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JSkilling

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Everything posted by JSkilling

  1. Can you type the French phrase and I'll translate it for you.
  2. I thought Michael did a superb job and was so sure he'd won I switched over to another channel and just came back to see Mario getting congratulated. I was quite surprised since I thought overall Michael's work was better. I like churros but somehow creme brulee in an egg cup with the other two dishes on the plate seemed so much more complex! Rematch!
  3. I think they came out darling! The key to the red and white swirl mixture is to lay down stripes of each color and then run your toothpick all the way through in one direction to pull those stripes of color out. You can pull one way and then reverse the next line or you can pull them all the same way.
  4. JSkilling

    Cocoa Nibs

    I like to get the pieces a bit smaller and use the over coffe gelato. I like them as the nut like element in a chocolate cookie and I like to snack on them!
  5. Two sticks of butter is one cup and I used unsalted and add salt back into the recipe.
  6. No, I don't want them to rise. They do puff a bit but stay basically the size that you cut. I might fiddle around with some baking powder in them though if someone tells me it will make the cookie a bit stronger but not tougher.
  7. Lemoncurd, You are very welcome and thanks! Someone else here gave it to me when I couldn't link so I'll pass on the favor. It really is the nicest of the sugar cookie recipes I've tried. What I've found is that if the butter to sugar ratio is higher then you'll get a better and softer cookie. There are times for crisp cookies (add more sugar) but I really like the softness of these once you get past the crackly of the icing. You'll note that I did not say to use Toba's glacé icing. It's lovely but doesn't dry so tonight I made ballet slippers with white and pink royal icing and it's just so much easier to deal with. Though, I'll say for a translucent border I really like to thicken the glacé icing up and pipe that around. And that does get hard. If you are going to decorate them like this, it works nicely to simply dot your wet base color with another color and then drag a toothpick through the dot to make patterns like hearts. You might already know how to do that but I thought I'd pass it along....
  8. Oh, that's easy it's the Cook's Illustrated one: 2 sticks butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 egg yolk 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp almond extract 1/2 tsp salt 2 1/2 cups flour Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the extracts and then the eggs. Stir in dry ingredients. Here's how I get them perfect. Right away you can plop them in two batches between two sheets of parchment paper. Give them a roll to about 1/4 inch and then in the fridge to chill. When they are good and chilled, peel off one side and then turn the dough over to that paper and peel off the other side. Use your cutters to pick up the dough and drop it on the sheets. Bake at 325 for about 10 minutes if using heavy duty dark pans. Bake at 350 otherwise and watch them until they just turn golden on the edges. Glaze with royal icing flavored with 2 tsp almond extract. Eat.
  9. I'd have to pay you the $ because I can't get past the first syllables I used PDX in a raspberry sorbet over the weekend and didn't find it to be gummy in the product. I did learn that I really have to keep the usage down low if I'm going to have fruit at 50%. I started with a base that measured out at 16 Baume and added about 1/4 PDX. I ended up at 27 and added water to get to 25 and decided to just spin it and see what I got. Very fluffy. And it's never going to freeze solid. The taste was fine and I've actually eaten some sorbet that was this fluffy in consistency, though it was made from all sugar and so sweet that it was tooth decaying immediately. Next experiment will take the Baume back down to 17-18 and adjust the water and fruit with the PDX to accomodate. Litesse has recommended 30% fruit, 69% water, 10% Litesse and some sweeteners % that can't remember off hand.
  10. I ended up starting at 1/4 cup and added another 1/4 as the batter came together since it needed the PDX to emulsify the fat back in. I liked them at 1/2 cup PDX and still got a nice, dense fudgy brownie. I'm going to try around 3/4 cup and see how that comes out. Even at 1 cup in the mixture, the results on day two were much better for the chew in the crust. It has softened enough that it was better than day one, but I'll try adjusting down between 1 cup and 3/4 cup and see what I think. I've also switched to my pure liquid sucralose from McNeil - about 3 drops from a liquid dropper seemed to do it with my other sweeteners. That Splenda bite still comes shining through in the batter but seems to bake out as there is no distinct taste even as the product ages.
  11. Ted, Thanks. I thought you meant that you had some master base that you mixed up and then just added your fruit purees as you went along. I haven't been able to such a thing since each puree has different amounts of sugar. I think I like around 16- 18 Baume best but ended up with a 25 raspberry sorbet this weekend. Sucker will never, ever freeze solid! I was experimenting with some polydextrose and it took my base that measures out at 16 to 25 with 4T added. Next experiment.... I do like to use a stabilizer with this and have used xanthan gum in the past and also have some commercial stabilizer that has locust bean gum and something that I can't remember offhand - might be carageenen... I don't use any additional atomized glucose or sugar product since I'm trying to keep the glycemic value down. I also have to deal with the added sweetness of fructose in my mix so I have to compensate for the fact that it's 1.8 times sweeter than sucrose, especially at frozen temps. I feel like Alton Brown half the time...
