K8memphis

A beautiful blend of both worlds!

One of my favorite quotes from Jacques Torres, in "The Making of a Pastry Chef" by Andrew MacLauchlan page 85. "I think the mind of a chef and of a pastry chef are stuctured differently. I think a pastry chef is someone who loves to plan, organize, and not be rushed. A chef is someone who is going to deal with the rush and do their very best work in that situation."

How's it going? Have you tried anything that you will not be using that you can tell us about? I was gonna say, Hope all is well in fruitcake-land but that's not coming out right! But anyway, got any updates for us??? No pressure though, zero. Just saying Hey. No news is good news, Cake-buddy.

White whole wheat? You mean like White Lily flour where there's no barley four in there? I didn't care for baking with the White Lily. I like what I'm used to. It's a bit heavier but nothing major.

Umm, you can cut out leaves out of the crust scraps and place them around the edge for a fancy flute or place them anywhere. If you put them around the edge, you will need to make a bit extra crust even. And overlap them a bit. You could make a couple snakes y'know by rolling dough out on the counter and twist them together to make a sort of braid. Attach to the edges of the tart & then bake. Attach with water or an egg wash. Before baking I like to brush my crusts with milk and sprinkle with sugar for a nice finish. You could tint the dough and bake any kind of decor you could imagine with cookie cutters etc. Polka dot pie, lightening bolt pie, apple pie hahaha--cut out 'apples', bake, and place on the filling. Berries, can you get any berries to decorate? Chocolate, yes chocolate anything would be cool--ooh ooh, bake the leaves, dip part of it in chocolate!!! White or choco or colored choco. Way cool and easy peasy!!

I made this once and it was overly sweet. You might want to consider cutting back on the sugar.

Bwoo wha ha ha and fa la la la 2 I mean egg nog is kinda rich to have with fruit cake. Shoot it's rich standing all by itself somewhere but man they just so seem to really jive together somehow. Cool Cool Cool. I hope it works out. Give us some hints??? Or give us another little whiff of something??? I can just so see your little nutmeg grater out on the counter patiently awaiting...

Yes I think that's similar. My understanding of hard sauce is confectioner's sugar glaze made with alcohol. Liquour laced runny icing. So powdered sugar, butter and alcohol and maybe some water, vanilla, whatever like that. Marrying anyone messes with the holidays!!

What about cooking down the cranberry juice to make it super concentrated?? maybe?? Just a thought.

If you deep fry at all. If you take canned biscuit dough, tear a hole in it and fry and then plop in cinnamon sugar--they are awesome. You gotta try a few different varieties to find the right one, there's so many. Last time I tried this was forever ago but, there's flaky, extra flakey, country style, buttermilk--I don't remember all the different variations. And one shines above the others. Really ^^^ those are awesome. Trust me. Use Saigon cinnamon. Or try Mister Donut on Calumet Avenue in Munster Indiana Or Fry fritters if you are into frying at all. apple fritters banana fritters, pumpkin fritters abalone fritters, artichoke fritters and conch fritters?? cherry & blueberry too. spicy pineapple fritters with habenero >> my favorite is pineapple, but I've never tried a spicy one like this. Fritters rule. Very easy if you are into deep frying. Don't burn yourself.

I was the same way--I wanted the surprise factor. I think tinsel and fa la la goes with fruit cake. Egg nog-y something?? Red and gold glass christmas ornaments, Collins Street Bakery tins, monks, lace doilies, egg nog hard sauce, fruit cake tarts?? Has fruit cake creme brulee been mentioned?? That's a wild thought Geez make some stollen and I'll eat it through the screen. I totally think yeasted candied fruit stuff fits with your theme. 'Cause I love that stuff, I get sick as a dog eating it though what am I laughing about??!! : ) Y'know what??? I think I've always had fruit cake served cold or room temp. That is a huge mistake isn't it?! Bet it would be better served microzapped a few seconds. Just some fruitcake thoughts pun intended, probably true too!!

Dorie, I love the two books that I have by you so far. The Pierre Herme Desserts & Chocolate Desserts. So well written. So perfectly detailed. So many insights to achieving perfection, or getting closer each time anyway. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Wow, I'm on page three of this thread--that's as far as I can go right now without eating the computer. Since I cannot bake and eat like I used to, I will get this book for my kid for Christmas...and borrow it back...no no no of course that's never happened before!! I might have to get three books, one for each of them & one for me. Truly though I can hardly ever go into the what's for dessert thread without major carb carvings that will not be denied, but this one is somehow easier on my formerly celulite infested body. I love to bake! So I'm catching up on the thread and will soon get the book... My opinion on scales: weighing is nice but overrated. Baking is so fickle, it can be as daunting as golf. There are so many thousand other factors than just the mere quantity of ingredients. Measure and sweep truly works wonderful. And I actually prefer the physical scale with the literal weights the best. It's much more fun than digital. You can see your thousandths and ten thousandths of an ounce or gram or whatever. Umm, and I like to substitute toasted oatmeal for nuts sometimes. Multiplied Kudos to you, Dorie, what a great thread and thrill for you, I'm sure. edited to say: God help me that chocolate banana marbled business is going to haunt my brain allllll day!!! And Patrick, how did you get the sides, the edges on that caramel peanut topped fudge cake sooo pretty??? You don't see any evidence of it being baked, y'know like most baked goods would look ~~ it looks so beautiful on the moist fudgey sides.

