JeanneCake

do you want to keep this pizza maker or not? If you do, then sharing tips is a good way to do it. If you don't want to keep this person, and are willing to be in a position where you are filling the pizza maker job on a regular basis then don't. It's all about how you want to take care of your staff. If this guy is good, or has potential to be groomed for another position in your organization; if he's reliable and trustworthy, those are valuable attributes in an employee. I don't know that pizza maker is the kind of job you're going to get someone to stay in for years and years so whatever policy you put in place now is one that has to stay no matter who is making the pizza.

Well, at least I'll be in good company with the rest of you, picking up all the lettuce, cucumbers, parsley and poultry carcasses down there in Hell with my eyelashes and wearing that coconut hairshirt ... I have done all of these, and more.

when I am especially tired, I pour Barilla Green Olive sauce over them and bake (I know, I know, it's sauce from a jar. My grandmother thought jarred sauce was never as good as "real gravy" and I never argued with her.) When I'm not tired, I like to do what everyone else does with them: stir fries, rolled around a sauteed veggie filling....

We've made snacky-desserts using tortillas spread with melted butter, sugar and cinnamon and then chocolate shreds. Roll them up, spreading the underside with melted butter, sugar and cinnamon. Anchor with a toothpick. Into the oven for a few minutes. Yum. Now that sounds good! Like cinnamon toast but with chocolate!!! Thanks for the idea, definitely going to do this one!

Hmm... dessert nachos! Cinnamon pita chips, dulce de leche or nutella, some soft creamy cheese, chocolate chips maybe a few dried cranberries... fudge drizzles... now I have to see if this theory pans out!

Can you show us what it looks like? I don't have the book .... but perhaps the author sliced the fruit paper-thin on a mandoline and candied it?

You could mash the cheese so you can use a tiny (ice cream) scoop or even a melon baller (you'd need to spray it with pan spray so it releases - the scoop is easier); or just use two spoons to shape small balls rather than try for slicing into coins. I love goat cheese with honey so it wouldn't matter to me if the cheese was misshapen The squeeze bottle is ideal for scribbling on the plate.

Exactly what I was going to chime in with; I have fond memories of drinking my morning tea from a wide bowl in France. Definitely a beverage I'd be curious about how people handle the remaining milk in the bowl after the cereal is gone - drink it or add more cereal til it's gone?

My favorite bran muffin recipe comes from Maida Heatter's New Book of Great Desserts; it makes an exceptional muffin - moist with raisins, crunchy from walnuts (the only time I like walnuts in any kind of baked good) and no grit from using bran (it uses All Bran cereal, not dry bran). It calls for a combination of white and whole wheat flour, molasses and honey, whole milk, butter (although I have substituted margarine when someone asked and it worked out ok). usually I keep a bag of the dry ingredients handy and can keep the wet ingredients mixed overnight in the fridge so I can make them fresh in the morning. It does not qualify as a make-ahead and keep batter that you can have in the fridge, but depending on the size of the muffins you make and the quantities, it might work for you. The recipe as written makes 18 standard size muffins, but I usually fill them a little bit more and get 12. You would get 6 or 8 bigger size muffins; and if this is all you need to make, it might work.... PM me if you want the recipe.

I'm not going to get into the ethical side of should you or shouldn't you. But if you do, it's all about whether you get caught; you run the risk of paying a fine or whatever the penalty is and whether you can afford to pay it. I don't know what the chances are of getting caught and being prosecuted; while the copyright infringement attorneys are busy, I can only guess they're looking at big fish and not little cake decorators or mom-and-pop bakeries. When Debbie Brown (in the UK) published popular children's character books, she has several disclaimers about having permission to recreate the characters in cake, and if you make these cakes they are for personal use only. So I guess if you were to put pictures of cakes you've done with licensed characters, you should show that they were "not for sale". But I'm not sure that's a lot of protection, especially if you have a whole portfolio of things like that and not a big family If you do decide to replicate a character, you could try to make it resemble the popular character and leave off some feature or other so that it is not an exact replica. I know that years ago, Earlene Moore warned a friend of mine to remove her picture of a Tabasco bottle done in cake; evidently Earlene knew of someone who was caught and warned by the company to cease and desist. I have no idea how many decorators who copy baseball caps or hockey bags, football helmets, etc with the logos of their favorite team are caught. But there are lot of places doing it!

