JeanneCake

When you mentioned "bark" I immediately thought of mendiants (they're like bark, but in circles, with dried fruits usually) so if you can get kosher dried fruit, this could work... I also love the idea of pretzels, as well as a box of assorted pate de fruit (upscale jelly candies!)

I ended up buying another C88 because I can get the ink cartridges overnight (free freight) from a distributor in NY; I could get a larger/better printer but I'd have to do a much better job of inventory for the ink cartridges

I thought exactly the same thing - what was the feckless turd trying to do taking video of it and then posting it. As if they were trying to bring them down. Agreed, way too much time on their hands.

Maida Heatter's California Fruit Bars are an easy bar to make; you mix brown sugar and egg over heat until the sugar melts, add flour and plumped dried fruit (the original calls for fruit and nuts, and there's a variation with just pecans) and bake in a foil lined pan. It's basically a blondie with yummy fruit. I like it best with apricots and it was always a hit when I brought it to our Thursday lunch seminars. The recipe is probably available online but it's in her Book of Great American Desserts I think variations of cookies would be excellent. Going back to the book above, the Chocolate Gobs are divine. As are the Raspberry Brownies.

I bought it from Food Industry Technology, 545 W. 37th St, Miami Beach, FL 33140 I don't have a website for them, and a google search turned up empty for them. But I found this other place: http://www.jiliding.com/fish-gelatin.html that looks helpful....

If you are prohibited from using gelatin derived from beef bones, are you allowed to use a fish based gelatin? Years ago I was researching gelatin for marshmallows for Passover and I found a place in Florida that sold fish based gelatin (in powder form) that was approved for use during Passover.

Would anyone know where to find Agrimontana apricot preserve? I can do mail order for small jars, but I used to be able to buy large cans many many years ago from a distributor. This was the best tasting apricot jam I'd ever had, even better than what I made myself!

You can add a bit of gelatin to stablize the whipped cream so it holds longer; but if you are keeping the cupcakes refrigerated until just before the reception begins they should be fine. (Is this an indoor or outdoor-in-a-warm climate reception?) You can buy a whipped cream stabilizer from Albert Uster Imports (the bottle will last you forever) and this will keep the whipped cream from watering out for at least 24 hours. You could also use a white chocolate mousse that would have a longer shelf life. Or you can get that stuff in a carton that you put in a mixer bowl and whip until it looks like (and behaves like) whipped cream. I want to say it is called Pastry Pride but I think if you ask for any non-dairy whipped topping kind of product, your distributor (or Restaurant Depot) would have it.

I'm right there with you on carmel/caramel; that grates on my nerves whenever I hear it. It's like being from Boston (thankfully without the accent) and wanting to say "there's an A in the middle of that word, don't forget it!" I don't know why it happens, maybe people think they are being correct when it's not?

I keep any leftover baked puffs in the freezer in a ziplock freezer bag. Refresh for a few minutes in a hot oven to recrisp them if you need to. I personally go with Pichet Ong's recipe, it is fantastic and browns beautifully even without egg wash and tastes great unfilled even. And I was not a fan of pate a choux until a friend used that recipe and shared it.

Would you consider covering it with chocolate fondant? There's a recipe for it in The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum or you could purchase it ready made..... I find chocolate fondant to be very different from the white fondant - less sweet, for one!

You can bake cheesecake in cupcake pans, with paper liners in them; I'd bake them the way I do the individual ones in rings - at a low temp, like 225 or 250 a nd for a limited time (20-30 minutes, checking at the 20 minute mark). When I bake the individual rings, i don't use a waterbath (I'm using a convection oven and I turn the heat down to 225 and turn the pan a lot). It's easier to get them out of the pan if you bake in liners. If you bake in cupcake pans, you can place those pans in a sheet pan of water to simulate a water bath if your recipe works better that way. You could also bake a sheet of cheesecake and then cut the sheet into rings (or triangles, or what have you) that will fit your paper liners, and if you want a more secure footing, you can place the cut circles onto cookie bases. I bake off half-sheets (because I make cheesecake pops) and if I am feeling very self assured, I'll bake at 300 for 35 minutes having poured 6 pounds of batter into the pan (using a pan extender). It's 250 for a little bit longer if there's lots of "stuff" (like oreos, heath bar, other cookie types like Girl Scout Samoas) - I am also modifying the recipe to make a firmer, denser cheesecake that can withstand rolling.

