JeanneCake

Bailey's cheesecake? cupcakes with baileys irish cream frosting? bailey's truffles?

RLB suggests reducing the juices left from thawing the berries (in a sieve) in a microwave - the microwave cuts the risk of caramelizing the sugars in the juice by cooking on the heat.

I can get a bow to be dry enough to handle (but don't apply too much pressure on the curve otherwise it will break) in a few hours using Albert Uster's gum paste. Make sure you roll it thin enough - run it through the pasta machine if you have one. I've made the bow loops (like for a loopy bow, not a tied shoelace bow) in the morning and put them on a cake that went out the door that afternoon. For a tied bow, you have to be careful about handling it - the center is where it wants to break when you go to move it and it's not completely dry. But the loops will hold up after an hour - I fold up a paper towel to support the loops for an hour or so and then I can take them out and the loops stay in place. If you added more gum trag to whatever gum paste you are using now, it should dry faster. Or white chocolate plastique - stick it in the cooler and it will firm up enough to handle in 30 mins. The problem I have with this is usually it's an ivory color.

What part of the decorating are you struggling with? The idea? Or not having a smooth coat of buttercream? Well, there's always a basketweave finish if you want to avoid having to smooth the buttercream. Fresh flowers always look great on a cake; you can add some dots here and there and it will look beautiful. I worked with someone who was absolutely amazing when it came to smoothing buttercream; her secret was adding fluidflex to the italian meringue buttercream - just enough to make it more supple and easier to smooth.

There might be time to see how they'd respond to you. I'd encourage you to write them a polite note (completely objective, no slamming them or embellishing the details), and repeat all the good things about your dinner youi've said here. Mention that you were surprized to see the entrees included on your check and although you didn't bring it up at the time, you've been wondering that perhaps it was added in error. Or send it via email if they have that type of contact on a website. This opens the door for them to address it by refunding your $, giving you a gift certificate for a future visit (even if you don't use it, you can give it to someone else) or ignoring it and confirming your suspicion that they are not up to par and you shouldn't go back.

Well, I'm still kind of confused. When the manager who wants to make things right asks what the customer wants, I think it was appropriate for the diner to say "no, we don't have time for the meals to be redone, but if you could just bring the check that would fine." I think the manager would have removed the entrees then. But the manager wants to make things right, so she pushes on in that effort and offers dessert, which is accepted. From the manager's perspective, she found something the customer agrees to to make it right (giving the customer dessert and comping it). Why would they comp both the entree and the dessert? Sometimes you have to ask for what you want and not guess that the other person knows what that is.

I love all the suggestions so far .... you could use passion fruit juice from Goya if that's available in your area and make a passion curd to fill a pie shell I was going to suggest Shoefly pie - Maida Heatter has a delicious one in her Great American Desserts book. It's a molasses pie but that description doesn't do it justice. It's really good, and around here in New England, very unusual. Good luck!

I think it depends on what you're painting. Luster dust/petal dust mixed with lemon extract dries quickly, either of these mixed with vodka takes a little bit longer to dry, but not forever. Gel or paste colors painted on fondant or gum paste will stay tacky. Airbrush colors will dry completely, and you can use them to paint in the same way you would the dusts/gels/etc. If you are coloring flowers that are premade, you can use the dusts dry. The opacity will be how much liquid (extract or alcohol) you add to the dust or gel or whatever... The more liquid you add to the dust, the more watercolorish your paint will be; the less you add the thicker it is and more concentrated the color. HTH

I'm sorry, I can't help myself based on what I've been reading on the other thread about saying something or not..... What did you do about the tip? Did you tip the wait staff on the total amount of the bill (regardless of whether they should have taken off the $45 in entrees or not)? On the other hand, they asked what they could do to make it right. You said that there wasn't time to do it again, but you did have time to eat dessert. Did you ask them at the time to take the entrees off your bill? Or was that just your expectation it would be removed and you would not be charged? (I'm not trying to flame, just trying to understand). So the difference between what dessert cost ($12?) and what the entrees came to ($45) is $32? I wonder if you had said to charge you for dessert but not for the entrees, what their response would have been.

I have a few Fat Daddio cake pans, and I'm not impressed with the quality or the way they conduct heat. Maybe their cookie pans are better, but based on my experience with the cake pans, I'd choose Magic Line first. I have a few Cooks Dream pans as well, they've held up pretty well.

Well, I found the site - Hometown Favorites - but they don't have the Peanut Plank or anything similar....

I was curious about this, and tried to find the web site that sells "obscure" foods like the sugar cereals we grew up with, skybars - the stuff you can't find anymore. I didn't find the site - yet - but I did find this: Peanut Plank recipe It doesn't call for baking soda. Maybe there's a way to make a clear caramel or something that is more golden than amber for this purpose....

If you're sorting it all out, that's letting them know you're not happy and things change as a result. If you don't tell them, they don't know, can't sort it out and are left wondering why the tip is low. I'm not suggesting that as diners, we train the servers. But if they're annoying you with constant banter, being too familiar, etc. you can say something. If you don't, don't penalize them with a bad tip and expect them to get it that they are too chatty, too familiar, too whatever. In the case of the raw bacon, if the waitress didin't know it was raw (hard to imagine, I know but let's go with benefit of the doubt) and it is brought to her attention, she can either make the customer happy by fixing it or not fixing it. If she doesn't fix it, there's no reason for her to be surprized by the absent or low tip - which is exactly what happened. (What she did ensured she wouldn't get a tip based on her reaction.) The flip side is if she didn't know the bacon was raw, and you don't tell her, and don't leave a tip, she doesn't know what the problem was.