I've noticed when I use pasteurized yolks, curds are looser than when I use shelled yolks. I have several curd recipes; some I use for tarts (because they are based on whole eggs and yolks) and some for buttercreams and toppings/sauces where I want a more intense flavor (just yolks). In both methods, I bring the curd to 186 and strain afterwards to get rid of any hardened bits. If I need the curd to be a little firmer, I'll use some gelatin sheets but normally for a tart, I don't have to - the curd holds it's shape when cut because it's relatively thin.

Maida Heatter has several excellent fruit mousse recipes (lemon, grapefruit, tangerine, orange, strawberry, lime) in her New Book of Best Desserts that would suit; they can be served in a mold or in individual glasses; you could also use Sherry Yard's Bavarian recipe and just sub out the passion puree for your favorite fruit flavor.

You want to get as much of the syrup into the meringue as possible; you will get more buttercream if you don't have a lot of the syrup left in the pan (or measuring cup. But it is possible to pour the hot syrup directly from the pan into the meringue with the mixer on high.) I don't bother scraping the pan, I just pour until it's all added and there's a coating on the pan. If you are using a non-stick pan, you'll be able to get practically all of it into the meringue. A few degrees over is not a problem but 10 degrees more is probably not ok. There's a range of what will work with this type of meringue buttercream; I can pull the syrup off the heat at 239 and get a beautiful buttercream; I can also pull it at 248 and get a slightly firmer buttercream.

Yeah, I fell victim to the neighborhood kid selling them to get scholarship money a few years ago. I have a nice collection of various knives so I didn't need anything but ended up buying the steak knives, which have been fine. As far as steak knives go, these are very good. I think I also "qualified" for a cheese planer, or maybe it was a peeler which I cannot tell you where that went to so it must not have been as good as the steak knives. Kind of like a home party thing but it's just you and the poor hapless child, showing you how their knives can cut a penny .....

Check out the Easter Pastries thread newly bumped up in P&B forum; it has several photos of what you are describing....

how long did you let the tiers sit before stacking them? I like to use some corn syrup (replacing about an ounce or so of the cream with corn syrup) when using ganache as a glaze; the formula I use also has some butter in it (2# choc, 2# cream, 8 oz butter). But it doesn't seem as if the glaze was the problem .... in my experience when cakes crack, it's because the board flexes and causes the cake to crack (split). I haven't used foamcore for cake boards; I've been using the half inch thick drums made by a company in Canada - Enjay Converters. Most suppliers carry them now (Pfeil and Holing does, I'm sure others do too). Sometimes if a cake is very heavy, I use plywood; I've also seen thick masonite used by other bakers. I don't know that your cake was especially heavy, but if the board flexed, that could have caused the first crack and then the rumbling across those pavers just made the situation worse. I also use bubble tea straws instead of wooden dowels for support. They're strong, cheap, you can cut them easily ....

Well, there's always a glaze of sorts - mixing icing sugar with some type of liquid (milk, or water usually) and then a bit of flavoring (coffee, caramel, or lemon juice perhaps). You can make it as thick or as fluid as you like - it will be somewhat similar to a poured fondant in that it will develop a crust as it sits but is easy to bite through. I find it very sweet so I am not as fond of it, but it works really well on some cakes. Or what about lemon curd as a topping - quite tart but with the right type of cupcake, it might work. Maybe a gingerbread cupcake?

