CanadianBakin'

I've had homemade caramel sauce in the fridge for about 5 weeks. It looks fine and tastes fine but I don't want to poison anyone. How do I know if it's safe?

Another fun place for packaging is Creative Packaging in Burnaby. They don't have cake boxes specifically but all sorts of other neat things. I've used their 1 lb "Tin Ties" with a window for giving away cookies. They're really wax-lined coffee bags so they do a good job of keeping things fresh and they don't get grease spots on them. You can dress them up very easily with a bit of raffia or ribbon , etc.

Welcome to eGullet fireflyzephyr! I've bought some nice stuff at Mayers (here). They also have a good selection of food boxes. When I've gone to their showroom they didn't require a minimum order for things - though their website does state minimums. I'd phone first. ← They mention showrooms on their website. Can you just go in and do a cash & carry sort of thing? You mention they didn't require minimums, does that mean you could buy just 10 of something or did you mean the value of your total order?

Mistinguett - mmmmm you've got me drooling!

Thanks for reporting. It all looks wonderful! I've been thinking of hosting a dessert evening as it would give me an opportunity to make a lot of delicious things without having to eat them all! Did you have a lot of leftovers or was it about right? What time did you start your evening? Was it instead of dinner, or after dinner? What did you really like about your eveing and what would you do different next time?

Beautiful tarts! Patrick, what is the diameter of your mini pans? Are they tinned steel or did you splurge on the heavier ones? I'm just composing a menu of mini's for a group of ladies for next week. I was going to do lemon tarts anyways, but I think I may use your ganache/caramel idea. They sound divine. Did you like them with the white pastry shell or would it have been even better with a chocolate shell?

That sounds delicious. I've been wanting to try a cake with daquoise for awhile. I'm going to keep this combo in mind.

That sounds delicious! What did you pair it with?

My first thought was, strawberries taste awesome dipped in chocolate mousse! So, my thought would be something like a Frasier, I think it's called. A 9" cake split in two. First layer down, probably inside a ring (springform would work). A layer of chocolate mousse, strawberries standing on end (stem end down). They usually put strawberries cut in half around the outside. Then fill up the gaps with more chocolate mousse. Put top layer of cake on and press down a bit. Chill. Then you could do one of two things. My understanding is a traditional Frasier would simply have a layer of buttercream on top and leave the sides exposed or, you could cover the whole thing in a chocolate glaze. Either way I think it would be scrumptious. My husband doesn't like fruit and chocolate but when local strawberries are ready I think I'll give this a try anyways.

I made the Spicy Korean Style Pork without the Asian Slaw last night. I used pork loin rather than tenderloin as Marlene suggested and my husband quickly grilled it on the barbeque. Very good! I will definitely use this marinade again.

Thanks for reporting back! You did a beautiful job!

That's what I was thinking. You can do as simple as a ganache on top or dulce de leche swirled into the batter before baking. There's so many variations and everyone loves them!

You might want to try Charlie's Chocolate Factory. They have chocolate boxes and inserts although I don't see the exact size on their website but you could get in touch with them. They may have more sizes than shown. **They are in Canada

I don't spend too much time in the Cooking forum but happened to be checking it out and just noticed this thread as I was going back to Pastry and Baking. I'm so glad you started it! I really enjoy Fine Cooking and find I learn quite a bit from it. I tried the risotto last week and really enjoyed it. My husband thought it needed a bit more flavour but I'm not sure what he was expecting. I used leek, saffron, asparagus and shrimp. I loved the flavour the white wine imparted. I hadn't used saffron before and was a bit nervous about it (had a bad experience with tumeric before) but I think it just added to the overall flavour & colour. I also tried the buttercream with great success and will probably use it as my regular recipe. Since CaliPoutine had trouble with it, I watched the on-line video first. I mentioned on the P&B thread that I think the problem might be not getting the corn syrup/sugar hot enough. In the recipe she says to just bring it to the boil. On the video it is brought to a rolling boil. It was very marshmallowy before adding the butter. The texture of the finished product was slightly more rubbery? than RLB's but delicious and piped very well. I made the chocolate version. My husband hasn't been a fan of Italian Meringue Buttercream in the past but he loved this version. 12 oz of chocolate is a lot more than many recipes suggest. I'm planning to try the roasted chicken and veg this week. (It's from the last issue) The pork sounds wonderful! I'll have to give that a try next.

