JeanneCake

Lava cake is another option... make them in advance, bake or not, then freeze and either rewarm in a microwave or bake to order

Maida Heatter has a recipe for Indian Pudding in one of her cookbooks and the intro to the recipe says something along the lines of "this requires long, slow cooking so if you are planning a slow cooked meal, it would be a shame not to make room for this too". Her recipe calls for 5 hours of baking, and while I've been wanting to make this recipe for at least 20 years, I haven't because of the baking time it needs. I just never seem to think of it on a snowy evening! My neighbor makes baked beans all the time during the winter, maybe I will coordinate with their efforts this year. Her description makes me think it is like a spiced custard but not heavy; maybe akin to grapenut custard? Or maybe a cheesecake.

Hmmm.... you could also use the Silver Palate carrot cake recipe; it does call for crushed pineapple but this disappears into the cake so you cannot tell it is there. Leave out the nuts and coconut and you're all set. You can add additional spices (that recipe only calls for cinnamon). I mention this because I routinely use it for wedding cakes (we have four this weekend and three of them are carrot cake) so I know it scales up easily. (My regular batch size is 4x the original recipe because that's as big as will fit comfortably in our 20 qt Hobart). How purple does she want the flowers? You could just make them white and brush them with the purple petal dust for a very soft effect - or even airbrush them if you have one. (the more delicate the flower, the more they will fly around and not cooperate when you are waving around the airbrush

I have never tried that. But now I want to! I don't have a hand held burr blender, just a regular Waring blender. I wonder would there be much difference.....

I like my food processor for making purees, some doughs, and a few batters (cheesecake pretty much.) The slicing blade makes nice slices for some things but they are thin slices (like for a gratin). When my child began to cook, I bought one of those chopper gadgets so he could put an onion or some garlic or herbs in it and I didn't have to worry about him with a knife. He's older now and more proficient with a knife, but he still likes to use the chopper It's a small one so it doesn't have much capacity, I don't know how useful it would be to you in your situation unless you were able to find a larger one. Best wishes for a speedy recovery...

As kids, my brother and I clamored for the pasta in a can - maybe it was the Chef Boyardee stuff, I don't remember. When my mother finally gave in and bought a can, my brother and I refused to eat it after one bite. I know it doesn't fit the loved it as a kid, don't like it as an adult theme we're on, but your story reminded me of that day. It was pretty funny!

I bought a hundred or so 3" round rings from Parrish's in Gardena CA many many years ago; they have website but there's no product list on it; they have a paper catalogue but I usually just call and ask them for what I want and get a price. I bought 2" and 3" cake rings (in various sizes - 8, 9 and 10 rounds mostly) from Pfeil and Holing because they are conveniently located in NY and anything I order pretty much arrives the next day (thank you UPS). Try Pfeil and Holing (www.cakedeco.com) or JB Prince, or NY Cake and Baking - they have have a web presence so you can browse through the products and then call in an order or do it online. Good luck!

Darienne, any advice you can offer would be very much appreciated! Of this I am confident: I will be asked on Wednesday to make lollipops for Friday. I have never made lollipops before, but I make Italian Meringue buttercream nearly every day so boiling sugar does not make me nervous. I also like to make caramel in a dry pan (ok, I rub it first with a cut lemon) so while it makes me nervous because this is a busy week for us, I am more worried about making them then finding out the next day they are too sticky to handle. And, they want clear lollipops, no color. I don't know if that makes any difference at all...

these look pretty cool! I sent the link to the blog below to the account and told them that this would be what the lollipops looked like. I probably won't hear until the last minute that they want me to make the lollipops I cannot begin to think why the client is saying that lollipops in France are paper thin; maybe it's just personal preference on their part. I would think a paperthin pop wouldn't ship without breaking anyway....

