JeanneCake

I knew of her work editing The Cake Bible before I'd ever heard of her daughter Alex; the first few times I saw Chef Alex in action on TV I wondered if she was related to the Maria of the Strawberry Maria cake in the book! Such a loss.

You could look at vegan pie crusts - they most likely use a vegan shortening/butter substitute or the one on the blog My Quiet Kitchen has one that is GF, DF and oil free. I looked at it a while ago when we had someone ask for a DF/GF fruit tart 😉 but then they decided against it so we didn't end up making it. (It uses almond flour if a nut allergy is an issue)

I'm biased, because I'm baking professionally. So please take this with a grain of salt .... I would not buy Fat Daddio pans if you gave me twice the amount of money they cost. They don't conduct heat well, and for a 3" tall pan, this will be a problem for you. I own several of these pans and am always disappointed in how they bake. They had odd sized square pans (11") so I bought them and regret it. The corners are rounded, not square. They are lightweight pans. They warp. Cakes don't rise as well in them (due to the pan weight and material). I recently bought some 9x13 pans and they sent Fat Daddio. They haven't gotten any better I would recommend Magic Line, if you can get them. They are the best pans I've ever used; and the majority of my pan inventory is Magic Line (we have 6 full sets of rounds from 16" to 5" in one inch increments; and 5 sets of squares 16, 14, 12, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4.5) as well as some custom 11x15x2.5 rectangles and 8x2.5 rounds so I have a lot more experience with these pans. They're heavy, cakes bake well, they wash well (use toothpicks in the corners LOL) and they never, ever warp. It's harder for me to find them (not that I really need any more!) but I would even buy them on eBay if they aren't dented or damaged. I would recommend getting 3" high pans - not the 4" tall ones. rant over

😢 Such sad news. She was a blessing to so many people here, and I hope her family takes comfort in knowing how cherished she was, here and surely in all other areas of her life.

Probably why it has seen so little use

For what it's worth the GN shortage isn't limited to retail; we make a GN custard in the summer for one of our accounts and I buy it by the case. I checked (because I'm putting together an order for next week, and sure enough -it's not available to order.

I was thinking the buttermilk and cocoa made the baking soda necessary to adjust the PH of the batter; and that the BP is for lift in the oven. I do think that the self-rising flour is something we see a lot of in English (and Southern US) recipes and perhaps their ratios are different. So if you use 1.5 tsp BP to one cup of flour, whisk well, then use 80 grams of that for the self rising flour, you should be ok....

Something else just occurred to me; several of my English cookbooks (especially for fruitcakes) have you make a parchment collar for the pan. It extends two-ish inches above the rim of the pan. Does the front section of the book talk about how to prepare the pans for cakes? The Australian cake pans I have (these are different shapes that you couldn't get easily) are 3 inches tall and the accompanying recipes all mention making the parchment collar. Your mileage may vary; but maybe something to try with the springform pan you have; just use a double layer of heavy duty foil to wrap the bottom (outside) and that will help minimize any leaking.

As Pastrygirl mentions, the depth of the pan is important. I want to say that most cake tins in the UK are deeper (about 3" tall on average) than here in the US (which could be 1.5" or 2" tall) ...... does the book have a photo of the finished cake?

I wash the BBQ grill by hand, always. And tonight I noticed that at least 6 or 8 rows are starting to show signs of losing the finish, on the top. It's not flaking so much as it's just peeled off in those small sections (you can't actually flake it off). Anyone else see this? We use the grill at least twice, sometimes three times a week - mostly fish, veggies, sometimes steak tips and this past week, the boys have discovered grilling burgers and they've had burgers (beef and turkey) three times in five days 🙄 I'm ordering another grid and while I'm at it, another drip pan. I know the drip pan is pretty easy to clean but sometimes having a second one would come in handy.