We have waffles & berries for dinner about twice a month! Mmmm...with ice cream or whipped cream.

I have used an angel flake coconut in the batter and it seems to blend in with cake much nicer than a medium or shredded coconut. So if you're using angel flake, I like it in! And they're delicious with cream cheese icing. It's funny you bring this up..just this week my husband asked me to make him a coconut cake with white fluffy icing. He said that the coconut was just on the sides, rather than inside, he thought, although he hadn't had it in years. Just suddenly had a hankering for it. So I made a yellow cake and guessed the "icing" was seven minute frosting and pressed a large ribbon shred coconut on the sides. It looked beautiful and I had guessed right. I'd never really had seven-minute frosting before but it's pretty yummy. Hard not to keep licking up the leftovers.

Looks stunning! I can't get over the tuiles. Was it hard to "tie" them?

Just wanted to report back. I don't have a digital camera so I don't have pictures to show. I took the loaves out of the fridge at about 8:30 am. I put them on a perforated baking sheet and covered the underneath of the pan with foil so the bottom of the loaves wouldn't dry out and loosely covered the tops with saran. The pan was very cold from the loaves so to give it a kick start I put them in the oven with a pan of boiling water on the bottom rack. They were in the oven for maybe 20 minutes. Then I set them in direct sunlight and went out. Much to my delight, when I arrived home around 12:30pm they had doubled! I was hoping, but had my doubts since the 6 hours at room temp the previous day had provided very little rise. I didn't have baking instructions so I baked them at 450F for about 25 minutes. As I removed them I realized I had forgotten to slash them so the look wasn't as good. As someone mentioned upthread, the one that had a tighter skin kept it's shape best. Unfortunately it also had a tunnel along the top. Any ideas why this happened? Aside from that, the flavour and texture were excellent! I will have to keep trying to perfect this skill but am very happy with my first try.

I have a question too! I'm on day 2 of my first sour dough bread. I'm using a recipe from the Chef who taught a pastry & baking class I took in March. Day 1 - I kneaded together starter, bread flour, water and salt. Let sit at room temp 24 hours. Day 2 - I made up the bread dough and let sit at room temp 6 hours, then shaped and now have in the fridge fermenting. Day 3 - I'm supposed to let sit at room temp until double and then bake. I know it depends on a lot of factors but approximately how long will this take? I have 2 1-1/2 lb loaves. If I take them out at 1pm should that be enough time to have them ready for dinner at 5:30? I'm going to be out most of the morning so my other option is to take them out at 9am and bake them off when they look ready, hoping that from 9 - 1pm when I get home won't be too long. Also, what temp and approximately how long? My instructions just say to BAKE. I don't know if it makes a difference but I made them with multi-grain bread flour.

WOW!! It's gorgeous!

4 layers of Double Chocolate cake with whipping cream/Oreo filling, Fine Cooking's Chocolate Buttercream over all and a chocolate glaze dripping down the sides. It was made with 3 12-year old girls in mind but it was appreciated by the adults as well. I took a picture but I'm not in the digital world yet.

I tried this recipe today, except the whole quantity and am very happy with how it turned out. I watched the video on finecooking.com before making it since you had problems with it and I know you bake quite a bit. In the video she brings the sugar mixture to a full rolling boil before pouring it into the whites but in the recipe it says to bring it "just to the boil". I don't know if this would make a difference but it worked for me. It's a bit sweeter than RLB's and it looks a bit more like marshmallows before you add the butter but the texture and flavour of the finished product are good.

Won't it be a little hard to tally on this thread since we may not know the gender of posters?

Most definitely, CAKE!

Patrick - where are the Citrus Bars from and are they that much better for having the cream cheese icing?