CanadianBakin'

Thanks for the link! I just won 1/4 lb 7" & longer Tahitian vanilla beans for $11 USD including shipping to Canada. Delivery is 3 - 5 days so I'll let you know when I get them how they are. I'm pretty excited as they are about $7 Canadian for 2 beans in the stores here.

Thanks Wendy! I think I'll try the white chocolate. They will just look a little more decadent and no one will be the wiser.

I've run into a problem and I'm wondering if anyone can help. I've just made lemon tarts in mini-muffin size shells using PH's lemon curd. I piped in the curd but didn't smooth the top. Then I put melted apple jelly on top to glaze and pressed a single apple jelly-glazed blueberry into each. When I pushed the blueberry in to flatten the top, cracks appeared in the lemon curd. Of course I didn't notice this till they were all done. I usually smooth the lemon cream before putting the apple jelly on so I can just set the blueberry on top but couldn't see a reason why I couldn't skip this step. Well now I know but in the meantime I have these cracked tops. Is there anything I can do to fix them? Maybe set them in a slightly warm oven for a bit? I don't have time to remake them and I'm fortunate they are for a family event so all will be forgiven but I would have liked a better appearance. Any ideas? I've got them in the fridge right now.

I've never had the dessert you speak of but I do have a surefire moist chocolate cake recipe. Double Chocolate Cake from epicurious.com. I've never had it come out dry, I've used it in various sizes of pans and it's always rich, chocolatey, moist and delicious. As for the dulce de leche, I simmer a can of sweetened condensed milk for about 2-1/2 hours in a large pot of water with the lid on, over med-low heat. You could try simmering only 2 hours to see if it would be a bit thinner or perhaps just warm it a bit before spreading on the cake to make it easier and then it will cut nicely when it's reached room temp. The recipe I've linked to has a ganache recipe for coating it which I haven't tried yet but it might work for you.

It's gorgeous! How fun to have a bride that didn't want a traditional cake.

You could make danish or a variation of and instead of using cherry or apple pie filling, use jam. You can fill muffins, you know when you put a bit of batter in the bottom, a small spoon of jam and then cover with more batter. Also, you can put a ribbon of jam in your biscotti when you're shaping it. It's a bit messy but tastes good.

I'd love this recipe if you have time to type it out. ← Black Bean, Corn, and Salsa Dip tortilla chips 2 pckgs. (8 oz. ea.) low fat cream cheese, softened 3/4 cup low fat mayo 3 T. combination of southwest spices, i.e., cumin, chile powder, etc. to taste 2 green onions, thinly sliced 1 cup diced red pepper 1 can (3.25 oz.) pitted ripe olives, drained and chopped fine 3/4 cup salsa 1 garlic clover (I use 2!) minced 1 can (15 oz.) black beans, drained and rinsed 1 can (15 oz.) whole kernel corn, drained Beat cream cheese, mayonnaise, and spices until smooth. Spread cream cheese mixture in the bottom and up sides of a 9x9x2 dish or equivalent. Combine sliced green onions, diced red pepper, olives, salsa, garlic, beans, and corn and spread over cream cheese mixture. Serve with tortilla chips. The original recipe calls for piping half of the cream cheese mixture on the top of the salsa mixture and garnishing with part of the green onions, but I never bother! It never lasts long enough to look pretty anyway! It makes A LOT! Hope you like it... I plan on making it next Friday for a dip contest at work! ← Sounds awesome! I'll definitely put it in my "to try" file. Thanks.

Wendy, the almond dough was fine and they are all cooked, they just didn't get "feet" so they don't look proper. I'll freeze the baked cookies until I have a use.

I think I'm getting it. I was ready to throw out a batch of small chocolate macaroons that didn't get feet and suddenly thought... these might work in a tart shell with, I don't know, some mousse or buttercream above and below. I imagine they'd soften up a bit and give it a nice texture. Would this work? I can just stick them in the freezer for now.

We do... they sell 3" ones but they come in foil pans and look and taste like what everyone else has. To someone who knows what good pastry tastes like (which I know is not the majority) they don't pass muster. I used them one year at Christmas for a cranberry mincemeat. My mother-in-law said, well, the filling is nice. I'm looking for something a bit more upscale.

I'd love this recipe if you have time to type it out.

JeanneCake PM'd and thought it would be good to start a new thread about prepared tart shells so the discussion didn't get lost in the mini thread. I have very little experience with tart shells aside from what's available at the grocery store so this will be great! My first question was: Wendy's response: JeanneCake's thoughts: JeanneCake I was wondering what you didn't like about the Cephalor? So far they are the only other brand I've been able to find in our area.

My husband uses it as the base for his marinade for tougher cuts of steak. It does a great job of tenderizing and just sweetens it up a bit.

I think the quesadillas is a great idea. Here's a link that might give you some ideas. I make a chickpea dip (like hummus but with a bit of mayo and sourcream) that is delicious and I don't know about your part of the world but here a can of chickpeas is about $0.78. Here's a great presentation. Some variation on a 7-layer dip (tex-mex dip) is always a hit too and pretty cheap to make. For both of these you can just use bags of tortillas if you're short on time. Pretzels also go great with the chickpea dip. Squares are always popular and easy to make. Like brownies, coconut bars, etc. Cut in small pieces, 1-1/2 - 2", they go a long way. You could dress brownies up with a swirl of caramel over top before baking and a coconut bar looks great with white and dark chocolate drizzled over before cutting. Meringues would be another easy and cheap sweet that keep really well. For a recent party I tinted some a pale green, added a bit of mint flavour and sandwiched them with a thin layer of chocolate ganache. They were gone very fast.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I was thinking 5/person total for the mid-morning lunch but I will cut it back even further for my quote and let my client make the final decision. That's why I mentioned it was ladies because I figured they weren't likely to eat much. Thanks for the advice, Wendy. I'm just supplying the food, not serving, thank goodness. They will be paying for the full amount and what they don't use they can take home or whatever so I don't have to worry about leftovers. I guess this means I'm just filling an order but I have to help her decide how much she needs.