One of my accounts asked me today about making an ultra-thin lollipop - their client says that in France, lollipops are paper thin, or perhaps just a whole lot thinner than lollies made here in the US. I told them that I only have regular sized sticks (the 5/16ths width) so any lollipops I made would be thicker, just to hold the stick in place. I don't have a source for thinner sticks, and plus they want these for next Friday. I tried doing a google image search on "french lollipops", ultra thin lollipops but can't come up with anything that looks like what they are asking for. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Any ideas? I've never made lollipops before, but I imagine it is similar to making caramel and then pouring into a mold or onto parchment or a silpat.....

There's nothing wrong with that. I love Oreos in all flavors; I am not so crazy about the blonde ones and I do not like the cakester things. We just started getting the vanilla/chocolate cookie version (blonde cookie on one side, chocolate cookie on the other, vanilla filling). The most popular flavor of cheesecake I make? Oreo.

Hmmm. Filling from the bottom would mean that you are either puncturing the paper liner the cupcake is baked in, or not baking them in liners but putting them in papers after you fill/frost.... Usually when I do filled cupcakes, I use a wide, plain tip and poke it through the top of the cupcake to about halfway to the middle of the cupcake, twist and then pull the "plug" and use that space to fill, then I pipe the topping on. You could smooth the filling level with the top of the cupcake and then dip them into the glaze and then do the squiggle. ETA: I like using jumbo/large/Texas size cupcakes for filled cupcakes - the standard size ones are harder to fill because they're smaller.

If you can get some pate a glace in a bucket, this will work better than the coating chocolate although it is probably a similar product. I use the pate a glace for my cheesecake lollipops and cake pops because of the convenience. When an order comes in, I put the bucket in a pan of water and when it is fluid, I dip right in the bucket (because I only dip the lollipops in it; if I am dipping other things, I pour some out into a smaller bowl. The brand I use for the pate a glace is Shokinag, which is now under a different company name; I've also used the same stuff from Swiss Chalet (the Swiss Chalet product is also available in coins called Ultra Rondo).

This summer I have a new hire who is a recent graduate of a pastry program taught at a local college by a well-known French pastry chef. We needed to make a lot of swans for a new account and she jumped at the chance. I was ok with her using her recipe from school, although she said that she hadn't gotten it to bake well at home. Anyway. The school recipe called for a different technique than I'd ever seen before. It was 1 qt water, 14 oz butter, pinch salt, sugar optional, 21 oz flour, 14-15 eggs. Bring the water, butter, sugar and salt to a rolling boil and pour into the 20 qt Hobart mixer bowl. Add the flour all at once and mix on speed 1 until the pomade is at 160 degrees; then add the eggs gradually. The puffs were ok; personally I much prefer Pinchet Ong's recipe... I asked her what the chef said about this technique - why he used it or perhaps this was his development; and she had no idea. She thought it was the traditional French method and I said no - the traditional method was what my recipes were (dump the flour into the boiling mixture, stir until it becomes a ball and leaves a film on the pot, then add the eggs...) so... anyone else use this type of technique?

I think you have to acknowledge what people are paying now for cakes and then be realistic about how theirs will compare. If they are buying their ingredients retail, versus wholesale (from a distributor or even if the local warehouse store is cheaper) that will make the difference in their pricing. Don't forget to factor in labor, overhead, advertising, packaging .... all of that contributes to the price of goods sold.

I use the Cuisinart Power Strainer - which is no longer manufactured - which is an attachment on the regular food processor. But you might be able to find one on eBay or something like that; that's how I found mine. It works beautifully to remove all the seeds. Perhaps there is something similar for a robot coupe if you have one of those in your kitchen already?