I did marshmallow lollipops last week for a fundraising event - I only half dipped them in chocolate then rolled them in sugared almonds (but surely you can substitute anything you want, non-pareils, sprinkles, fruity rice krispie cereal or maybe any kind of cereal). I am so used to dipping my cheesecake lollipops - which are frozen when dipped so that makes the chocolate set up almost immediately! - and doing room temp marshmallows meant that the chocolate didn't set quickly and dripped a lot. Someone suggested chilling the marshmallows but I just plodded along and finished them all and vowed not to dip the next batch of marshmallows! I double the recipe and use a regular full size sheet pan so mine are not as billowy beautiful as yours - they are the height of the sheet pan which is what - not even half an inch? so I made them more like financier shape rectangles....

Marshmallows might work; it might be time consuming to wrap or bag them, though depending on size. But certainly a lot of fun in terms of flavors and colors.... The same with brownies - I'm doing some brownie pops by cutting them into fingers, then dipping in chocolate and sprinkling on non-pareils, etc. But you certainly don't have to dip them in chocolate ....

Who knew something so simple could become so complicated! The Rich's I ordered somehow transformed into a generic product that is dairy (the sales rep is fixing it as we speak); the store-brand chocolate sandwich cookies are also dairy, as is every other variety of chocolate sandwich cookie now; and while I was there I checked out Cool Whip, which is also dairy (I always thought it was non-dairy but no. I don't know what's in it to see how it could be called dairy but never mind that for now). Droxies (Hydrox) are also dairy. I found chocolate graham crackers that are pareve so I'm going to use those instead of the oreo crumbs; different taste I know but same look. I think next time I am going to suggest they do a beach theme and go for sand instead of dirt - at least the Vienna Fingers cookies are pareve!

Pam, you're right about the Oreos - I always thought they were pareve, but no! Thank you for the heads up. I went to a large supermarket with a whole aisle devoted to Passover foods, and while they had plenty of Leiber and Kemach mixes, no cookies. I wonder if there are chocolate Nilla wafers (Famous Wafers are far too expensive to use for this) and if they are pareve.... I found Jello vanilla instant pudding at the store and it only had a circle U on it so that is pareve. Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the cookies if I can't find a sub for them; I might just end up making a plain chocolate cake (I use water in my recipe and will sub out the butter with margarine) and crumbling it up. I ordered the Rich's from Perkins and will see how it goes.

I'll be making 45 of them, it's a 5 oz serving (cosmo glass). Should I use regular or vanilla soy milk for the pudding (pastry cream)? I don't use soy milk so I don't know how the vanilla version differs from the regular or unflavored kind) then I can use the non-dairy whipped topping for the whipped cream. When you say vanilla creamer, is that a soy coffee creamer? In the milk aisle in the supermarket?

One of my catering clients needs a Dirt Cake dessert for a mitzvah celebration. It's been about 20 years since I had this last; I remember this as mixing up instant pudding mix with milk, and layering it with whipped cream and crushed oreos and letting it sit for a few hours and it was pretty good on a summer night after a barbeque. So since this is a meat meal, we cannot have dairy. I can get non-dairy whipped topping in a carton (Pastry Pride, Elgin and Rich's is what my distributor carries - any opinions on which is better than the other?) - can I use this as a substitute for milk when making the pudding? (I have to admit, I don't have any boxed pudding mix so I have to look and see if that can even be used at all.) Or, any other ideas on how to do this dessert if you can't use the non-dairy topping as milk?

What the reviewer expresses is their own personal opinion and I doubt that there is much you can do to prove malicious intent. It would be intereting to note whether the reviewer in question has routinely published poor reviews of similar wines/products. If this is their first poor review, then perhaps their motives are not pure and they do intend harm; but it's impossible to prove. And I think you'd have to establish economic loss to get anywhere (your winery lost X amount of business over previous years directly as a result of this reviewer's claims). So as hard as it is to ignore, it's best to let it go. Or send them a case of the wine in question!!

white chocolate would work to stiffen it without gelatin; I always like to add some of the cream to the melted chocolate (as if you were tempering it) so you don't get bits of hardened chocolate in the cream. You can also add some of the cream to the chocolate and then melt it and add the whipped cream to it.....