Just bumping this up to see if there's any more input.

This has been an excellent discussion and I'm glad I got to read it before I got too far into mini's. I did buy Flo Braker's book but because of this discussion I feel more confident in using her ideas and some components but developing them to fit my menu and what I have available as well as coming up with my own things. This gives a lot of freedom and room for creativity. If I have any doubt about flavour combinations, presentation, etc. I can always go back to a book for ideas. I've been working on a menu for 55 and I picked 6 items to make but didn't end up with enough variation so what was supposed to be almond cake rounds covered in white chocolate glaze with chocolate dots will become butter cake rounds cut in half with raspberry jam in the middle, covered with white chocolate glaze and decorated with raspberry jelly piped on. Now, Chefette was mentioning about size. I've been trying to keep my mini's around 1-1/2 - 1-3/4". Would that be considered a petit four? Wendy, what size are those mini cakes in your cooler and what size pastry shells do you use? It looks like you purchase pastry shells, I imagine with the amount you go through, making them would be insane. What brand do you use or what brand do you think is best?

I have had some success with the chocolate macaron recipe on here that has brown sugar but I tried it again yesterday with terrible results. No foot at all, bubbly looking tops, etc. I think maybe my oven was too hot among other things. Anyways, I have found what I think is a fool-proof recipe!! Sweet Miniatures by Flo Braker has a wonderful Chocolate Macaroon recipe! I made them today with fresh eggwhites since she doesn't mention otherwise. They smoothed out nice, a couple points but I probably needed a larger tip. Beautiful feet. I'm sorry I don't have a digital camera to show you. Her ingredients are as follows: 16 oz icing sugar 9 oz ground almonds 50 grams cocoa (not sure why it's in metric) 1 cup eggwhites (about 240 grams) 1 oz icing sugar 1 tsp honey I only made a half recipe but it worked great. The big difference to the other recipes is her method of baking. You put your oven rack in the top third of your oven. Double pan your parchment lined cookie sheet. Preheat to 475F. When you put the macaroons in you drop the temp to 425F and set the timer for 8 minutes. Drop the temperature by 25 degrees every 2 minutes till you get to 350F. It works a charm! Between each sheet you need to get it back up to 475F so there is a but of waiting but well worth it. Can you tell I'm excited?! If you try this please let me know how they turned out.

My mother-in-law makes great Panini's with roasted vegetables and Brie or another soft cheese.

Neptune, Snow Cap etc have normal bakery supplies but I was wondering if there are other places like Qzina who sell a little bit higher end ingredients. At the moment I am looking for 2"tart shells other than that which you find in every grocery store, which are also the ones I imagine the large wholesalers would sell. Qzina has some that look good but I was wondering if anyone else would?

I have 3 jobs coming up. Two are for groups of 55 where someone else will be doing the savoury finger food and I'm doing miniature sweets. At least one of those will be in the afternoon after an informal "celebration of life" (memorial). I'm taking a guess here but I was thinking 3 pieces per person would be about right if I assume that 60 will come just to be sure. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The third one is for a group of 75, mostly ladies, after an anniversary service for their organization, which begins at 9am so I imagine they'll be eating 10 - 10:30. They asked for sweets and savoury so I figured I could do an assortment of items much like you would get if you ordered "High Tea" like the one Joie pictures in her post in the Vancouver forum. So I could do savoury, semi-sweet and sweet items. The only guidelines she gave me were no seafood, sandwiches or something, no mufffins, must have scones. I can probably figure out the menu but have no idea how many pieces per person for each "tier" to count on. Can anyone please help? If you have a tired and true menu combination that you would like to suggest, I'm open to that as well.

I never use a recipe when I make crumble! Just some flour, approx. twice the amount of oatmeal, a scoop of sugar, and cut in maybe 1/4 cup of butter. Then I just mix in the fruit and sprinkle a generous layer over the cake. My favourite is when I leave out the fruit, add chopped nuts and brown sugar and cinnamon though. ← Lorna, do you use fresh or dried fruit in your topping? and about how much in relaltion to the other ingredients? I've just got a job providing food for 75 at a mid-morning celebration and that sounds like it might be a nice option.

Ok, now what about freezing mini's. Wendy, I know from your blog that you freeze a number of them. I'm sure others do too. Most books say you can freeze many of the components but not the assembled dessert. Is this really true or are there some things that can handle a couple days in the freezer assembled? I'm especially referring to things that aren't served straight out of the freezer. Many of my jobs have to travel anywhere from 30 - 90 minutes so they also need to hold ok for that time.

Wendy, thank-you so much for all the time you've taken to explain this. I'm amazed! It does make sense and I can see how having a full pantry would make it easier. As it is, I don't, but that's ok as the principles still apply. My jobs don't come as often but I can still freeze leftovers. I'll take a try too... Pineapple Upside-downs - I'm imagining it's exactly the same as the real thing except small, so that would be a small chunk of pineapple in the bottom of a mini-muffin pan with caramel and yellow cake over top but not filled too high so that you'll be able to flip them over. Or I guess you could just trim the tops. They usually have marachino cherries too so maybe when you flip them out you could put a small whipping cream rosette and a whole marachino cherry on top. Would that work?

Wendy, on the other mini thread you mentioned some recipes by Payard. Could you please give the title and a review?