How many baskets are you projecting to sell? You don't really know when your customers are going to consume the products so something already shelf-stable might be safer. Consider asking your distributor if they have Peter's caramel blocks or something else that you can safely use while you figure out the canning issue. This way you have no concerns about stuff that is going out the door now, but you have a plan for future holidays (Easter? Mother's Day?) Edited to add: in some of the canning forums I am in, there's been a lot of chatter regarding the shortage of lids last fall and the shortage of some jars so perhaps sourcing the jars at the same time you are getting data about how to do it safely is a good idea too!

OMG that FB forum is FULL of people experimenting with Valentine's designs. The last post I read was someone struggling to get the shell out of a heart shaped silicone mold (she claims they keep breaking) and people are telling her she should go to the dollar store and get these plastic hearts meant for packaging and use those as molds. Another person chimed in that they were doing round red shells and adding (🤢) red velvet instant pudding in place of the cocoa mix. For the love of God people .....! LOL I do have to admit that I was surprised we sold another 50 this week to repeat customers, who asked if we were going to keep making them through the winter.......

If you were foolish enough to consider exploring how to make a pink hot chocolate, how would you go about it? Use Ruby chocolate, ground up? A touch of powdered color in a Ghiradelli white cocoa mix? I haven't tasted the ruby chocolate to know if it's any good or not, so this could be a fool's errand.

I'm still on the raft! Final count 909 (in the last two weeks). I expect demand to fall off drastically for this and we will probably only make 20 or so a week if that. I had been planning to do different flavors for the winter months (Jan/Feb/March) but I'm not sure about that any more. I wanted to do one with colored marshmallows and a superhero one. Or a Dr Seuss one - a lot of elementary schools do a reading festival around the birthday of Theodore Geisel - at least the ones around here did when I had a child in elementary school! I cannot tell you how excited I am to know that I can sleep in tomorrow morning (no young children in our house At the moment I am feasting on lobster dip, prosecco and crackers. Eventually I will begin dinner which is a sort of seafood fra diavolo (hitting four fish instead of 7) and go to sleep!

It's worse than Cabbage Patch dolls. Next year you'll find them in the local drugstore, made by Nestle. I am working 14 hour days, coming home and updating our order sheets, sleeping 6 hours and repeating. I've run out of labels, containers (I'm actually now using clear plastic drink cups with lids because everywhere is out of the 3x3x3 clear boxes.) and I am almost out of chocolate. I stopped counting at 600. I'm so tired I can't even cry.

What does the inside of the pan look like and have you ever used crisco (applied with a brush) and floured the pan before baking? Edited to add: Have you ever baked a non-gingerbread recipe in the pan, just to see what happens?

This trend is .... wow. I'm grateful for it because it's bringing in business I might not otherwise have; everyone wants one/some and I am literally making 50-75 of them a day. And selling out. Mine are not even half as pretty as the ones in those articles Being the competitive spirit I am, you can bet that NEXT year mine will be prettier! (I've since corrected the label to be jtcakes.com instead of jtcakes) @pastrygirl, thanks the comparison to crystallization of sugar helped! @JimD thank you for your message; I took a look at it and it made a lot of sense - I will have lots of questions after Christmas! @Kerry Beal I HAVE SILK! I got Felchlin cocoa butter on Saturday, and I have silk today! 🥰

