CanadianBakin'

Do you bake with a digital scale? ← I do use a digital scale for chocolate, but not for everything. I know that I should, but haven't gotten up the energy to convert my recipes. Even though with the elements of a cooky, there aren't that many things to remember. ← I think flour is one of the most important ingredients to measure since it's hard to have a perfectly consistent method of measuring with a cup and the weather also affects how it measures.

Do you bake with a digital scale?

I just spoke to her and she only wants a drizzle so it won't be much. Thanks for the quick replies.

← Good questions... tarte tins are 9-1/2", I think the plates will be standard dessert plates not larger ones. It looks like I'll have to e-mail the caterer about how she's serving it. Thanks for the guidelines.

I have an order for 4 Tarte Grenobloise which will each be cut into 16 servings. The caterer would like to serve it with whipped cream and raspberry coulis. I have no idea how much coulis I should deliver with the desserts. Any ideas?

The chocolates you entered are gorgeous! Not only are you a chocolatier you are obviously an artist as well. Well done!

I'd start checking at around 15 minutes but of course you'll smell it. Make sure it's level with convection. I usually bake in a standard oven but a kitchen I use just got a convection and my chiffon baked so quickly it didn't have time to level. I hadn't had this problem before. Butter cake will probably take a bit longer and be a bit more fail safe but I'd still take an extra minute to level.

I'd recommend using a chiffon cake recipe if you're looking for something light.

Also you could melt it with a little bit of cream so you can apply it a bit thicker.

I'm sure others with more experience will chime in but to get you started... I would say you could bake off that recipe in a full-size sheet pan and yes it's going to cook way faster. Are you baking in a conventional oven or a convection? And what type of cake?

Here's PH's formula from Chocolate Desserts: 1 1/2 cups (375 grams) heavy cream 1 Tbsp sugar 2 1/4 (65 grams) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped Basically same method as Alanamoana mentioned. I find if you first add just enough cream to cover the chocolate, mix it in with a spatula till smooth and then gradually add the rest of the cream you ensure that all the chocolate gets melted. Sometimes if you add all the cream at once you will sometimes have lots of tiny flecks of chocolate that won't melt so you don't get as smooth a texture.

Wow! I love how much colour you use. It makes your case (and walls) look beautiful!

Here's a recipe on www.finecooking.com that I have used and enjoyed. It does have a mushroom top rather than straight up so I don't know if it will work for your purposes or not. http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes...fles.aspx?ac=fp If you can't see it and would like to, PM me and I'll do a copy/paste.

A tip I learned to help with presentation is to press the crumble through a cooling rack that has a grid to get a slightly more uniform crumb. It's a lot easier than trying to break it up with your fingers.

Thanks! It's called SerendipiTea and is on Montrose in downtown Abbotsford. If you don't order High Tea I think you could still have them if you ordered dessert and tea and specified that you would like an assortment of Tina's miniature desserts.

Thanks Theresa, I will have a look at that book. For the purposes of this particular thread I would like to keep it to artificial sweeteners. I'll edit my original post to reflect this.

Last month I began baking for an excellent tea shop. They have a full time baker/cook and I bake only the miniature sweets for the top tier of their High Tea. Of course much of their clientele is older and some are diabetic so I'm looking for proven sugar-free recipes using artificial sweeteners. *There has been much debate on other threads about what constitutes a diabetic dessert so I'm not looking for more of that discussion. I've decided to simply go sugar-free and leave it at that. What I've learned from reading other threads... - it seems a combination of sweeteners tastes better - crisp cookies or moist desserts like cheesecake seem to work best - ground nuts seem to be a common ingredient in these recipes I have never used artificial sweeteners before so I'm trying to learn as much as I can before wasting a lot of ingredients in testing. Thanks so much for any recipes you can provide.

It wouldn't help for display purposes but I use Ph's lemon cream and it freezes really well. You could portion it into saleable amounts and have it ready to go upon request.

Your Rugelach looks perfect!

I use the Tartlet pastry recipe from Sweet Miniatures and it freezes fine for a least a few weeks. If you wanted to be double sure about the crispness you could use PH's sweet tart pastry that has ground almonds in it.

Thanks for the great ideas, ladies! More questions.... What about mixing crisp cookies with moist bars? Should they be separate items? Like you can buy cookies or bars or both but not in the same tin? Or do you just keep everything separate in the freezer, box them up the day of, and let the customer worry about it?

They are so good in Claire Clark's Oatmeal, Pecan Cookies. The recipe takes about 1/2 lb. She also uses dried apricots and cherries but I have a chocolate loving family so 1/2 lb of dark Callebaut chocolate ends up in mine instead.

I appreciate your input Tammy! I'm bumping this up to see if anyone else has experience or advice.

If it can replace almond or hazelnut then maybe you could make macarons with it.

In Confetti Cakes she adds 1 cup cream cheese to her Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I haven't tried it yet but I plan to.