Looks beautiful! what did you end up using for the chocolates?

@ ChrisZ: Swiss Chalet is selling a chocolate glaze with metallic sheen in in both white and dark; I don't know if they only sell to the trade or if consumers can buy from their website. I've been seeing pictures of cakes that have animal prints inside the baked layer (leopard); and ones where people bake cake balls in that special pan and then put the baked balls into a pan of cake batter and create a cake with polka dots in it. You can buy sparkle airbrush color, which you could use to color cake batter (think red velvet), but honestly, the sparkle will be very very faint because it's a shimmer color not a neon color. But it's worth a try.

I just spritz my styrofoam dummies with water to get the fondant to adhere; shake off the excess water and then apply the fondant to the styrofoam and smooth it...

I've always thought of "pearl dusts" as having a lustrous, luminous finish with an undertone of the color named (e.g., gold pearl has a gold sheen, super pearl is white, red pearl has a red shimmer). The "luster dust" has the same shimmery finish, but a distinct color. Petal dusts don't have any shimmer at all, it's just the flat color. Usually I mix them with lemon extract to paint on fondant cakes or or flowers, some people use vodka; I find the lemon extract dries faster for me than the vodka. But vodka is good for correcting mistakes I buy them from Pfeil and Holing (www.cakedeco.com), Avalon (www.avalondeco.com), Cal-Java (www.caljava-online.com), Global Sugar Art (www.globalsugarart.com)

What if you did smaller display cakes and put them on pedestals? Instead of going with a 12/10/8/6 dummy, go with 8/6/4 and then get a plastic or foam pedestal (you could find something at a floral distributor) so it can be elevated on the table. Maybe use it as the giveaway at the end of the show to people who book an appointment with you. Would you be willing to consider using a cone instead of round stacked cake dummies (sort of like a piece montee/croquembouche)? That might use less product.

RLB always has a chart in her books with ingredients listed by volume, by weight (avoirdupois) and in metric (grams) - perhaps start with her recipe and use her chart for comparison when you bake from the other recipes...

My father's mother was a suberb cook; she taught my mother and then me. Dinner was every Sunday at her house and there were a dozen of us around the table. There's a picture somewhere in the family albums of me in a high chair rolling meatballs in her kitchen. She didn't bake frequently, though; when she did it was biscotti (my Nonno's favorite) and S cookies and like everything else - done in mass quantities so it would last for a month. Ravioli were every few weeks, hundreds and hundreds of them that would take the entire day in my parent's kitchen (It was just a little bigger than hers) and more than once I was found asleep in the hallway where I had snuck out of bed so I could watch my parents and grandparents at work.

I would love to have the recipe too please.

There's a way around this; use a magnet on the outside of the cage. When I got my 30 quart it was the first thing I did (figure out how to swing the cage around so I could pour hot syrup in without the cage being locked in place). Then it seems that someone mentioned it to the tech working on the mixer one day and now I don't need the magnet anymore....

I am reading the OP as describing an individual choux puff. So to that end, I've seen some pastry chefs use a thin sweet dough, rolled very thin, placed on top of an individual choux puff before baking. I'm trying to remember where I saw this, possibly it was in Herme's dessert book but I will have to find the book to check. St Honore usually has caramel dipped puffs along the edge of the round but it could be plain puffs as well.

I freeze the unfilled shells all the time; I put them flat sides together in a fish tub (think tupperware or rubbermaid airtight container) and line them up and then freeze them. I fill them immediately after taking them from the freezer and then store the filled ones in the cooler (same way, in the fish tub, airtight) for a day. I tell the customer the shelf life is 3 days max.

Depending on the conditions in your walk in (humid or not) the shells might change color (this happened to me in the summer when I moved and got a new walk that needed to be tweaked a bit); I would put them in fish buckets lined with parchment or deli paper and go from there. Herme ages his macs in the cooler for a day; and I've stored completed ones in the freezer (in fish tubs but I wrap them with plastic wrap) for a week so I think you'll be fine!

The beater blade company is not going to make a scraper paddle for the 7 qt KA (I've asked them twice and Rose Levy Beranbaum asked on her blog and they said no) but I've found the beater blade at Home Goods. They don't have it all the time, but you could ask them to hold one for you the next time they get some in....if you have them in your area.