Thanks @curls for the video link! I thought I was buying polycarbonate molds from D&R a few weeks back during the black friday sale (there was no picture of the molds on the site and not ever having bought molds before, what did I know!) but they are flimsy plastic so I am not using them and hoping to return them but haven't heard back yet. I also got some plastic molds from a candy supply store before they sold out so that's what I'm using. Anyway, today I just had to do something - we cannot keep up with demand for these things. So, I melted some Felchlin ultra molding and did exactly what he describes - I fill the molds with a 2 oz ladle, and kind of dunk it in so the chocolate comes up to the rim. Then when all the molds are filled, I turn it over on a grid to let the excess drip; slide it off the grid, clean the edge and then leave it upside down on a piece of parchment while I fill the rest of the molds. then I repeat it so it's more sturdy. I only have to do it once with the tempered chocolate though; this molding stuff seems more "fragile" for want of a better word. Sealing them (at least for me!) is the easy part. I don't understand this cocoa butter issue, though. My AUI rep is very nice and more than willing to work through the issue; but they are already saying, well no one else has complained .... and personally I want to say, well how many of your other customers have an EZ Temper? And would you guys like to tell the Chocolate Doctor she is wrong? Yeah. Didn't think so. I don't know how you guys do this. I'm determined to get it but OMG .... temps, crystals, seeding. I flunked Algebra twice in high school (aced Geometry with straight As though!) and I feel like I'm back in math class! 🤣

Thanks, Kerry, I'm glad you have a chance to take a little break from the pandemic 😁 I'm getting some Felchlin cocoa butter. What i had was Orchid, and it was on sale..... I've asked for help figuring out the age and how it was stored and they are responsive. There is no one around me that has anything, and this tempering by hand is confusing (to me) and time consuming. I've gotten it right, which is encouraging but I have so many questions! I'm using a really viscous 58% and it takes an hour just to make shells for about 2 dz bombs. I have a long long road ahead as far as chocolate goes!

I am clearly doing something wrong - I bought a case of cocoa butter three or four weeks ago from AUI, powered up the EZ and left two containers in for 24 hours. Very lumpy so left it in another day. Still lumpy. Took them out, and forgot to put them back in for the day so the next day they went back in - still very seed-y, lump-y looking. No change after 24 hours. In desperation I melted it all out (took the CB to 93dF) put it back in to see what would happen. (I haven't changed the default temp setting, it's at 33.8) I've lost track of how long it's been in there but this is what it looked like at the end of the day yesterday. These *$&%^ chocolate bombs are killing me - I don't know how to temper chocolate to begin with and learning on a curve during a holiday season in the midst of a pandemic is probably not the best time to learn something new And I am learning that working clean when working with chocolate is simply not possible as a novice 🤣. What am I doing wrong? Should I have melted the CB to a higher temp? Or just wait longer? Edited to add: I don't really want to bother Kerry with such a trivial question because she's busy saving our lives in the pandemic so I'm hoping someone else has had this issue and can tell me what worked for them.

that makes me remember a line on several menus from various wedding venues "blah blah ... cake decorated to your perfection" 🙄 Seriously? WHO'S "perfection"??? Isn't that why there's a website dedicated to cake fails (cake wrecks) - that was somebody's "perfection" too 😄

Julia Child didn't refer to herself as a Chef; she in fact made mention of the fact that she'd never led a brigade so should not be referred to as Chef. The word that's getting to me is "artisanal" - not everything is artisanal 🤨 but I see it in regular rotation. I'm not saying there aren't artisanal producers but the term is being applied very loosely IMHO.

Yeah, where did you get the grilling bags? Those look great ....

All of our distributors (who ship to MA from NY, MD and across the country) have warned us that the carriers are "experiencing higher than usual volume" and to count on shipping delays. I'm not sure about the USPS. Better to plan for 3-5 days shipping just in case. Have you sent out test packages to see how things arrive? I think American buttercream made with all shortening is safer than a shortening/butter mix. Some of those UPS trucks are jammed to the gills with stuff so even if it's freezing out, your packages should be somewhat insulated against wild temp swings!

I succumbed to the hot chocolate bomb madness. I just ordered molds from D&R (2.75 inch), hopefully they'll be here in a week or so. I'm ordering cocoa butter from AUI this week and will make silk and then immerse myself this weekend learning. We use chocoa forte 60% as our basic, everyday ingredient chocolate and that's what I'm going to use to get the technique down. (we save the good stuff for mousse and ganache). So, the dark side beckons and I'm answering the call Please be patient with me as I navigate this new obsession.....I'm sure I'm going to be asking questions!!