If you are looking for rolled fondant, The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum has recipes for both plain and chocolate rolled fondant (she also has a recipe for poured fondant in there too); Kerry Vincent's wedding cake book also has a recipe in it

Now that you bring it up, it's been a while since I've seen dried pears at the market. You could get them mail order at Sunnyland Farms - I have always had great products from here.

what a pain these were! I bought some imported greek feta this morning, but when I tasted it, I didn't like it with the watermelon (it was really bland, not sharp or tangy and I was surprized and then I had to improvise, because I'd already used goat cheese with the figs/proscuitto and I was using a sweet gorgonzola in fresh apricots). I'd already cut the watermelons (the watermelons tasted ok, the yellow wasn't as sweet as the red) into coins and I ended up alternating the red and yellow colors on the skewers - four "coins". The irony was that the event was outdoors, under a colored tent. A red and yellow striped tent. Which I didn't know until I got there and then the event planner was wondering why I couldn't stop laughing when I arrived. The photographer was in seventh heaven, though; he got some shots of the skewers with the tent in the background. But it had the desired effect - people loved them and the presentation. Sometimes the pastry gods have a sense of humor! And I think ricotta salatta would have been good; I wish I'd seen it in the market this morning. I still have a whole yellow melon left so maybe I'll try it ....

A Brazilian friend tells me that her family makes a dessert with it, sweetened condensed milk and Nestle's Media Cream. These are her instructions: Empty the can of condensed milk into the blender. Fill the can with passion concentrate (it comes in a glass bottle) and put that in the blender. Drain the water off of the media cream and put that in a blender. Mix to blend, pour into containers or glasses or whatever and refrigerate for 30 minutes minimum. Sounds like a key lime pie kind of thing but with no eggs....

Ok, I have to say that I am not someone who indulges in cocktails and mixed drinks (mostly because the only thing my husband remembers to get at the liquor store is *his* microbrews and I'm too tired at the end of the day to make my own) but the use of the word "artisanal" makes me wonder if you can have artisanal spirits like you can have artisanal bread and chocolates..... Yes?

On Monday, in preparation for a "high end tailgating party" for this weekend, I was looking online for different ways to present fruit skewers (the party is also doubling as a photo shoot for an event planner's portfolio). So in the search, I came across a photo I cannot find again. It showed red and yellow watermelon, cut with a round cutter with some type of white cheese ball in between and perched on a clear cocktail stick (I ultimately bought some sticks and a platform from jbprince). It gave me the idea to use yellow watermelon, which our produce guy was able to get in and looks/tastes great. I have been looking for this picture for the last two days and no luck, no matter what I search on. I've looked at the jbprince site, the Swiss Chalet site (because I was going to order some verrines but didn't), on epicurious but no luck. I was hoping to see what kind of cheese it was (I don't want to use feta; I know feta and watermelon is a nice combo but wanted something else). It was a fairly close up photo (it was easy to tell the watermelon had been cut with a cutter); nothing in the background (that I can remember) but I can't find it and the party is tomorrow so perhaps someone can suggest a cheese to use with it or is way better at finding images than I am!

What about a cherry ganache filling in the devil's food cupcake (hollow out a bit of the cupcake, fill with the ganache), top the hole with a brandied cherry and swirl the top with kirsh-flavored whipped cream....

While you could learn a lot in two weeks, it's not going to really register as a place where you gained a significant amount of work experience - even if you picked up things that will serve you well in the future. Consider presenting your resume with skills listed first. Ask your present employer what you're good at (speed? multitasking? organizing) or if that's too blatant (it looks like you're fishing for compliments!) be honest with yourself about what you do well at work and where you need to improve. Then go from there. Lead with your strengths. Many times a fast food operation by its very nature teaches you how to organize yourself and speed - as well as how to clean as you go and this kind of experience can be a good thing.

We love breakfast for dinner! Usually it's scrambled eggs or an omelet, toast, melon and berries if we have it, bacon on occasion (none of us has any willpower when it comes to perfectly cooked bacon!); I'm the only one in the family who likes french toast so I don't make it just for me. Husband and son like apple sausages on occasion..... Usually it's once or twice a month, but it's been a long while since we've had breakfast for dinner so maybe tomorrow.....