of transactions and bladeebladeebla. Honestly It's a joke a pure joke. Hats off to people ballsy enought to buck the system 'cause the system is sure bucking them and us too.

I disagree with all due respect. Your assumption invalidates your position. The truth is culinary schools do not equip their grads with these skills. What about the all due diligent kid who was at the dentist with a tooth ache on buerre blanc day. Good thing somebody wrote it down somewhere. Those skills are a whole lot harder to come by than a formula. I mean, no offense, but your buerre blanc example proves my point. Recipes are easy. Skills take lotsa time & dedication. A little less ego and a little more people skills help a lot too. Or know your politics--that's very helpful as well. Kitchen specific politics that is.

Well thank you, I'm so glad I helped. Umm, concentric circles works fine. Glad that there are pros there and you can relax (to a certain extent) and enjoy. I'm sure it will be wonderful. The only bugaboo about the concentric circle is that the moist crumb & icing build up on the knife can potentially create more friction going around and tear the cake a little more. Not always. Just so many variables. So the cut off a hunk in one straight shot aka square-ish but never in New Jersey can result in less build up and...truthfully my favorite way is the leave it to someone else way.

On the slicing of it. Y'know how pizza can come sliced as pie in wedges or in squares-ish. You generally slice cake like this in those squares-ish. Generally one would not cut a cake that large into wedges.

Yes for sure do the work in a restaurant thing. And if you really wanna get the long & short of it, be a dishwasher and watch and listen carefully from that vantage point. In other words, be happy to be low on the food chain in this initial time investment. You have to work and work and work and work to get any higher even with the diploma and years of experience. Which is why that pricey diploma is ever the more bloated. Tomato-boy there in the avatar has a Cordon Bleu diploma that he will be paying for for a looong looooong time. In my opinion, it is not worth it to go for Cordon Bleu. A culinary diploma yes. Restaurant work first though. But the designer label is not worth it, just an inflated price for some words. Well my experience is state side too. I don't really know about France, London or Ottowa. But yes in the states they are needlessly commercial and tragically over priced.

I stick a folded aluminum foil thingy in the middle of most everything I bake these days. In larger cakes I happily put multiples. ***It's described here, scroll to the fourth picture. It's so easy. I spray them with pan grease so they slide out easy. It does leave a little opening but it helps things bake so much better. It's worth the side effect hole to me. If the hole gets carried away for some reason, I just tame it with a squirt of icing piped in there. Love magic strips. I'm old fashioned, I still sometimes use the terry cloth toweling. Sometimes I just bake a cake an inch too big and trim off the edges. ***Edited to say: Ruh roh, the link didn't work exactly. It's in the 12th post down in that thread then the fourth picture. fwiw.

You could 'enhance' your design and use a cone shape to affix them to. This would be pretty sure fire depending on your glue. I know people that have done that with regular croquembouche's. Just some croqueboo thoughts pour vous....

Pate choux lasts pretty well. It depends on what you glue them with too. I mean you could use hot glue even if you're not going to eat it. Would not absorb any moisture anyway. Or you could maybe use royal icing. Wonder how piping gel would do for glue. But you don't want to hollow them out of course either. But I just wonder about the weight. While they totally can last for weeks, I've never stacked them up so I'm not sure if/how they will hold thier weight. Y'know depending on how big they are. Smaller sized ones seems like it would be better huh, structure wise. Hmm, you might need to do a trial run.