  12. And I'm going to make it worse.... They are soooo good. I flavor them with vanilla and almond in the cookie and then flavor the glaze with almond. I underbake (which I know you like) so the cookie is softer and melts in your mouth.... And you can't stop at one!!
  13. Thank you, Jeanne! Knowing your gorgeous work, that's a nice compliment.... Our local Starbucks has some snowflakes that look like they are dipped in white chocolate and they've had some red hearts as well. So here I am craning my neck around to get a better view of the back of the stacks to see what they've done to theirs. Maybe I just should have sprung for the $1.75 to see what they did. Which, by the way I think is cheap for these cookies.... One of the things I truly like about the glacé icing is that it's got a translucency to it so for the outline it really does look good. I'm not usually one for a different color outline to the cookie but I did like it quite a bit in this red/white combination.
  14. Ted, When you say you make up a base is that with a mix of some kind? And then you just add your fruit purees to get to the correct sugar solution?
  15. I know somewhere there was a discussion of which was better for royal icing but I can't remember the outcome or if there was a preference one way or the other. I use meringue powder because it's easier and I don't want to take a chance with a customer on egg whites. For home I don't care and we all eat egg products that are not cooked up to temp. As Anne said, "it's only my family!"
  16. Because we cannot have it all - we'd have nothing left to bitch about.... Yikes! And I'm thinking about doing these as favors for weddings. I must just be a glutton for punishment... Ok, so back to real questions. Now when you do runout with the white chocolate do you just get it thicker to use to outline and then thin it out for the fill? I was thinking that if I wanted to mold something on top of the cookies I'd do it in white chocolate since that would be better to pop into your mouth that a hunk of fondant.
  17. I use the Herme recipe and have added the powdered egg whites as well. I do like it better with but the results without are fine. I like them one day later. I fill mine with ganache and freeze them and thaw with no degradation in taste. They are spectacular.
  18. Thanks, Patrick, but Jeanne hit the nail on the head with this icing. On mine 24 hrs later and they are still not dry enough to stack. But that shine is glorious!
  19. So do you dip the whole cookie or just the front? How do you store them if they are not tempered? Keep them cold? You know what I love (little kid at heart that I am) white chocolate dipped cookies with those multi colored non-pareils on them. Love the little crunch! And I love even better, sugar cookies dipped in a red mint glaze and then dipped in dark chocolate and covered with multi-colored non-pareils.
  20. These cookies that I just did with the same glaze have a beautiful sheen but will never be as hard as my royal icing. I love working with it but the corn syrup really does make it too soft for storage. I dented my cookies in propping them for this photo shoot. I like to flavor either Toba's glaze or my royal icing with almond and the comments I get EVERY single time someone eats one of my cookies is " Oh-my-God!" I think that's the key to getting more flavor out of the icing. On it's own, it's eh. I've added small amounts of corn syrup to the royal icing and I think it helps to maintain a more soft interior but a firm outside layer (thanks, Keith!) I dusted my snowflakes at Christmas time with luster dust and that added some sheen on top of the matte royal icing and I thought that was a nice compromise. The shiny glaze will be used only if the cookies are being iced, dried and served in the same time frame! Anne, do you just dip yours in tempered white chocolate and then do your designs in royal icing? I love chocolate covered cookies but they, to me, are a different cookie entirely and stand on their own.
  21. You could probably pipe royal icing on top of each one since you're not adding any fat based product and it can stay at room temperature as the marshmallows do. Use a very fine tip and icing that is of writing consistency, color it and give it a go....
  22. I think the key is to go back to what you originally stated - you want an upscale name. Bakin' would not suggest that to me, nor would your cute handle here. It works perfectly in this environment but my first thought is generally pork, not cake! You know that Beggin' Strips commercial where the dog just keeps saying, "bacon!" That keeps running through my mind... The the kind of baking you are doing, I like "crumbs" Lookee here - I got to 100 posts!
  23. Here's what I'm making for Valentine's Day, the day my husband swears is simply a made up Hallmark holiday he chooses to ignore....
  24. Love the tutorial mode on this. I may try to do these with some phyllo in place of the puff.
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