To my knowledge, I'd never deconstructed food before but man that was fun! If I had the right arena for it, I could so way get off on that.

Thanks, Jeanne, that sounds wonderful.

Thin ganache is fluid at room temp. Think chocolate milk.... ← Oh. Will that stick to a strawberry or slide off??

You will still add a boatload of oil to the ganache. Ganache is too firm at room temp. You need a pourable substance at room temp. It goes against the grain, but add a lot of oil and all will be well.

Thank you, SkiDude, let me make it clear I am not an expert. However I do have some thoughts for you. I screwed up my measurements and had dismal results at times. Sounds like you need to tweak your amounts. I mean you can do it as you go too. Just test it and start adding more of whatever you used. Did you strain your product to be sure all the alginate dissolved properly and did you add additional to make up for that?? Did you add any sodium citrate if you needed it to get the right ph balance?? Are you dropping drops straight down with a food baster??? You can get syringes at the drug store too that work great, but the ones I got made very small cavis*. And on the freezing, I read somewhere that they did not fully freeze the substance just stored it in the freezer to chill. I have no idea how they did that but I remember reading that it was not fully frozen if that helps at all. Good Luck! Happy Cavis* to you!! *more than one non-fish caviar sphere pronounced A like apple, CAVhees

Wow, what an awesome challenge, Cheryl, and congratulations AlanaMoana. I think lightening up fruit cake is a noble idea. I mean of course you are not limited to making just one kind either I made fruit cake eons ago with beautiful real dried fruits and we soaked it in mead, honey wine. And then there's an old Amish Friendship Cake where you soak the fruit in sugar etc for weeks and then the fruit ferments then you bake the cakes oooh so good. My Mother-in-law gave me the starter and formula ages ago and I do not have a copy but I'm just tossing out ideas into the idea bucket. Soak the cake, soak the fruit, soak the cook Maybe fruit cake would be good with your own candied fruit but I agree the stuff they sell in grocery stores as candied fruit should be condemned by the fda. Why do you think they were esoteric? (I had to look it up but... : ) Would love to hear that recipe--mostly the ingredient list. And what is Poire William, a liqueur? !!!Go Alana Go Alana Go Alana clap clap clap clap clap...

Awesome, Cheryl!! No really, the only problem with all this is we need cyber tastes somehow, scratch & sniff the computer screen ain't workin'! The cranberry tart is beautiful. I love the symbolism especially in the crepe~genius. You blew it out of the water with autumnal beauty. I had actually seen Indian pudding made on tv this week so I was on your thought wave there. !!!YAY!!! Hey, too late now but can you get shoepeg corn in your area?? You can get it canned or frozen. It is very very very good corn in lieu of fresh. I could never remember the name and my husband just remembered it. It's sweet and tender and a real treat. I hope everyone remembers the five kernels of corn and maybe consider incorporating that into your Thanksgiving meals. I like to use five candy corns by each plate. Before the meal, each person takes one corn, says what they are thankful for and we go around the table five times till all the corn is gone. Yeah, I know I know, kinda corny!!! But very cool.

I have no ideas for you. But sweet potato shepard's pie sounds heavenly. I think I would add a nice blast of some saigon cinnamon and a pinch of cayenne. At least that's what I'm gonna do next time I make this. Sorry, I'm not an infusion guru. Geez that sounds good. Thanks for a great idea.

Yes, so true. Cannot be stressed enough. In fact take it one step farther and make it as chef-friendly as possible. Chef-boy, my son formerly known as chef-wanna-be, was sending resumes ping-ing and pong-ing with the people who do the hiring and he could not get the recruiter to call him back with the requested info. We got together and we re-wrote his questions with a one two three scenario. Even though originally he had written a great letter, he got a reply instantly to the re-write. Delete all non-essential mumbo jumbo. Like Malawry said, get right to the point and make it easy for Chef to say yes. You don't want to sound like fast food though, in this case just low-fat, low-carb real good food, fast. 86 the sauce.

My experience with fountains is to use more oil than you think would even be good. You need a consistency that is still loose at room temperature--this has been my experience. At least as loose as like cold pea soup loose. So you can imagine how much oil should go in. Not water. Chocolate is a fat and water will screw things up. Although I've used it with butter which contains water. But don't add any water, add oil. It will still taste great no worries. You can do white choco, milk choco, or dark. You need more oil the darker the choco, less oil for the white. You can purchase chocolate especially for fountains. Fountains are a lot of fun, wonderfully messy and beware of double dippers~ edited to say: easily pourable at room temperature is how I would describe it.

Oh yeah, I've flamed up caramel before in the microwave. Pyrex and plastic wrap works great been doing it for years. The only issue is to avoid steam burns when you remove the plastic. I've also melted dishes with heavy lids too.

Jonathan, I wanted to thank you for this thread and for your pioneering as well as everyone else's. It inspired me to create this for a challenge in the Iron Baker series here in egullet in pastry & baking forum. My challenge was to make a plated dessert using Sweet Southern Tea with a welcoming Southern hospitality feel. So my idea was to deconstruct sweet tea ie., tea, lemon, sugar, ice cubes, sweat on the outside of the glass and the glass. The tea caviar represents the sweat glistening on the outside of the glass, the cake cubes with which you grab up the caviar represents the ice cubes and there's various other goodies there. But I wanted to thank you as you were my inspiration to try this. This is the entire thread. Pictures of the plated dessert start on page two and my demo of how I did the caviar are on page three. Thanks, Dude!