For what it's worth, I got an email from Pfeil and Holing Customer Service today (I have been badgering them for years about this) saying they were a few weeks away from stocking edible dusts and a range of "new stuff" but that could mean anything. Anytime I order, I've been using their feedback form to ask for edible dusts so maybe they just got tired of me asking

The husband and wife team, the Winbecklers, use rolled buttercream and were pretty good with it, as I recall. He used to make the news on occasion by sculpting celebrities out of cake (I remember the Princess Diana one.) and used this rolled buttercream. I've never used it so I can't say whether it tastes good or not; if you do a google search on rolled buttercream cookies, there's a nice picture of some autumn leaves with it. It looked like fondant on the cookie to me, so maybe there's another alternative out there for decorating cookies. Personally, I use coating "chocolate" for decorating cookies.

OK, OK, I'm the coward who didn't want to risk public flaming for an idea that would fall flat. Literally The last time I made marshmallows, I burned out my KA 5 qt and my trusty older KA 6 qt so it's been a year since I made marshmallows and I am way out of practice. I hate people who are armchair chefs who spout about how something could work with no practical experience as to how it would work. So let me get into the armchair to continue this post.... I love the idea of a salmon marshmallow. What I love about a marshmallow is the airy feel so I first thought of salmon mousse, but not all that dairy (the whipped cream). Then I thought about how to make a salmon gelee and would adding beaten egg whites make it more billow-y to approximate a marshmallow. I have no idea what this pink stuff is Rob speaks of. The only pink on our Tday table is the cranberry sauce

I've been following this thread since it began, and I think there isn't going to be any end to the debate, but after Holly's reply, I couldn't help but wonder: Has anyone here ever been asked about this? Have you, as a customer, left a tip you thought was fine, and then been asked? What happened? What did you do? Why do you still remember it? Is it because you were embarrassed at having left a small tip or because you felt the shame of being called on it? Or did it serve to educate you that your tipping practice was out of date? As a customer, if my experience is less than satisfactory during the meal, it's my job to let the server know so my experience can be improved. If I don't tell them, but pretend that everything is "just fine" then give them a small tip, how does that help them not repeat the offending behavior if it was the server that is contributing to my less than satisfactory experience?

Maida Heatter's Frozen PB Pie, but the filling has whipped cream, milk, confectioner's sugar, cream chz and milk chocolate so you might be thinking it is more like a PB Mousse pie. I don't know AB's recipe to know how it would compare. Basically you melt the choc, beat the cream chz and PB, add the melted choc then the milk and sugar, then add whipped cream. You pour it into a premade crumb crust (I like a plain chocolate crust with, Maida adds some salted peanuts to the crumbs) It never really freezes too hard to cut so it's good to have around.....

If the restaurant is/was successful, what does the owner think needs to change? Or why does he think it needs to change? What happened to the staff from last year? (From your description, it sounds like a seasonal place with a clientele mostly made up of the tourist crowd and not open in the winter months?)

You press the chocolate side to the cake and peel off the acetate, as if you were applying a chocolate band, or you could break off pieces from the acetate and apply them to the cake.... ← Yeah, but the chocolate side is the side the acetate is on. ← You're right! There's two sides, one with the feuilletine on it, and the other side with just chocolate. I should have said the side with the feuilletine on it. I don't know whether it is possible to separate the sheet from the chocolate before applying it to the cake. I know when making small chocolate decorations you can separate it, but when it is a wide band, I don't know if this is possible. Thanks for catching the error

You press the chocolate side to the cake and peel off the acetate, as if you were applying a chocolate band, or you could break off pieces from the acetate and apply them to the cake....

I would fill them the day before, you can brush a little syrup on the flat sides before filling if you like. I know there are distributors selling them - already assembled - frozen. Even the unfilled shells are shipped frozen. So far, I haven't made them myself yet but I'm considering it as a Passover item....

Can you use it as a garnish, like to mask the sides of cakes? I'd like to be able to make a crunchy dessert with it. ← Do a Google search: feuilletine site:egullet.org I stopped looking after more than 8 threads - there's even a recipe that uses it in RecipeGullet. One thing we did in a chocolate class was to mix it with hazelnut gianduja (and/or praline) and milk chocolate, roll it out between parchments, then cut out small circles which were then used as a base for dipped chocolates. If you use it to garnish a cake, I think it would depend on the on the frosting, but doing it just before serving might be best. And I think it'd be delicious and crunchy. ← Would this work? Spread chocolate on a strip of acetate, then sprinkle the feuilletine on the choc before it sets, then use the strip on the outside of the cake or entremet. The other thing I thought of is the hazelnut "cream" I've seen at Swiss Chalet or AUI. You can melt it like you would a poured fondant, to pour on the top of a finished cake, then put the feuilletine on top of that. It should stay crunchy and you might even be able to put a chocolate drizzle on it....

I tried the coconut caramel panna cotta (no eggs, so doesn't qualify as creme brulee) from the epicurious site. I didn't use the caramel, it was definitely more of a molded flan or creme renversee. It has a nice smooth texture, nice coconut flavor but as always, I wish there was more coconut flavor. It used coconut milk and cream of coconut. I might use a coconut rum caramel sauce the next time I make it.

Roland Mesnier has two versions in his Dessert University cookbook - one is an orange and the other is a champagne version. My copy is at work and I am home right at the moment, but I think if you do a search on "champagne creme brulee" it might come up on an amazon site and you can view the recipe from the book online. it is very much like a pastry cream - you cook milk, a thickener like cornstarch and sugar, temper some beaten egg yolks with the hot milk, then back on the heat, then into a mixer to cool on low speed, then you add butter. It's creamy and pourable and you can put it into tartlet shells or ramekins, then sugar and torch when ready.